Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/861263
New book chronicles history of Lions' home 2 0 1 7 K I C K O F F S P E C I A L Another new book that will interest Penn State football fans this fall is "Lair of the Lion: A History of Beaver Stadium." This book is di>erent from Bill Contz's "When the Lions Roared" because it is a 180-page co>ee table book =lled with more than 125 photos and dia- grams along with the text. "Lair of the Lion," pub- lished by The Pennsylvania State Uni- versity Press, describes the evolution of the stadium since the late 1880s as an integral part of Penn State's athletic and educational goals amid the constantly changing national and collegiate sports culture. For the =rst time, readers will see o?cial documents and detailed con- struction plans, including engineering schematics on structural changes that have been made at Beaver Field and Beaver Stadium over the decades. Especially in- triguing are the back-to- back chapters about raising the stadium in the massive 1978 expansion – an engineering marvel that eliminated the tradi- tional running track that had been in place since New Beaver Field in 1909 – and the construction of the north end zone upper deck in 1991. Readers not only learn about the origi- nal funding and naming of the stadium but also about the nearby historical markers and the construction of the Nittany Lion shrine. One could not =nd better, more au- thoritative authors to collaborate on the book than Lee Stout and Harry West, Penn State graduates with distinguished careers at their alma mater. Historian Stout is now a library emeritus, while West is a professor emeritus of civil en- gineering. In the interest of full disclosure, this writer assisted the authors in some phases of the project. "Lair of the Lion" turned out better than even I had envi- sioned. –L.P. HOME, SWEET HOME Beaver Sta- dium, seen here in 2010, has been the Nittany Lions' home field since the start of the 1960 season. Photo by Patrick Mansell your mother's a lawyer, but you, you're an idiot.' I guarantee there was steam coming out of Farrell and he wanted to pick up Joe and crumple him like a piece of paper and throw him away." What truly make the book so fascinat- ing are the stories Contz's teammates tell, like the ones about Farrell, and Bowman with Costas in Vegas, along with the insights from Contz, which are often incisive, amusing and self-depre- cating, and the running commentary from Blackledge. Then there are the escapades of the six Phi Gamma Delta members, fraternity brothers of Garrity and wide receiver Kevin Baugh, who drove nearly 24 hours to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl with student tickets and gasoline money but no credit cards and not much spare cash. They not only mooched their way through six days in the French Quarter, but when Garrity made his now-historic touchdown reception, they were sitting so close they can be seen in some photos of the chaotic scene. "We all follow the flight of the ball, look down, and see Gregg tearing down the sideline running right at us!" one of the frat brothers, Mike Bellaman, recalled. "We start