Penn State Football game-day review of Ross-Ade Stadium: Purdue is a basketball school

Penn State Football took on the Purdue Boilermakers on Thursday night for a prime-time conference showdown. I don’t know if the fans got the memo.

I had an opportunity to attend the week one win for the Nittany Lions, so here is my honest review of the gameday experience at Ross-Ade Stadium.

Pre-Game

Penn State features a vast amount of tailgating and pregame festivities. There was none of this on the side of the stadium I was coming from. The frat houses seemed to be having a good time, but outside of that, there was little going on.

The streets filled with students 90 minutes before the game, and they were not the most welcoming bunch. Chants broke out from different groups heading to the game. The most popular was a simple “F*** Penn State.” The other chant I haven’t heard as often was, “Touchdowns, not kids.”

As you walk up to the stadium, the south endzone is completely open with a giant screen taking up most of it. The entrance was unique as you can enter from field level. You also can get a glimpse of the “World’s Biggest Drum”; it wasn’t that big.

Gametime

The game was the first Blackout game Purdue hosted since 2018 against Ohio State. The Penn State faithful made sure to wear white and had a strong presence on the Penn State side of the field.

The noise in Ross-Ade Stadium is largely manufactured through the PA system. The PA system is blaring the train whistle and general crowd noise until 15 seconds are left in the play clock. Once turned off, the crowd cannot keep up the volume.

The student section didn’t seem overly into the game and as far as I could tell, didn’t have an effect on the game. Penn State Football had zero pre-snap penalties and had no problems communicating.

After Penn State went up 21-10 at halftime, most of the conversations on the concourse turned to basketball and how good the team should be this year. The concourse was another problem entirely. The concourse was not open to the outdoors. While the temperature outside was in the 70s, on the concourse it had to be above 100 degrees, even hotter in the restrooms.

After Sean Clifford’s pick-six in the fourth quarter, I thought the crowd would actually get into the game and create a noise problem. They did not.

Review

Overall, the stadium is on the smaller side and reminded me of Spartan Stadium. You can definitely tell the fans are more interested in the basketball team than the football team. The “We Are” chants were the most organized cheering that was done all night.

While the game was great, the atmosphere and experience were really disappointing.