STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The heat is flowing through Beaver Stadium’s enclosed areas like it should and the toilets are flushing. The video boards remain fully functional while the super ribbon boards, part of an offseason upgrade completed this fall, will soon be filled with College Football Playoff logos and sponsors.
Athletic director Pat Kraft walked through Beaver Stadium this week with members of the College Football Playoff and SMU administrators as part of the visiting team’s site visit. They ensured everything inside the 107,000-seat venue, the second-largest college football stadium in the nation, was fully operational ahead of Penn State’s first-ever appearance in the College Football Playoff.
Kraft exhales, but doesn’t want to jinx anything in the lead-up to Dec. 21 when Penn State will host SMU at noon in Beaver Stadium for a first-round Playoff game.
“It’s the best $4.5 million we’ve spent in the renovation,” Kraft joked this week referring to the costs of winterization for the stadium which was done last offseason so Penn State could host a Playoff game. “Honestly, the Maryland game helped because that was a pretty cold game. We were able to really test the system and we’re in a good spot.”
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Getting this venue ready to host a Playoff game, which will double as the last hurrah in the stadium’s current configuration before it undergoes the next phase of renovation this winter, has been in the works since 2022 when the expanded Playoff was announced. At that moment, it was clear getting a home Playoff game was a real possibility, but Beaver Stadium was up against the clock.
With exposed pipes running throughout the building, backlogged maintenance and a history of pipes freezing, thus making bathrooms inoperable, Penn State knew it needed to act quickly. After every regular-season finale, the stadium would be put to bed for the winter by going through a winterization process. When the venue wasn’t in use they’d add heat trace — electrical heat tape — to the water and sewer lines on the press box side of the stadium. The idea of hosting would force Penn State to act quickly on these maintenance issues.
After years of conducting studies about whether to renovate or rebuild, Penn State announced a multi-phased Beaver Stadium renovation in May 2024. Last winter, it used money that was part of the renovation to address priority maintenance and winterization efforts. It’s not the most eye-catching part of the renovation, but without it, Penn State might be holding its breath until kick. The school also has extra port-a-potties on hand for next weekend in case something goes wrong, Kraft said.
The functionality of the stadium is just one of countless logistical hurdles all four Playoff hosts in Austin, Columbus, South Bend and State College will continue working through this week and next. It’s also a good problem to have.
Come Dec. 21, fans will file into Beaver Stadium’s parking lots for a noon kick flashing one of 24,000 printed parking passes. Penn State doesn’t use mobile parking passes. Long before the Nittany Lions knew if they would host the passes were ordered and many are being shipped to season-ticket holders this week.
“There are only two printers in the country that can print 24,000 parking passes so we had to get that order in probably August or September,” said Vinnie James, Penn State’s deputy AD for internal operations. “We’re like well, we’ve gotta do this just in case, and if we don’t end up doing it just don’t put the year on them — just in case.”
Last spring, Penn State announced winter graduation would move from Saturday, Dec. 21 to Sunday, Dec. 22 in anticipation of Penn State potentially hosting a Playoff game. The idea of holding a ceremony in the Bryce Jordan Center — adjacent to Beaver Stadium — with a football game going on was a nightmare scenario. Indiana announced this week that its winter graduation ceremonies will shift to earlier in the day next Friday so students can drive to South Bend to see Indiana play Notre Dame.
Even with the date changed at Penn State, many of the hotel rooms reserved for winter graduation remain occupied. That cut into hotel and Airbnb availability in a town familiar with exorbitant lodging costs and two-night hotel minimums during football and special event weekends. Members of the College Football Playoff were in State College in the summer to reserve hotel blocks for the visiting team and the officials, Kraft said. Many others hoping to attend the game might end up having to stay as far out as Harrisburg, 90 minutes away from State College.
“I tell people all the time, we are just very different,” Kraft said. “It’s a small community with an enormous stadium and everyone kind of comes in and our people know how to manage it, but then you try to explain it to others and they’re like ‘Wait? What?’ … Everybody had to work together to move graduation and get staffing ready to go. It’s taken a while to get to this point.”
The weather forecast for Dec. 21 in State College, Pa., is partly sunny with a high of 30 degrees and low of 21, per Weather.com. (Matthew O’Haren / Imagn Images)
How different will this be from a normal home game?
While this is a Penn State home game, it’s important to remember it very much belongs to the Playoff. The Big Ten conference will receive $3 million for Penn State participating in the first-round game. Signage in Beaver Stadium will include the College Football Playoff logo and not all of Penn State’s usual sponsors. The areas captured most on TV, field level and the lower bowl, will have CFP branding and sponsors. Details like the Allstate field goal nets, the Taco Bell student section and having the AT&T logo plastered on sideline headsets are all minor tweaks. Players will wear a patch on their jerseys and the Playoff will provide helmet stickers.
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It also won’t be treated like a normal home game recruiting weekend. The Playoff controls ticketing and retains all money from ticket sales. There are no free tickets to distribute to football recruits and recruiting guests like there normally would be. If recruits want to come, they have to buy a ticket like everyone else.
“Although it is a home game for us, we don’t gain any advantages that way,” head coach James Franklin said. “There are advantages, but not as much of an advantage from a recruiting perspective as people may think other than obviously really good players are still able to watch us continue to play this season.”
The timing of these first-round games will give college football administrators, coaches and the Playoff committee much to think about in the coming years. With games just days before Christmas and less than two weeks for fans to book, how well fans travel or if they hold out for the next round of games is unknown.
SMU, like all visiting teams in the first round, is allotted 3,500 tickets. Of those tickets, 1,500 must be in the lower bowl. SMU plans to bring their band and spirit squad, but will not bring their live mascot, Peruna IX, The Athletic confirmed. Not needing to clear space for the miniature shetland pony was one less worry for Penn State this week.
Penn State’s regular-season White Out was a night game against Washington. (Matthew O’Haren / Imagn Images)
Students tickets
These games also bring the unknown of how many students will stick around any campus.
Penn State anticipates having 15,000 students in the student section, which coincides with the first day of winter break. Students were able to request tickets last month at $28 per ticket via a lottery system. The size of Penn State’s usual student section — something it and the Playoff were committed to preserving — is around 21,000. Some students who said they didn’t receive tickets have expressed frustrations with the ticketing system. Penn State insists that any student who correctly filed a ticket request by the deadline was issued a ticket.
“I would rather have 21,000 students than put those (tickets) on the market for SMU fans to buy,” Kraft said. “Our students drive the energy. I’d love to have 21,000 in there like we have for home games and we certainly wouldn’t shortchange ourselves in that area.”
Penn State will treat the game like a normal White Out despite it being played at noon. Kraft insists that specific game themes should be part of Penn State’s advantage for hosting. The team will have the familiarity of staying in their usual hotel and going through their normal home game routine. While there will be more eyeballs on this game and the entire production around it, Kraft checks the weather once more.
Penn State should avoid snow next weekend though they do have a snow plan prepped if ever they would need it. A blizzard, of course, would be the biggest challenge. They’d need to turn to the community to help shovel the stadium, a plan Kraft said they don’t anticipate needing, at least not this year.
“I’m adamant that it will feel like a home game,” Kraft said. “We put ourselves in a position to host. … As we take the field, we’re gonna make sure that our fans see what they’re used to seeing and it’ll feel and look like a White Out.”
(Top photo: Matthew O’Haren / Imagn Images)
