It's nice to be nice to the nice

The lasting impression I came away with after experiencing my first Penn State football game? Man, the Penn State people sure are nice, and gracious in victory.
I hadn’t been to a college football game as a fan for more than 25 years (as a working member of the press, I had been to a Temple game at The Linc in Philly a few years ago). During a summertime visit to Connecticut, I hooked up with Dick Turelli, a college baseball teammate of mine when we were at the University of Iowa in the early 1980s. When Dick mentioned that Iowa was playing at Penn State this year that put a plan in motion for us to meet for the weekend in Happy Valley last weekend.
And no wonder they call it Happy Valley. Everybody seems really happy. I don’t think it’s only the beer that makes them that way, they just seemed genuinely pleasant.
Despite sporting our Iowa black and gold, the Penn Staters wished us luck before the game, opened their tailgate parties to us, didn’t gloat when their team handed Iowa its hind end and then wished us a safe journey home.
In fact, nobody swore at us, spit at us, flipped us the bird or even laughed at Iowa’s poor effort. I got booed only three times — which in a crowd of 103,000 and change wasn’t bad. I’d like to think those guys just had some leftover boos from the night before that they didn’t get to use on the Phillies poor offensive effort and post-season elimination.



For their part, the Iowa folks always have traveled well. It’s about a 16-hour drive from Iowa City to State College, but Iowa people have stout systems and iron undershorts so distance didn’t appear to be a problem for those that we talked to.
We were amongst our own for only about an hour on Game Day at the “Hawkeye Huddle,” a pregame Iowafest at the Nittany Lion Inn. It turned out to be the only place we could escape the “We are . . . Penn State!” cheer.
At that event, Dick and I had hooked up with Steve Duncan, our assistant baseball coach when we were at Iowa. Dunc is retired now and working in the equipment room in the Iowa athletic department — and he’s connected. So much so that we got to ride the cheerleaders’ bus from the Nittany Lion Inn back to Beaver Stadium after the Hawkeye Huddle.
Thanks Dunc. There is never anything wrong with riding on the cheerleaders’ bus. We didn’t know it at the time, but that turned out to be about the only highlight of the game.
Penn State wasn’t even in the Big Ten conference when I played at Iowa, so I have no personal animosity toward the school or its teams. I wasn’t crazy about being packed like a sardine in the stadium’s upper deck or the dude who got sick and ralphed all over the back of a guy three seats down from me about five minutes before kickoff. And when one’s team is getting beat - the final was 13-3 - that lion’s roar sound that comes out of the public address system when Penn State does something good can be a bit tedious.
But I can’t complain about the hospitality. The way we were welcomed and treated, it was an impressive display of good sportsmanship by a large number of people.
Well done, Penn State. Allow me to offer you a complimentary cheer: “You are . . . Penn State!” Your team, your school and your fans are to be respected.