The Big Ten, with three stadiums who boast capacities of 100,000 fans or more, is known for big-time crowds and great atmospheres throughout the league.
Those crowds and atmospheres will be gone this year as the Big Ten announced earlier this week that only families of players and staff will be permitted to attend games, but on a campus by campus basis.
There is “a lot less” schedule flexibility than they previously had heading into the football season Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour acknowledged during a press conference last week.
“We don’t know how many of those games will get played,” Barbour said. “If anything, the first couple of games have been examples of that for us.”
With such limitations, it’s easy to say that home-field advantage just won’t be the same this year especially so at Penn State.
It means no white out, no stripe out and no, not even tailgating outside the stadium this year. The smell of hot grills and hamburgers will be all but a distant memory on game days around the stadiums in the Big Ten and in Happy Valley.
It could be a blessing in disguise for the Nittany Lions to be playing in seemingly neutralized stadiums as this year the average capacity of the stadiums they’d be playing in on the road is over 75,400 people.
If there’s a year Penn State is happy to not have to deal with opposing fans on the road, it’s this year.
The Nittany Lions haven’t beat Michigan in Ann Arbor since 2009 and the last trip to Michigan Stadium was an ugly 42-7 loss in 2018. It’s been 39 years since Penn State has won in Lincoln against Nebraska, a 30-24 affair in 1981.
That being said, Penn State won’t be able to utilize their 107,000 faithful to make things difficult at the line of scrimmage for Ohio State on Halloween. They also won’t be able to use the crowd to their advantage against the likes of Michigan State or Iowa either.
It’s not just the uniqueness of the season that will make things interesting, but Penn State head coach James Franklin mentioned this year not counting against eligibility is something they will happily take advantage of.
“I think one of the advantages of this year not counting from an eligibility standpoint is you don’t have to worry about the redshirt guys only playing four games,” Franklin said. “It opens your roster to allow you to play more people, which I think you may need based on opt-outs and based on quarantine or whatever it may be.”
The limitations and new rules in place this year on eligibility will force programs such as Penn State to be creative on the field in their roster makeup but also in creating a home field advantage as well.