Blue White Illustrated

hat winning field goal by Sam Ficken, kicked from the lushly manicured Irish grass of Croke Park, seems as though it happened ages ago. So much has taken place since, creat- ing so much anticipation for the future, that the flavor of that season opener in Dublin has already worn off. Scholarships are returning. The num- ber in the win column is growing, and there's even a potential bowl game to look forward to. Wasn't that the whole reason why the Ireland trip was planned in the first place? Go figure. By the time this column reaches mail- boxes, our Dublin visit will seem like a mere afterthought. However, that game – and, for that matter, the entire "busi- ness trip" – was an adventure that won't soon be forgotten. Not only did it springboard Penn State into the 2014 season with a win over UCF, the Fiesta Bowl champion from a year ago, but it provided a memorable experience for those who traveled along. Throughout the week, James Franklin strived to set a tone, pounding home that the visit was for work, not pleasure. "For us, this is a business trip, to go play a football game," he said after the team's first practice at University Col- lege Dublin. "It's not going to be a once- in-a-lifetime experience because we're going to work really hard to make sure all of our players graduate with a mean- ingful degree from Penn State so they can afford to go back at some point on vacation with their family or their friends and enjoy the countryside." But every once in a while, Franklin would relent – even if it was just for a few minutes here or there. For a majori- ty of his players, it was their first time leaving the country, so he set aside some time to take in the sights and sounds. The team toured downtown Dublin on a double-decker bus and checked out the Guinness Storehouse. Likewise, their five-star hotel was a sight to behold. That wasn't all. After the second practice of the week, Penn State called in members of the Gaelic Athletic Association, and they taught the fundamentals of the country's native sports, hurling and Gaelic football. Hurling, a match of which was played during halftime of the UCF game, is reminiscent of lacrosse. Instead of a netted lacrosse stick, however, players use a flat wooden paddle, called a hur- ley. They also wear a tight-fitting green helmet with a facemask. Although PSU's players were just sticking to the slow-moving basics, they were still re- quired to the wear them. (It was quite the scene watching the 300-pounders squeeze that over their heads.) In order to score in hurling, players must strike the ball with the hurley, us- ing a baseball-like swing to put it into the goal, past a keeper. Unsurprisingly, Christian Hackenberg, once a standout baseball player in high school, picked it up rather quickly. The team also learned how to play Gaelic football, a sport which really is nothing like what Hackenberg and his teammates play. Rather, it's a vicious combination of rugby and soccer, with touches of basketball and volleyball sprinkled in. The rules are most similar to Australian football. Only on a trip to Ireland would players have had an opportunity to dabble in these sports. They're the Irish pastimes, and stories about them fill up the pages of the sports section just as football and baseball do here. In fact, Gaelic football is the primary sport played at Croke Park. About 24 hours after Penn State's win, Dublin's hometown Gaelic team squared off vs. Donegal, a county from up north, on the very same playing surface. By the time the 70-minute match started, it was impossible to tell that an American football game had been played there the day before. Groundskeepers had cut the grass by a quarter-inch or so, repaired any divots with a pitchfork and steam brushed off the painted lines of the American grid- iron. Almost like what the NCAA did with Penn State's bowl ban and scholarship re- strictions, the pitch was wiped clean. More than 85,000 fans crammed into Croke Park for the Dublin-Donegal match that afternoon, making it the largest sporting event in Europe that day and also making the Penn State- UCF crowd of 53,000 from the day be- fore look spotty at best. More than 20,000 represented Penn State, however, despite UCF being the home team. And although they had the assistance of piped-in music – the crowd noise for the Gaelic game was strictly organic – Penn State's boister- ous chants and cheers nearly matched the noise level of the 80,000-plus Gael- ic fans. Props for that. And, to think, that was for a noncon- ference game, not even a bowl. That Gaelic football match? It was the All- Ireland semifinal, equivalent to the con- ference championship round of the NFL playoffs. Maybe it's an afterthought by now, but that Ireland trip proved – not like it needed to be again – that Penn State fans travel in droves. Ten thousand peo- ple at a PSU pep rally in Europe. Twice as many at the game. Unreal. They had better be ready to travel again, though. Just as everyone is fully adjusted from the jet leg, it appears as if another trip might need to be planned. To Florida? Tennessee? Detroit? A bowl game will make any destina- tion a little sweeter. But it won't match Dublin. ■ LAST WORD T I M O W E N | O W E N . T I M . B W I @ G M A I L . C O M T A trip to remember

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