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I didn’t know his parents were Penn State fans until I saw it. It was the summer before senior year of high school. Several of us went to a friend’s basement to hang out. The poster on the wall was a tribute to Washington crossing the Delaware. However, instead of George Washington leading the Continental Army across the river, Joe Paterno was at the bow of the ship with the Penn State Nittany Lions. Maybe they were at Rutgers that week.
It’s possibly the most kitschy Penn State product I’ve ever seen. It was done by George LaVanish, a talented artist who worked for the school and still lives in the state, and is dated 1986. In my memory there was a batch of Penn State wall art in that basement, and that wasn’t unusual. I knew a lot of people in Philadelphia with full rooms at Penn State, some of whom had never even attended the school. But they liked college football and Penn State was the best team that could be considered home. There are plenty of Penn State fans left in Philadelphia.
I’m a Penn State fan, nominally. I have a better reason than many: my dad went there and we grew up watching their games. “Come on, guys!” said when Penn State made a mistake. I still say this to the sports teams I support. My fandom was at its peak when I was a kid, and in the 1990s, Penn State was often one of the best teams in the country. One year I wore my Ki-Jana Carter t-shirt to every elementary school dance I attended.
Then I went to college and Penn State wasn’t good anymore. My friends who attended the school saw three losing seasons and no wins in all four years. I visited sometimes, and the tradition I remember best was fans throwing their trash in the student section after touchdowns. (They told me they don’t do this anymore.) That’s when my fandom pretty much ended: the team was bad, I was at a different school, and my attention was elsewhere. I’d like to say that I turned against Penn State when the child sexual abuse scandal came to light in the early 2010s, but by then most of the warm feelings had been gone for a decade.
I still paid some attention. Over the past few years it’s been nice to talk football with my dad and complain about James Franklin’s coaching decisions. Penn State has had some decent years recently, but in the end they always lost the big game, usually to Michigan or Ohio State, and I learned not to get my hopes up. When this season became a 12-team playoff and Penn State opened the year ranked No. 8, I paid attention little further. Some shaky wins early in the year (the Lions could have lost to Bowling Green) then made me think they didn’t really have much of a chance. Somehow they will now play Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl on Thursday, with a trip to the national title game on the line. They still haven’t beaten Ohio State. They lost the Big Ten title game. However, they qualified for the playoffs and all they had to do was beat SMU and Boise State to get to this point. Now I’m stuck drinking a 1986 Penn State-branded Coke on a Twitch stream.
Philadelphia is once again a Penn State city. Or maybe it never stopped being. These are the kind of fans who have Paterno Crossing The Delaware on their walls, the people who say, “If God isn’t a Penn State fan, why is the sky blue and white?” bumper stickers, people with garages they’ve turned into shrines. I know people with huge collections of Penn State buttons, given out by a bank at games over the years. My friend’s stepfather, when asked the time, always begins with “According to my 1995 Rose Bowl Penn State watch…” When I was a kid, my neighbor had a cardboard cutout of Joe Paterno. (Sometimes I was at his window. A contractor once asked my dad why my neighbor was so weird; he’d been staring at him all day. “Oh, that’s just Joe Paterno,” my dad replied.)
But there are also a lot of Notre Dame fans in Philadelphia. The Irish brand is national, perhaps even as international as a college football team can be. The Fighting Irish have been that way since the 1920s, when Knute Rockne took the team on trips to face prominent opponents. The parents passed it on. People attached to their Irish heritage became Notre Dame families. Notre Dame beat Penn State 9-0 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia in 1928. They destroyed Penn in Philadelphia 60-20 in 1930 and 49-0 the following year. Nobody remembers these games. But who knows? They could have helped create the true fandom that exists here for a university 700 miles away. Maybe.
A large portion of the Penn State fandom hates Notre Dame, even though the teams don’t play each other much. A 1992 game remembered as the Snow Bowl, where the Irish beat the Nittany Lions with a two-point conversion in the final seconds, is one of my earliest sports hate memories. The Irish and PSU have only played twice since then, although the true feud never dies. But yes, in my old age I have softened a little. Some friends are Notre Dame fans, through osmosis, a real connection to the school, or both. My friend Kelly Bloor had a whole family of Fighting Irish fans before her brother even went to school, and I’ve been with her in bars where the entire crowd links arms and sings some horrible fight song. I don’t particularly enjoy this. But I like hanging out with her and seeing her giddy after a win. I’m glad when Notre Dame still loses, of course; I’m not a monster.
In addition to Penn State alumni and general “they’re the team I root for” fans, there are usually a lot of kids from the Philadelphia area on the team. The connection is deep. But Notre Dame does it too. In 1959 the researcher was reporting on the annual fan pilgrimage to South Bend for a game. In 1991 the Daily news described Robert Sumner, a Notre Dame fan with a “very supportive” wife, daughter and son. His answering machine opened with “If you’re not a Notre Dame fan, hang up.”
Then there was Al Leonard of Philadelphia, who began making annual trips to see Notre Dame while working for the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1940. He had traveled 85,914 miles to attend 65 games in 1954, and brought with him 25 co-workers when the researcher He mentioned it that year. “He used to do it only when necessary, but then he organized the ‘Enn Dee Club’ with the other 25, who annually go on a train tour of the west or south, pointing out stops to be there once or twice. Notre Dame games on the way,” the newspaper wrote. “This year’s game is the end of a tour that includes the West Coast, Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon.” Good job if you can get it.
Much of the state actually has a bit of a divided fandom. Pottsville Area High School rescheduled its basketball game to avoid playing during the Orange Bowl in order to accommodate Notre Dame and Penn State fans on the roster. (Some kids are just choosing sides now. Pottsville senior Letrel Montone told WNEP-TV: “I’m a Bama fan and we had a tough year, but I’m just rooting for Penn State. Now, you know, I’m a kid from PA. We’re going to Penn State.”) In Scranton, a group of Penn State and Notre Dame fans are heading together to the game in Miami. A little more color from WNEP, who seems to have quite a team on this story:
Bill Fey of Wilkes-Barre is a bowl game veteran. He has followed the Lions to places like Pasadena, Phoenix, Tampa and Miami. He expects to come home to some disgruntled Notre Dame fans: “Well, they’re going to be sad. They’re going to be sad. There it is. “I can’t help it.” Dan Downs vows to make sure his wife realizes the Irish are the top team: “I’m going to say, ‘Honey, don’t be mad at me. Notre Dame is kicking your butt.’”
A very nice story by Rich Scarcella in the reading eagle It was about having to choose between going to Penn State to study journalism or going to Notre Dame, where his father wanted him to attend. In the same article, Tim DeSchriver wrote about No. 1 Penn State’s 36-6 win over Notre Dame in 1985, adding that growing up in the Poconos, the two teams to root for were ND or PSU. The man who played Notre Dame’s leprechaun mascot in the 1970s is making headlines. “When you’re 5-foot-5 and love sports,” he told WOLF-TV, “you probably won’t be a basketball player or a quarterback, but you can be a part of it in a unique way.”
My fandom is pretty safe. I’ll be traveling to the game too: about half an hour to my parents’ house to watch the game with my dad. I was at his house for the SMU game and we texted during the win over Boise State. I’ll be wearing a ’90s Penn State sweatshirt that complains about the team’s undefeated seasons without national titles. If things go my way, a two-loss Penn State team will be just one win away from making that jersey a little less ugly. But only a little. I’ll have to get some even more annoying gear if they win.
