As Beaver Stadium enters into the 2023 football season, the Nittany Lions have now played 389 games within the friendly confines of one of the nation’s largest venues. Boasting a record of 310-79 all-time, Penn State has won 79.6% of their contests at Beaver Stadium as the program nears 400 games at one of the most historic stadiums in the country.
A perfect season at home would see that mark rise to a win rate of just over 80%. Penn State as a program overall has the ninth-highest winning percentage [.688], falling behind Michigan and Ohio State in the current iteration of the Big Ten. Soon-to-be Big Ten member USC also sits inside the top 10 just ahead of Penn State according to Winspedia.
Is it possible to go perfect at home this year? The Nittany Lions have a fairly favorable home slate in 2023 but a late season matchup with prohibitive Big Ten favorites Michigan might pose the biggest challenge of the entire year home and away as Penn State looks to shake up the conference title race dynamics in mid November. All told a deep and talented Penn State team should be fully realized by the time to Wolverines come to town, but the same could be said for the visitors. As a program Penn State has posted a perfect home record on 15 occasions with three of those coming since 2016.
As for much earlier in the year, Penn State looks to open its 10th season under James Franklin with a primetime 7:30 p.m. meeting against West Virginia with tickets already well over $100 just to get in the door. So far the Nittany Lions are an early 20+ point favorite against a Mountaineer program not expected to do too much in 2023 but upsets – especially with a Penn State team working in a new quarterback and receiver corps – are never out of the question in college football.
No matter what there should be plenty of fans in attendance in see the game. Ticketmaster has little in the way of major swaths of tickets available with resale tickets making up the entirety of tickets available on the platform. It might be hard to top Penn State’s over-capacity season opening 107,305 fans against Ohio in 2022, but it’s not out of the question that a regional foe coupled with primetime could see one of the highest attendance for a home opener under James Franklin.
Home Opener Attendance Under James Franklin [106,572 capacity]
- 107,305 Ohio [2022]
- 105,323 Ball State [2021]
- 105,232 App State [2018]
- 104,527 Idaho [2019]
- 101,684 Akron [2017]
- 97,354 Akron [2014]
- 94,378 Kent State [2016]
- 93,065 Temple [2015]
- No crowd – COVID year Ohio State [2020]
