STATE COLLEGE – Nobody noticed right away. It was sort of a gradual thing where everyone tapped someone next to them on the shoulder and murmured, “Hey. Look, at this.”
Everyone should have been tipped off by the fade-out of the usually ceaseless “gameday experience” soundtrack over the public-address system. And then the Nebraska Cornhuskers walked together from the west sideline of Beaver Stadium and the Penn State Nittany Lions walked together from the east. It wasn't formal looking. More like neighbors crossing a lawn to greet each other. No one announced anything on the P.A.
And then they all knelt down around the center of the field and bowed their heads. Within a few seconds, without a prompt, everyone in the stadium had fallen completely quiet. No one announced a “moment of silence.” That had already been done a few minutes before. It just happened by itself.
Think about 100,000 people spontaneously deciding to make virtually no noise. It was the most remarkable thing I think I've ever witnessed at any public event, let alone a football game.
In an America where nothing anymore seems to escape prefabrication and packaging, neither was this in one sense. The prayer was conceived and delivered by a Nebraska assistant coach and former Fellowship of Christian Athletes president who, frankly, has stated some controversial views in the past.
But none of that mattered here on this day. What mattered was the effect it had in bringing those in attendance together as a community.
It was sort of like the polar opposite of the brawl before the 1988 Notre Dame-Miami game. People consciously making a decision to act with civility and goodwill rather than impulsively and in chaos.
If just for a few moments, that's exactly what this place needed. It was a stadium counterpart to the candlelight vigil held at the Old Main lawn on Friday night.
This isn't to say a more salvos of anger and pain and heartache aren't going to visit Penn State University in the near future. They are. What's gone on here has taproots and the investigation into the Jerry Sandusky scandal has barely reached the subsoil.
I think the people here feel branded; the sense of that is palpable. The Sandusky scandal hasn't just soiled the football program and the people in it but the entire populace. I think they feel this place and community, through no fault of the vast majority, is now maybe known for the hideousness of child sex abuse and for a profound lack of perspective on the importance of football.
If that's not fair or maybe even entirely true, I think the sense of it is still filling an awful lot of people with a profound sorrow.
On Saturday, what happened at a football game might have been the very beginnings of turning all that around.
From the outside looking in, there were very good reasons not to even play it. Nebraska coach Bo Pelini echoed the sentiments of many when he made an admission afterward:
“I'll be honest with you, going into the football game I didn't think the game should have been played for a lot of different reasons.
“I think in the end, I look at my job as a football coach to educate and to prepare the kids who come into the program for the rest of their life. The situation that is going on is bigger than football. It's bigger than that game we just played.”
Pelini admitted he remained conflicted even afterward. But he doesn't live here.
Penn State interim head coach Tom Bradley does and has for over three decades. He had the opposite viewpoint:
“At no time did I think the game would be canceled, nor did I think the game should be canceled.
“The players on this team, the players from Nebraska, they deserve the opportunity to compete. I don't think anything has changed from that end, that they had any involvement with any of these events that have happened this week.”
Which is, of course, the football argument that all people insulated inside the football realm would give. It's the same argument Olympic athletes gave when the United States team was prohibited by its own government from competing in the 1980 Moscow Games as a protest to the Soviet Union raining death on Afghanistan.
The counterpoint is basically Pelini's – that these people need some perspective. That they need to realize the world is bigger than athletic competition, larger than a football field.
Well, the problem with that here is that football is so much part of the communal fabric of the place. It's where they meet. The best way they can start to heal is by using the game as a means to show that they grasp the difference between the game and life.
And there are people who have doubted such a perspective exists here based on the events of the last week, especially the student rioting that occurred after their beloved figurehead – the football coach – was fired.
I admit having my own doubts. Even during this game, there were a couple of failed plays late in the fourth quarter when more than just a smattering of boos rang out. You thought, my God, what kind of knuckleheads could boo these kids on this day?
And whom are we kidding? They are all around here, too -- people who simply aren't bright enough to grasp how little football should really mean, simpletons who cannot be helped.
But I think a different side of this community – a larger and more representative side – went on greater display.
They made themselves known after a last-ditch Penn State possession that began with 49 seconds left in the game, Penn State down by the final score of 17-14. The drive never really got going and finally expired on a Matt McGloin incompletion as the clock ran out.
Then something happened else happened that I've never seen in 21 seasons covering football games at Beaver Stadium. It began slowly with no one really noticing. A few people clapped by themselves, then a few more. And by the time McGloin, his chin hanging on his chest, and the rest of the team approached the south portal, the entire place was standing and applauding.
A standing ovation for a losing Penn State team.
I think what happened here Saturday afternoon was a solemn prayer in a figurative sense as well as a literal one. If that sounds hokey, you don't know this place. To me, it seemed like nothing less than a vow by everyone in attendance to help take care of each other through the next few months and years. All while trying to imagine what could be way down the road.
What could be out there? Who knows? Maybe precisely because of this horror, there could emerge a place known for, even synonymous for, the love and care of its children.
Wouldn't that be something?
