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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/thesquareattack on 2025-10-03 23:46:45+00:00.

Hey y’all. Long post here, but I figured I’d share my experience as an Oregon fan for the Ducks vs. Penn State game last weekend. I can’t say enough about how cool the experience was and how welcoming the people and fans were - Nittany Lions, we’re excited to host you in Eugene in 2027, and Oregon fans, take it from me, we better be good hosts!

THURSDAY

4:00am PT: Alarm goes off for a 6:10am flight out of PDX. The thing about a trip from Portland, OR to State College, PA is that your travel day is so stacked, it’s almost enough to take your mind off the stress of a massively important game for your favorite team. Key word: “almost”.

11:32am CT: Quick stop in Minneapolis. Just long enough to note their impressive investment in airport food court quality, not long enough to thank any locals for allowing my Seattle Seahawks to replace Geno Smith with Sam Darnold.

3:54pm ET: Wheels down in Pittsburgh and off into the rolling hills of central PA. This drive reminds me of the road trip out through the Palouse towards WSU - that is to say, there’s not a whole lot out there, and football is your only pot of gold at the end of a long, winding rainbow. My travel companion and I take turns expressing confidence in Dante Moore and fear of the PSU running back combo of Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen.

~6:30pm: We pass a strip club called “Streekers” in Seward, PA (2020 census population: 399), and I feel a pang of homesickness for Portland. I also wonder if they’re showing the game on Saturday.

7:30pm: Arrival at the Airbnb. Pulling up on a new college campus is a great opportunity to do a handful of things including:

  • Googling the most popular majors at that school (engineering and business, for PSU).
  • Confirming what the best pizza place is (I wouldn’t know, we got Dominos).
  • Mapping out your route to the football stadium (a 45 minute jaunt uphill on the way there, and >1 hour back after a win, I walk faster when I’m nervous).

11:30pm: Is there anything better than the first night of an away game sports road trip? Your team hasn’t disappointed you (yet), your friends and neighbors rooting for the other team are still fairly cordial to you, and the camping mattress you’re sleeping on is still retaining air. So much potential.

FRIDAY

10am: Penn State and the surrounding area has many excellent breakfast options, including healthy choices for staying light on your feet for a full day of sightseeing, so I order Chick-Fil-A and stay on the couch while my friends explore the campus. Pacing yourself is important; you call it laziness, I call it establishing the run.

Noon: Hit publish on the Square Attack, making sure not to jinx the Ducks in the process with a pick. I can’t bring myself to gamble on huge games like this - I’m emotionally invested enough as it is. It’s the one superstition I’ll never get over. [And, as a reinforcing reminder, it worked!]

2pm: I’m finally out the door and off to campus. Walking through frat land as a 33-year-old really makes you appreciate your mortality. You’re reminiscing on your own bygone college days, while the students look at you like they’re ready to ask if you’re lost and need directions back to your retirement home.

2:10pm: Our mobile caravan of fans in Ducks gear is receiving mostly positive and welcoming feedback, a theme for the weekend. Penn State fans are generally fantastic, except for the frat kid that walks by and blows a raspberry at us, exchanging no other words and never breaking stride, which is the funniest thing I saw anyone do all weekend.

2:30pm: We’re on the aptly-named College Ave, walking through an endless sea of students. Penn State holds about 45,000 undergrads. Oregon holds about 20,000. The math as to why they need a 110,000 person football stadium out here in the middle of nowhere is starting add up as we walk by the ESPN College GameDay set and approximately 200 different Greek life fundraisers and bake sales.

2:45pm: Cafe 210 West has the longest line I’ve ever seen for a patio lunch spot, so we make the ultimately fateful decision to go straight to Champs Downtown, the largest sports bar on campus. We arrive just in time to see Europe driving some of the final nails into the coffin of the United States’ Ryder Cup chances. Watching in the dark basement, a Penn Stater leans over to me, unprompted, and asks: “If you could kill one player on the PGA Tour no questions asked, no repercussions, who would it be?”, a question that would startle me if I didn’t have “Patrick Cantlay" dialed up as an immediate answer. He nods in solemn agreement and says nothing else.

4pm: PSU alum Lavar Arrington is here hosting and MCing this event on behalf of Venmo, a responsibility he’s treating with equal prestige as his GameDay guest picker role. One of our friends in a Ducks jacket flings some good-natured shit talk his way. Lavar responds by miming a fake shotgun and shooting him twice. Note to self: keep it light when shit-talking former NFL linebackers.

5pm: Free drink tickets long exhausted on several rounds of hazy IPAs, we begin to fraternize with the enemy. Every single conversation I partake in or overhear from Penn State alums is negative about their team: some combination of “I hope we don’t lose by too much” and "I’m worried about Drew Allar”. One of these sentences will prove more prescient than the other in about 24 hours.

8pm: I’m drinking a cocktail called a “Dirty Sprite” and Two Friends just started their DJ set. It’s officially on. I brought ear protection, because I’m one thousand years old.

8:20pm: The Friday game I bet on has started, but I fail to notice that Sam Leavitt refuses to feed the ball to ASU TE Chamon Metayer for my requisite 32 yards, as I’m a little busy with singing along to a trap remix of “Shout” at the top of my lungs.

9:30pm: I notice Hank of Pardon My Take fame waiting at the bar next to me, so I offer to buy him a Modelo and ask for a vote of confidence in my Patriots o8 RSW bet. He gives a much more detailed answer than I’m prepared for. I exit with a “Go Ducks” before I have time to embarrass myself. (Super nice guy, by the way.)

10pm: The local closing DJ comes on. I help him adjust his mic level from the crowd, because I know the struggle. Will I DM him later to tell him “great set bro”? Of course I will. I am having a 10 out of 10, capital-G capital-T Great Time right now.

???pm: I’m still wearing sunglasses indoors. It’s time for me to go, but not before I leave our new Penn State friends with a totally sincere “thank you for hosting us” and a totally insincere “good luck tomorrow”.

???pm + 15min: We stop at a cheesesteak spot that interprets an order of “one large cheesesteak” as “two cheesesteaks”. I should have gone to Penn State, I lament aloud.

???pm + 45min: We arrive safely at the Airbnb. Time for bed. Not by choice.

SATURDAY

7am: No.

8am: Yikes.

9am: Pain.

10am: Ok, time to rally. We drag our asses out the door and on our way to the tailgate, but not before watching Pat McAfee do his WWE thing on GameDay and pick the Nittany Lions to a crowd of rabid PSU fans. Prime Lee Corso would have had the stones to put on the Duck head. Pat McAfee, you’ll never be Prime Lee Corso.

10:30am: The best thing about walking to a stadium on game day is that you don’t need directions - just follow the mob. This is especially true when the stadium holds over 110,000 people. People are mostly nice, thanking us for making the trip and welcoming us to State College, a sentiment that makes a lot more sense when you’ve been the little brother of the conference for 20 years and your campus is 200 miles from anything resembling human civilization.

11am: Beaver Stadium is officially in sight. I’m reminded of the Las Vegas Strip death march when you see a close-seeming building that’s actually a 45 minute walk away. Later, a PSU fan will tell me they actually moved this entire stadium from the other side of campus in the 1960s (or something). I’m realizing this as I type that he may have been messing with me.

11:15am: We’re officially in the parking lot. A lot of fan bases claim they have “the best game day experience” - I genuinely think Penn State has a legitimate shout at this. I’ve never seen a tailgating setup like it, and it makes me want to visit more contenders for the title.

11:20am: We don’t even make it to our own tailgate before some Penn Staters stop us in our tracks to take a shot.

11:30am: We’ve arrived at home base for the next eight hours, and the first thing anyone wants to do is play Stump. Stump is a drinking game that involves flying hammers, alcohol, and not much else. Some miscellaneous notes about Stump:

  • The goal of Stump is to knock everyone else’s nails into the stump. On my first swing, I flip the hammer, catch it, and perfectly drive one almost all the way flush to the wood - only to realize I’ve hit my own nail. This results in a peal of laughter from our PSU fan hosts, plus a penalty of two drinks.
  • Do not play Stump against someone who brings his own hammer specifically to play Stump.
  • About two hours from now, while merely observing a game of Stump, I’ll take a high-speed ricochet of a three-inch framing nail between the eyes and nervously laugh it off. If I’m not wearing my still-bar-flo…

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