Shocker: Penn State Has No Rival

[longtimefan]

The adoption by the NCAA of the championship game rule was much more of an influence than PSU's move. The NCAA has said they never expected any D-1 conference to expand to 12 and thereby qualify to have a championship game. The SEC's expansion caught them totally by surprise. The economic success of the championship game made everybody want one.

The NCAA "never expected. . ." Now that's shocking news.

 

[Wrinkle]

Can we please trade our football rivalries for a spot in the Big 10

 

[longtimefan]

basically, this just proves that ped st doesnt need a rival...hence the 107k week in and week out.

it would take Syracuse 4 games to top that 1 game attendance mark.

northeast football is ped st, a few of D1 schools along for the ride, the Ivy's, the Patriot and D3.

they are Rome.

and it sucks,

Ped St has been an outlier in the northeast forever. They are a massive, state-supported, land-grant school. They are a perfect fit for the B1G.

In 1965, Beaver Stadium had a smaller seating capacity than Archbold. Then the PA politicians decided to get serious about college football. By 1969, they had doubled the size of the stadium, and were arguably national champions.

The Catholic colleges (ex ND and BC) were out by the 50's, as were the Ivy's and a few others like BU. What was left in the NE were a few smaller private schools, the service academies, and WVa who were unable to compete with the Nittany Behemoth.

 

[Hoo's That]

The NCAA "never expected. . ." Now that's shocking news.

Yeah. I know. They had the chance to be "vindictive" against the Bowl subdivision (aka Division 1-A) for not participating, but didn't. They could have limited having championship games to the divisions that participated in the NCAA championships and needed to decide who got the autobid to the playoffs, but didn't.

 

[baggerbob]

Ped St has been an outlier in the northeast forever. They are a massive, state-supported, land-grant school. They are a perfect fit for the B1G.

In 1965, Beaver Stadium had a smaller seating capacity than Archbold. Then the PA politicians decided to get serious about college football. By 1969, they had doubled the size of the stadium, and were arguably national champions.

The Catholic colleges (ex ND and BC) were out by the 50's, as were the Ivy's and a few others like BU. What was left in the NE were a few smaller private schools, the service academies, and WVa who were unable to compete with the Nittany Behemoth.

Paterno burned his bridges to the east many years ago.
If ever in the future an East Coast conference is formed they wouldn't be a part of it.

 

[Cuse181]

I don't care about that. It's not simply about money, or at least it shouldn't be. I'm a fan, not a business man. I don't own stock in anything related to college sports, so I don't care about maximizing the money. As a fan I care about other things. My perspective is pretty clear in posts #25 and #42.

But if fandom isn’t impacted by rivalries then who cares? The only empirical way to measure fandom is ticket sales (or watch time data which I dont have access to). Just because YOU think they need a rival doesn’t mean that’s the majority opinion and thus it may not be a driving factor for decisions. I understand where you’re coming from, but I think you’re underselling the impact of success over perceived rivalries.

 

[sufandu]

But if fandom isn’t impacted by rivalries then who cares? The only empirical way to measure fandom is ticket sales (or watch time data which I dont have access to). Just because YOU think they need a rival doesn’t mean that’s the majority opinion and thus it may not be a driving factor for decisions. I understand where you’re coming from, but I think you’re underselling the impact of success over perceived rivalries.

Who needs to measure anything empirically? Why do sports need to be scientifically studied? What a terribly unfun way to look at sports.

All I need to do is talk to fans. Fans of teams that have great rivalries talk about those rivalries more passionately than any other games. Great attendance for a team without a good rivalry just means they support their team, which is how it should be. It does not mean that a good rivalry wouldn't be more fun for them.

 

[Cuse181]

Who needs to measure anything empirically? Why do sports need to be scientifically studied? What a terribly unfun way to look at sports.

All I need to do is talk to fans. Fans of teams that have great rivalries talk about those rivalries more passionately than any other games. Great attendance for a team without a good rivalry just means they support their team, which is how it should be. It does not mean that a good rivalry wouldn't be more fun for them.

Why measure things empirically? Because that’s the only way to measure things or else you’re just speaking from anecdotal experiences. Sports is all about stats, so fittingly the best way to measure success is by using statistics.

 

[sufandu]

Why measure things empirically? Because that’s the only way to measure things or else you’re just speaking from anecdotal experiences. Sports is all about stats, so fittingly the best way to measure success is by using statistics.

Sports are about entertainment. Yes, stats matter: yards, points, etc. My entertainment is not dictated by attendance. And yes, sports are very much about anectodal experiences. Look at all of the posts we've had about experiences: the SU dunk tape, Hakim Warrick's dunks, Johnny Flynn posterizing the dude from Rutgers, Freeney planting Vick on his butt, the Kirby Dar Dar kick return against Florida, Ismail's kick return against FSU, the Marrone teams befuddling Geno Smith, SU-vs-Gtown, the Pearl hitting the halfcourt shot, 6 overtimes, etc. Rivalries are fun and entertaining. Why is this so hard to understand?

If you want to boil down sports to some analytical formula and pretend your an ESPN analyst (maybe you are an ESPN analyst for all I know), have a ball. That seems like a really boring way to watch sports to me.

 

[Cusefan95]

There’s a book “Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder” which is really good. One of the takeaways I had from it is the absolutely amazing job we’ve done building fragile systems in our economic system (an example would be just-in-time manufacturing). It’s led to a situation where everything will seem to be going great until some triggering event leads to a massive cascade failure.

I think college sports is no exception - rivalries traditionally helped maintain interest in down years, but conference movement and expansion has stripped that away. In a specific case we can look at Penn State - we can look at it and feel it doesn’t really matter, they still draw 107,000 fans to games. In aggregate it almost certainly contributes to a declining interest in college football generally. Like most things, everything will seem manageable right up until the point it isn’t - it’s really only at that point the decisions to increase fragility of the system will really look unwise in retrospect.

 

[qdawgg]

Nobody NEEDS a rival. You're missing the point, maybe because it's been so long since we had one. You're only looking at this from a strategic point of view. College sports are about more than making a playoff or winning a NC. They're about pride in your team and fun. Rivalries enhance the experience of both, especially for those teams that don't make the playoff, which is most of them.

So you’re saying if they had a real rivalry their attendance would be like 200,000 a game. So look at what they’re missing out on by only avg 107k?

 

[OrangeDW]

hopefully everything falls apart at some point, and conferences are reorganized by geography again.

Syracuse
Penn State
Pitt
WVU
Boston College
Maryland
Temple
Rutgers
UConn
Virginia Tech

Something like that.

 

[UpstateSM]

I hate to say this but I’m going to bet Ped St to win the B1G and to make the CFP. I think they might be really, really good and I think Ohio St might take a small step back.

 

[sufandu]

So you’re saying if they had a real rivalry their attendance would be like 200,000 a game. So look at what they’re missing out on by only avg 107k?

Ummmm, no. I never mentioned anything about attendance. People get too caught up in numbers. What I said has nothing to do with attendance and attendance does not determine the character of fan experience. Rivalries make things more fun and exciting. They just do. If you don't get that, you don't get sports.

 

[javadoc]

Just saw this thread bump and it would play well as a question on The Match Game. “Shocker - Penn State has no ______”.

 

[longtimefan]

Just saw this thread bump and it would play well as a question on The Match Game. “Shocker - Penn State has no ______”.

Easy. "Shame."

 

[JKinPhilly]

Just saw this thread bump and it would play well as a question on The Match Game. “Shocker - Penn State has no ______”.

Morals

 

[cuseincincy]

Bit of a weird article and topic. A good 20 of my friends went to Penn St. Half my hometown is PSU football fans. A rivalry means very little to them as they see themselves as a staple of college football and thus there are always big games in conference with massive draws. Penn St football is a massive event for nearly the whole weekend starting Thursday nights. It really doesn't matter who they play- good teams playing at PSU- it's a monster game. Not to mention almost all B10 matchups with Pst are seen as some form of a rivalry.

I'll just add I loathe PSU and the creepy cult that they have there.

PSU fans consider themselves the center of the college football universe and believe that they are every other team's top rival.

 

[Orangezoo]

PSU fans consider themselves the center of the universe and believe that they are every other team's top rival.

FIFY

 

[Cusefan95]

Bit of a weird article and topic. A good 20 of my friends went to Penn St. Half my hometown is PSU football fans. A rivalry means very little to them as they see themselves as a staple of college football and thus there are always big games in conference with massive draws. Penn St football is a massive event for nearly the whole weekend starting Thursday nights. It really doesn't matter who they play- good teams playing at PSU- it's a monster game. Not to mention almost all B10 matchups with Pst are seen as some form of a rivalry.

I'll just add I loathe PSU and the creepy cult that they have there.

I lived in Bellfonte, PA about a ten minute drive from Beaver Stadium for nearly a decade, so dealt with Penn State fans a lot. Fairly early in that decade was the Sandusky trial. My take on a bunch of things:

1) Most fans would prefer to have an actual rival...they kinda tried to turn Wisconsin into a "rival" which ran into the issue that Minnesota is Wisconsin's biggest rival and isn't being displaced by PSU. Its less true that a rivalry means little to PSU, more accurate to say they've accepted they don't have one, and have no route to one - so why obsess over it?

2) I think every game in the B10 has some kind of trophy attached to it at this point - which is an inauthentic, inorganic effort to create rivalries. I didn't know of any fan who cared.

3) Non-PSU fans who throw stuff like "its a creepy cult" and PSU should have gotten the death penalty have created a weird dynamic. Since I lived right there and was capable of not pontificating about my moral superiority, I had lots of honest conversations. I think most fans were horrified by what happened since they were always the "school that did things the right way" - but when outsiders started advocating for the death penalty (or people like on this board were saying the school should be shut down) - it led to an "us against them" mentality which persists to this day.

If fans here recall back how they reacted when the Bernie Fine story broke and fans across the country acted as if Syracuse fans were p*do enablers, we're not fundamentally that different. Our reactions were basically the same. What's different in the Penn State case is its gone on for a decade, they know the over the top negative opinion exists - and simply don't care anymore. You think they should have gotten the death penalty (or are a cult)? Their take is that's fine, you're simply the enemy who has no more moral standing than them and you can go yourself.

Its a microcosm of the cultural climate in the country, where the goal seems to be to convince yourself you're more moral than the "other", and villify and attack them as enemies. Over the last decade I've grown to have much more contempt for the "Penn State should have gotten the death penalty", "Penn State is a cult" crowd than I have for Penn State and their fans - because frankly they/you are a much bigger part of the problem and reason why the US is tearing itself apart than PSU was or is.

Feel free to argue and pontificate on what a wonderful, awesome, moral person you are and how my opinion revolts you. Because at this point I'm with the PSU fans - you can go yourself.

 

[baggerbob]

I lived in Bellfonte, PA about a ten minute drive from Beaver Stadium for nearly a decade, so dealt with Penn State fans a lot. Fairly early in that decade was the Sandusky trial. My take on a bunch of things:

1) Most fans would prefer to have an actual rival...they kinda tried to turn Wisconsin into a "rival" which ran into the issue that Minnesota is Wisconsin's biggest rival and isn't being displaced by PSU. Its less true that a rivalry means little to PSU, more accurate to say they've accepted they don't have one, and have no route to one - so why obsess over it?

2) I think every game in the B10 has some kind of trophy attached to it at this point - which is an inauthentic, inorganic effort to create rivalries. I didn't know of any fan who cared.

3) Non-PSU fans who throw stuff like "its a creepy cult" and PSU should have gotten the death penalty have created a weird dynamic. Since I lived right there and was capable of not pontificating about my moral superiority, I had lots of honest conversations. I think most fans were horrified by what happened since they were always the "school that did things the right way" - but when outsiders started advocating for the death penalty (or people like on this board were saying the school should be shut down) - it led to an "us against them" mentality which persists to this day.

If fans here recall back how they reacted when the Bernie Fine story broke and fans across the country acted as if Syracuse fans were p*do enablers, we're not fundamentally that different. Our reactions were basically the same. What's different in the Penn State case is its gone on for a decade, they know the over the top negative opinion exists - and simply don't care anymore. You think they should have gotten the death penalty (or are a cult)? Their take is that's fine, you're simply the enemy who has no more moral standing than them and you can go yourself.

Its a microcosm of the cultural climate in the country, where the goal seems to be to convince yourself you're more moral than the "other", and villify and attack them as enemies. Over the last decade I've grown to have much more contempt for the "Penn State should have gotten the death penalty", "Penn State is a cult" crowd than I have for Penn State and their fans - because frankly they/you are a much bigger part of the problem and reason why the US is tearing itself apart than PSU was or is.

Feel free to argue and pontificate on what a wonderful, awesome, moral person you are and how my opinion revolts you. Because at this point I'm with the PSU fans - you can go yourself.

Take that stuff to the off topic board, this is a sports board.
Please administers lock this thread before we go down that path again.

 

[DuxburyO]

……. What's different in the Penn State case is its gone on for a decade, they know the over the top negative opinion exists - and simply don't care anymore. You think they should have gotten the death penalty (or are a cult)? Their take is that's fine, you're simply the enemy who has no more moral standing than them and you can go yourself.

What is different in the PSU case vs Fine is that (horrific) crimes were committed and ACTUALLY convicted in a court of law. Actually that’s just one of the many horrific differences between the two.

Over the top opinion ???????!!!! WOW. I don’t know you, but if you think that child rape doesn’t deserve a negative opinion, I don’t want to know you.

 

[cuseincincy]

FIFY

Lol! No shame either. Short story...My company ,7 years ago, purchased a company headquartered in Harrisburg, PA whose previous owners and all senior management were PSU alums. Very connected PSU alums. 1st day our CEO, CFO and COO walk in and the conference room has a huge painting of Joe Pa on the wall. Shadow lights and all you could tell it was a subject of much pride.
CFO - "Well that's going to have to come down."
Former owners - Chuckle a little. "No. That's our Joe Paterno painting its hung there for 40 years."
CEO had been inspecting the photo up close. Left the room. Five minutes later a knock at the door and the building manager is there. After a brief word from the CEO they go and start taking the picture down.
CEO - "I don't care how long that fn picture has hung on that wall but its not hanging on the wall in my company. Either take it home or its going in the trash."

That was the moment they realized they were no longer in charge of their company.

 

[Orangezoo]

Lol! No shame either. Short story...My company ,7 years ago, purchased a company headquartered in Harrisburg, PA whose previous owners and all senior management were PSU alums. Very connected PSU alums. 1st day our CEO, CFO and COO walk in and the conference room has a huge painting of Joe Pa on the wall. Shadow lights and all you could tell it was a subject of much pride.
CFO - "Well that's going to have to come down."
Former owners - Chuckle a little. "No. That's our Joe Paterno painting its hung there for 40 years."
CEO had been inspecting the photo up close. Left the room. Five minutes later a knock at the door and the building manager is there. After a brief word from the CEO they go and start taking the picture down.
CEO - "I don't care how long that fn picture has hung on that wall but its not hanging on the wall in my company. Either take it home or its going in the trash."

That was the moment they realized they were no longer in charge of their company.

Lol. I've got way too many people I know who are PSU grads. Some good friends too. The cult is real. I call them on it and the evil stare is real too. A few times went there to visit for a weekend of debauchery and it's just such a creepy vibe. They are easier to deal with away from JoePa land but on campus it's intolerable.