Journey to Happy Valley, part 1

I’m breaking this post up into two parts since I don’t have time to write up the whole trip tonight.

I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for a long time. How long, you ask? Five years. This is my fifth season of Michigan football and yesterday was the first Michigan game that I could drive to. Due to a quirky schedule, I had to wait five long years for this game.

As I have mentioned about one hundred times, a few of us rented an RV for this game since it is impossible to get a hotel room within an hour of State College during football season. Given that the game traffic in State College is the worst I have seen anywhere, that was a great decision. I’ve heard that most people who stayed until the end of the game last night and tried to leave State College did not get on the highway (less than two miles off campus) until 4AM or later.

FlyingV, RytheRed, and I decided to show our Michigan pride on campus when we arrived on Friday night. We were going out for a late dinner and drinks and decided to wear Michigan sweatshirts and brave the cold night. We were heckled everywhere we went. We walked by “Paternoville”, which is where the students that want good seats for the game camp out on Friday night. However, this was a fairly tame area at 9:30PM, despite the large number of tents around there.

We were heckled like crazy once we started walking through campus. Whenever a girl walked by, she would tell us how much Michigan sucked right to our faces. Whenever a guy or a group of guys walked passed us, they would wait until they were about ten feet beyond the three of us, turn around, and yell something to the tune of “Michigan sucks”, “Go Home”, or “Fuck Michigan”. Apparently, they were afraid that we would beat the crap out of them or something because they would never say those comments to our face. Nells, a UConn grad who came along with PhillyPhanatic (and hence, to support Penn State), found this pattern funny. She was walking about twenty feet behind us and noticed that a group of three PSU students turned around and looked at the three of us in confusion. Nells yelled “Fuck Michigan” (shocking all of us in our group) when she saw the perplexed guys. Those guys then proceeded into a profanity laced anti-Michigan tirade. Hilarious.

With one exception, our only response to the comments was a friendly verbal jab in return (some reference to being “owned”) or just yelling “Go Blue”. There was one guy who was quite drunk and looking to show off his “guns” by wearing a tight t-shirt and no coat on a cold night. He decided to bump into me and stare at me menacingly in order to show me who was boss. Given that I had no intention of resorting to a steroid-induced rage, I just walked on without saying anything. Unfortunately, FlyingV felt that this was a good time to stand up for me and fisticuffs nearly ensued before I pulled him away. Whether or not someone agreed with the logo on our sweatshirts is not worth trading punches.

We finally walked into a bar a little after midnight. When the students saw our Michigan sweatshirts, we were booed loudly. The Philly-raised PSU fans broke out into an “ass-hole” chant (that and E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES! are the only two cheers heard from Philadelphia sports fans…and plenty of both cheers were heard on Friday). The three of us frequently went back and forth between the upstairs and downstairs section of the bar to rile the crowd.

Clearly our presence was not appreciated on campus Friday night, but despite the heckling, the students were very nice. Many of them talked to us and wished us a happy stay in their college town. Some of them complimented us for being brave and supporting our school. It was a very enjoyable night out.

Tomorrow I will write about the game day and game night experience.