Blue White Illustrated

May 2014

Penn State Sports Magazine

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Staff views spring game as platform for PSU A few weeks ago, new Penn State of- fensive line coach Herb Hand tweeted that he was eager for his family to come up from Nashville, where they still live, and "join 80k at the B/W game" on April 12. Hand's Twitter feed has become a must-read for Penn State followers, and it has brought his family members a bit of local celebrity. But it was the second part of that tweet – the attendance tar- get – that got everyone's attention. Eighty thousand? That's an awful lot of fans for the Blue-White Game – more fans, in fact, than Penn State has ever drawn for its annual spring scrimmage. For the Nittany Lions to meet or surpass such an ambitious goal, they are going to need a lot more than just the enthusias- tic participation of the Hand family. They are going to need the rest of the Penn State community – students, grads, lettermen and subway alumni – to turn out for the game, to "pull the rope in the same direction," as James Franklin is fond of saying. And the Lions are probably going to need all those people to bring their friends. Can it be done? Franklin thinks so. The ever-effusive first-year coach has tweeted about drawing "80K MINI- MUM," and at his recent speaking en- gagements, he has talked about the po- tential impact that a big crowd would have on his staff's recruiting efforts. To that end, he's been thinking about tweaking the format from the past two years in hope of making the game more enticing to fans. Under Bill O'Brien, the Lions split up into offensive and defen- sive units and used a scoring system in which the defense was awarded points for turnovers, sacks, tackles for loss and three-and-outs, while the offense was rewarded not only for scoring plays but for plays of 15 or more yards and for making two consecutive first downs. The system sounded good in theory, but in practice, it was difficult to follow the scoring, and both teams tended to pile up points pinball-style, leaving on- NEWS & NOTES F O O T B A L L THE BLUE-WHITE GAME AT A GLANCE WHERE Beaver Stadium WHEN 1:30 p.m., April 12 PARKING/ADMISSION Free (parking lots will open at 8 a.m.) RADIO The game is set to air live on the Penn State Sports Network TV The Big Ten Network's tape-delayed broadcast begins at 6 p.m. April 12 OTHER ACTIVITIES An autograph session will take place from 10:45 to 11:30 a.m. Players will be permitted to sign one item per person. The Penn State game- day Fan Festival, with numerous displays, vendors and interactive events for kids, will begin at 9 a.m. and will be located along Curtin Road. The 5th Annual Paterno Family Beaver Stadium Run/Family Fun Walk to bene5t Special Olympics Pennsylvania is set for Sunday, April 13. Participants will 5nish at the 50-yard line in Beaver Stadium for the 3-mile run or 1-mile walk. For more in- formation, go to specialolympicspa.org/beaver-stadium-run SIGNATURE MOMENT Johnnie Troutman signs auto- graphs prior to the 2009 Blue-White Game. A school- record crowd of 76,500 turned out for the game. Annemarie Mountz

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