Not Especially Ready for Some Football

How about that UMass band?

I refer to the halftime show of last Saturday’s ritual slaughter at Beaver Stadium. The game was a snoozer – I left after the mid-game festivities with the score Nittany Lions 38,000,000, Minutemen 0 – but the UMass band, which featured tuxedoed vibraphonists, a vocal quartet, and an electric guitarist and bassist in addition to the hundreds of marching instrumentalists, baton flingers and flag bearers (where were the hippos in tutus?) – kicked butt.

When I joined the Penn State faculty in the waning years of the late, great 20^th century, friends asked if the position came with free football tickets. Sure it did, along with free parking, subsidized housing and a cappuccino and a brioche delivered to my office every morning on a silver tray.  

I went to my first game – the famous Snow Bowl vs. Michigan — in November 1995 (froze my patootie off) and have gone to maybe a half dozen games since. I go when a ticket rains down from the heavens, when it’s not too nasty out and (usually) when they’re playing a worthier opponent than Cupcake State.

I made an exception to the worthy opponent rule on this occasion because my bride, still relatively new in town, hadn’t been a to a game yet and I thought she should see what 100,000 butts in 100,000 seats looks like. (She may be less interested in sports than anyone I’ve ever known.)

Think of it as an anthropological experience, I told her, bearing in mind the overarching ethnographic question: What the devil is going on here?

We left the house after 3 o’clock, thereby missing a fundamental component of the game-day experience: sleeping off all the alcoholic beverages one has consumed since breakfast.

We noticed as we walked to the stadium that everyone and I mean everyone had dressed for the occasion, wearing either numbered jerseys or Penn State-emblazoned shirts or at the very least, navy and white. This wearing of the colors, I believe, is a relatively recent development. In olden times, spectators who weren’t expecting to be called upon to block, tackle, run, pass, catch or kick didn’t see any particular reason to wear any semblance of the team’s uniform. In really olden times, the guys wore jackets and ties.

Then the idea of the crowd as 12^th man took hold – the belief that the fans, lifting up their voices as one, can inspire players to elevate their games. Also there’s the pleasure of unity: We are all here together, connected by our love for this team and this school. The NBA has taken dressing for success one step further: Not only the players wear uniforms, but the spectators are expected to do so as well.

When we got to the gate we realized we had made a classic rookie mistake: We’d brought a backpack to hold our caps, jackets and snacks. No backpacks allowed – even after one has emptied the contents into clear plastic bags.

Loath to consign our pack to the trash bin, we had the brilliant idea of stashing it in a tree and retrieving it after the game. Busted! A cop saw us and asked us to pity the guardians of public safety if everyone were to leave backpacks strewn about.

So we retreated to one of the parking lots and asked some tailgaters who appeared to have no intention of venturing inside the stadium if we could leave our bombless backpack with them. They cheerily agreed. 

Now we could go in. I have to admit, I’ve never liked that snarling lion sound they play at sporting events hereabouts. It reminds me of a loudly expectorating drunk. Come to think of it, the public address system at Beaver Stadium also reminds me of a loud drunk – one who is sitting at the barstool next to yours and screaming in your ear. One minute it’s the announcer. The next it’s a commercial. Then it’s some pop song that should have been entombed in a time capsule and not dug up for a thousand years.

How is it that all these kids know the words to “Build Me Up Buttercup?” How is it that they all sing along? So obedient, these sports fans. The p.a. system blares, “Everybody clap your hands,” and everybody does! There’s nothing disturbing about all the mass chanting and singing that goes on around here unless you think of the shipwrecked kids chanting, “Kill the pig!” in “Lord of the Flies.”

This brings us back to the ritual slaughter. All this folderol is supposed to be fun, right? But it couldn’t have been very fun to be a Minuteman on Saturday. I guess they were playing so their band will have enough money to take the show on the road.