Are You Ready for Penn State Football? Not Me! Not Ever!

Yesterday the Penn State Football Facebook page posted a video, 20 Days, which you can view by clicking here.  Now it's 19 days and counting until the opening day on September 3, when Penn State plays Indiana State.

There is a lot to anticipate about this year’s football season, including a good home game schedule with Alabama Iowa and Nebraska being much anticipated games.    We will also experience division play this year, and the first-ever B1G championship. 



But am I ready?  No, not at all.  My problem is always the same:  my husband Terry counts the days until the first football game.  But for me, classes start on August 22!  That’s in 7 days.  I can’t separate being ready for Penn State football from being ready for classes. 

So I get irritated with that countdown.  I wish he would stop!  I don't want to be reminded how quickly summer is disappearing and how much I have to do.

I'm just not ready for classes to start again.  By the time football starts, classes will already be in full swing.  Somehow, in the next 7 days, I have to tie up a lot of loose ends and get ready to meet a whole bunch of new students. 

Not to mention that I'm teaching a new course so there's more preparation than usual.  The to-do list keeps getting longer for classes to start, and the time keeps getting shorter. 

And, once football season starts, there goes our weekends.  Anything I want to achieve that's not class or football related will have to wait until winter.  So I have to get to it now or let it wait. 

As for football, the to-do list is surprisingly short, so in a sense we are ready.

We need to make hotel reservations for the Penn State vs. Temple football game in Philadelphia, and firm up car rental reservations for the Penn State vs. Indiana football game in Bloomington, Indiana.

As far as away games to Indiana, Northwestern, Ohio State and Wisconsin are concerned, everything else is reserved.  Although the sticker shock of airline prices really got to us!  This has become a much more expensive hobby this year.

Most of our away game plans were made and reserved in one day in May when I sit down and book airline reservations, hotel rooms or tours as needed.  It's not that difficult to do anymore.  We've been at each Big Ten venue enough to know what we want to do.  We know which airlines fly to which sites and we have our favorite hotels. 

We booked two tours this year, for Ohio State and Wisconsin.  Ohio State is a bus trip from State College and was quite reasonably priced.  We also found that the Wisconsin tour was less expensive than doing airfare over Thanksgiving weekend on our own.  That is somewhat unusual but I think the holiday travel has something to do with it.

We have visitors from out of town staying with us for the "big" games:  Alabama, Iowa, Purdue (Homecoming), and Nebraska.  So we have to arrange our cleaning schedule accordingly.  We are in the process of figuring out whom to invite for the other home games in the season:  Indiana State, Eastern Michigan, and Illinois. 

And, I almost forgot!  We need to get that DVD recorder fixed!  It's irritating not to have a recording of the game when we return home from Beaver Stadium or a trip to an away game.  Yes, we watch each game live, then we go home and watch it again....unless, of course, it's a miserable loss.

So are we ready for some football?  No…not me…I'm never ready for football season.

But when it finally arrives in 19 days, it will all be worth it!