SUNDAY COLUMN: End of an Era? No More Blue-White Games Could Have Lasting Effect

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As we approach what might just be the curtain call for the Blue-White Game, we need to acknowledge the sheer value it has provided to the Penn State football team in terms of continuing preparations for the upcoming season.

Lol jk it’s a glorified practice.

However, over the years, that glorified practice, which has taken many shapes and forms as the program has undergone leadership changes and college football has, um, changed a bit itself, has had intangible but significant value for the program’s many fans.

Maybe it’s the young dad who gets to take his 6-year-old to (what kinda passes for) a game, knowing he doesn’t have the scratch or the Nittany Lion Club points to take him to one in November. Maybe it’s the students, who are approaching finals and need an excuse to get sunburn and a buzz on and a chance to scream and yell with a few hundred of their closest pals. Maybe it’s the recruiting geeks who have been waiting to see the Daryus Dixon-Matt Outten matchup. Maybe it’s the 80-year-old dude from Clearfield who just likes to climb the bleachers, take in the sights and sounds, and remember the old days. My first football game was of the Blue-White variety, and I have no memory of it other than a picture of 5-year-old me with the Nittany Lion, but I’ve since come to understand that a now four-decade relationship with this program can be traced directly back to that day.

Point is, Penn State football means a lot to a lot of people. If you are reading this, you are proof of that. And that includes even the bastardized version that the spring game had become. The likely reasons the Nittany Lions are presumably planning to can it—risk of injury, exposure of backups who just might look good enough for poaching at the right NIL price—have already shuttered spring games of most of the nation’s other top programs. It’s understandable. Spring games are basically a coach’s nightmare—you don’t want to show anything or anyone that a future opponent is going to learn anything from, but the game counts as one of the coveted spring practices, so you have to get some kind of work done.

At the same time, though, this game was always a way to keep the fans’ football thirst satiated, to give them something to look forward to and hold them over until September. Something about seeing your first-team QB let it rip, even if he was wearing a red jersey and working against a third-team defense, or seeing a freshman running back break into the secondary and imagine the reason he scored standing up was that he was just that fast instead of the defense pulling back to avoid injury, is what made the afternoon worth it for a few people. Sure, most of those aforementioned students in the stands couldn’t tell you who two thirds of the players were, but the legends of Aric Heffelfinger and Cole Chiappialle will forever live in Lion infamy. And it’s hard for even the players themselves to quantify the confidence they build from playing in front of fans, even when the stakes are lower than low and the opponent is your roommate.

On the one hand, Penn State is at a juncture where it doesn’t necessarily need to drum up good feelings in the fan base. The Nittany Lions are coming off a mostly impressive three-game playoff showing and return one of the country’s most dynamic offensive backfields, a line that should give them time and space to show their talents, and enough defensive weapons for new DC Jim Knowles to give most opponents big problems.

On the other, the stadium is undergoing some big changes, and ticket price increases—and at least a minor game of musical chairs—are coming. The transfer portal has shifted the transient nature of rosters into overdrive, and the connection between players and the average fan is consequently weakening by the year. The Blue-White Game was always the perfect thrifty antidote to the skyrocketing cost of the sport, an opportunity to entertain fans from all walks of life, even if it was only football by definition. If this—or next year, or the year after— is indeed the end, the machine will still roll on, but some small yet important piece will be gone, and 70,000 people will miss one of those rare chances to come together and share the kind of experience that can make someone a fan for life.