UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Though the landscape of tents remains the same, this was anything but an ordinary week in Paternoville.

Dozens of tents were set up outside Gate A of Beaver Stadium in anticipation of Saturday’s game against Nebraska at noon. That part doesn’t change. The PSU loyalists who are equivalent to Otto’s Army at Syracuse never miss a week-long tailgate.

But the horde of media lurking directly across the street and hovering 24 hours in a day was something new.

‘Monday night you’re kind of sitting out here and you see a bunch of news crews and you’re kind of we’re all kind of stunned by it,’ Jeff Lowe, a junior broadcast journalism major said. ‘We get a lot of news out here, because people like covering us. But not to this level.’

By Tuesday, the reason had become clear. A shocking, nauseating sex abuse scandal hit the Penn State football program, with one of legendary head coach Joe Paterno’s former assistants, Jerry Sandusky, allegedly committing numerous molestations of young boys over the years.

So while Monday’s unusually large collection of television, print and radio reporters took the fans at Paternoville by surprise, the week had only just begun for the Nittany Lion community.

‘We came into this week thinking it was going to be Joe Paterno’s last home game,’ freshman bio engineering major Paul Kucinski said. ‘And it’s turned into something much more than football.’

The result has been a scaled-back version of the normally enthusiastic tailgate outside Beaver Stadium. For this week’s marquee matchup against No. 19 Nebraska, students still began camping out Monday night per the usual routine. But the events of Paternoville have changed and taken on a more significant meaning to the students, players and community as the week continues.

On Thursday night, an impromptu vigil was held around Joe Paterno’s statue adjacent to the Paternoville camping area. Dozens of die-hard fans sat in silence to honor one of the greatest football coaches of all time as well as reflect on the week’s events in total.

A few hours earlier, members of the Penn State football team had visited Paternoville to partake in a trash can football tournament. The game features four garbage cans two per team to be separated by roughly 30 yards. The object is for teams of two to throw a football into the opposing team’s trash cans.

It’s a staple of the weekly tailgate, always drawing in some of the best Nittany Lion players. Matt McGloin, the starting quarterback for PSU, Nate Stupar, a linebacker, and Derek Moye, a wide receiver, turned out to play Wednesday night.

‘They want to win it for Joe Paterno,’ Kucinski said. ‘I was talking to Derek Moye yesterday at Paternoville playing some trash can football, and he said he really wants to win the game for Coach.’

And immediately after the players left Paternoville to head home, the news of Paterno’s firing broke around 9:45 p.m.

The stunning turn of events since Paterno had announced he would retire at season’s end only a few hours earlier prompted the vigil and shook the campus again.

‘You kind of wish everything was acted on quicker, because it let too much emotion build up of the past couple days,’ Lowe said. ‘And that’s why it exploded last night.’

The residents of Paternoville are left waiting eagerly for the start of Saturday’s game. They share the belief that that once the team gets back on the field, where the community can focus on the players and not the coaches, the whole campus will be uplifted.

But the reflection until Saturday’s kickoff remains most important. Though the players and coaches of the football team have certainly been affected by the week’s events, Lowe and the rest of the students at Paternoville want everyone especially the media to understand that the Penn State student body isn’t overlooking the victims. They remain a crucial part of the mourning and healing periods.

‘It would mean a lot to the university to win the game,’ Lowe said. But again, the saddest thing is the victims, I just can’t stress that enough. But there is still an eerie, sad, depressing feelings.’

Saturday’s game won’t be the majestic sending-off party for the legendary and iconic Paterno. But the bringing together of more than 100,000 strong in support of the same cause will be welcomed following a week where the Penn State community was torn in half.

‘Penn State has always been about more than football,’ Kucinski said. ‘But if we can find a way to rally around something, pull the entire student population together everybody show the world that we’re still Penn State and we’re not going to let something that one man did affect everybody here.’

mjcohe02@syr.edu

Published on November 10, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13