No words for White Out night
From all accounts, it is hard to describe exactly what it’s like playing in Beaver Stadium’s annual White Out game.
Penn State’s players tried their best to capture it this past week ahead of the 2019 White Out game against Michigan. But the words were vague.
“To be honest, there’s no real word to describe it, you know, to say what it really is,” tight end Pat Freiermuth said Wednesday.
“I could say it’s electric. I could say it’s loud, but that wouldn’t even do it justice. I mean, you can just feel the ground shaking at times. It’s an amazing experience.”
Coach James Franklin took a stab at explaining what the experience of the White Out is like Tuesday and Wednesday.
“I’ve been telling wide receivers coach Gerad Parker what it’s going to be like because, even though some of these guys have been coaching college football for a long time, it’s different,”
Franklin said Tuesday. “It’s different. And I tell people, literally, I’ll have that eight seconds where I’m standing there in the tunnel and you see it and you hear it, but you literally feel it. You literally feel it.
“I’ll enjoy it for that eight seconds, and then you run out and you’re so consumed doing your job from that point on, it’s kind of hard. It’s kind of hard.”
Then, Wednesday: “I think it’s one of those things that people can explain it to you all you want, but, until you experience it yourself, it’s hard to experience. And I’ve been in some pretty good environments.
“I was a head coach in the SEC, obviously, I’ve coached with the Green Bay Packers, so I’ve been in some pretty good environments.
“So you think you understand what it’s going to be like, but, until you get in there and kind of feel the electricity, [you don’t].”
Even if that’s true, what is easier to explain is the impact the White Out has had on the Nittany Lions.
Whether you buy the hype over the game for yourself, it would be hard to find another annual game anywhere in the country that receives more notoriety than this one.
And Penn State has used that situation to host some of its biggest wins in the past several years, like its upset over Ohio State in 2016 to propel itself to a Big Ten championship.
The Nittany Lions have also used the White Out as their biggest recruiting weekend each season, for obvious reasons.
“Yeah, it’s obviously, the environment is really important for the future of our program,” Franklin said Tuesday. “Obviously, it has an impact on game day and how we play and how challenging we can make it for their offense.
“It also has an impact that there’s going to be ... a bunch of young players sitting in those seats or hopefully standing in the stadium and feeling the energy that we have in this town and the energy in the stadium and say, ‘Hey, this is where I want to play.’
“I mean, you think back, I remember when I first got here thinking about that. Was it a seven-overtime Michigan game? How many players ended up on our roster that were in the stands that night. Does it have an impact? Yes. Yeah, I don’t think there’s any doubt about it, I think it does, especially in a White Out.
“I remember [former tight end] Jesse James talking about if you come to the whiteout, it’s almost impossible for you not to come to Penn State. It’s almost impossible.”
Franklin made a point after the win at Iowa Saturday to encourage as many fans to show up for the White Out game as possible, saying he hoped there will be 112,000 people in the stands, which would be a stadium record.
Beyond the freshmen and transfer players at the game, there will surely be a few faces in the stands who have never seen the White Out before.
If what the Nittany Lions say is true, it will be an experience those newcomers will find hard to explain, but one they won’t forget any time soon.