Between State College and Pittsburgh

Saturday, September 20

Somewhere between State College, PA and Pittsburgh, PA

9:53 pm EDT - Fall means college football and Saturday
college football means something heretofore unimagined by me. Here's
the trick: some schools — not the one I attended and none of the ones
I have ever before visited — have a real sense of school spirit
anchored in football. Some of these schools, let us call a
hypothetical one 'Penn State' seem to regularly draw crowds larger
than several small cities.

We happened to be at this 'Penn State' this morning and while I don't
have the official attendance, I do know the average stadium attendance
last year was over 105,000 and that the stadium's capacity is the
largest in the country at 107,282 (Michigan used to be larger, but
it's capacity has been reduced due to an accessibility lawsuit). To
put this in perspective, Casper, Wyoming — the largest city in Wyoming
— is around 50,000 people. A capacity crowd at Beaver Stadium is
fourteen times the size of Wasila, Alaska; it's 40,000 people more
than you need to get onto a statewide ballot in Pennsylvania; it's
constitutes around one-fifth of a US congressional district. Today the
stadium had a capacity crowd and then some.

Max Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's son, joined us as we registered
students, alums, and the odd parent.

I am fairly certain the event was successful, though it's tinted in my
memory by the yellow light that comes from being right near the edge
of a dream. The bus finally arrived in State College, PA at 5:00 am
last night. We dropped it off in front of Beaver stadium and then
drove for an hour over mist-soaked backroads to our hotel. We arrived
at 6:30, slept enough for exhaustion to set in, and then pulled on
yesterday's clothes and trekked back to the massive stadium.
Adrenaline and Red Bull carried us through the first hours, but at a
certain point consciousness started seeming like a real burden. I have
photographs of two dancing pretzels in front of the bus, so I am
fairly sure that actually happened, but my hazy memories of
photographs taken, students stopping into the bus, and songs spun
split in and out with feverish images of misty roads, Pennsylvania
woodlands, and our briefly occupied hotel room.

Tomorrow we head to a Pirates game and then to University of
Pittsburgh for a concert and voter registration.

Nick Brown