STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The scenarios are already swirling in Herb Combs’ mind. Penn State’s associate athletic director for facilities management and operations knows what it takes to get Beaver Stadium up and running, which means he knows the challenges associated with maintaining the 106,572-seat stadium.
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There’s always a plan for snow removal or torrential downpours. They’ve learned they can’t leave snow under the bleachers in the student section because of snowballs, and when the grass parking lots are saturated, they’re well-versed in re-routing parking elsewhere.
Pretty soon, Combs and Penn State will have a plan for hosting a College Football Playoff game in Beaver Stadium too.
“When those athletes roll in on July 30 or 31st, whatever day it is on any given year, they’re assuming they’re going to play that weekend,” Combs said. “Well, we as a facility and as an operations team, we also need to assume that we’re hosting that event.”
The College Football Playoff will expand from four teams to a 12-team bracket in 2024. The top four conference champions will receive first-round byes, and the No. 5 through No. 8 seeds will host first-round games on campus. In 2024, those first-round games will be played the week ending Saturday, Dec. 21. That means keeping stadiums functional for a little longer into the winter while also trying to host a team’s biggest game of the season at a time when many campuses are clearing out, with students wrapping up finals and heading home for winter break.
“Do I think we could play a game, you know, December 19? Yeah, we would find a way to do it,” Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft said. “We’re not going to go and take a game somewhere else, wherever that might be. We’re going to host it. We’re going to do it. But it does come with so many challenges.”
Using the BCS/CFP rankings, Penn State would have qualified for a 12-team playoff eight times (1999, 2005, 2008, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022) if a 12-team playoff existed dating back to 1998. The Nittany Lions would’ve hosted Boise State in 2008 in a playoff game in Beaver Stadium and had byes in 2005 and 2016. They’d have been on the road in every other appearance — 1999 at Kansas State, 2017 at USC, 2018 at Notre Dame, 2019 at Baylor and 2022 at Ohio State.
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It’s tantalizing to think about what Beaver Stadium, the second-largest college football stadium in the nation, would look like for a first-round playoff game. State College is already a place that lives and breathes for football season, with RVs rolling into town on Thursdays of game weekends and visitors packing the downtown bars and restaurants Friday to Sunday.
One game weekend results in roughly $12.4 million worth of football visitor spending, according to a study conducted by the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau. That $87 million per season boosts the local economy like nothing else and can be rivaled by only one other weekend: spring graduation.
“December is a time when visitation is really starting to slow down here,” said Fritz Smith, president and CEO of the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau. “It would keep more people employed in the hotels, it would enable them to not necessarily have to lay people off or reduce their hours as much as they normally do.”
Kraft, who arrived at Penn State in the summer, spent much of his first football season learning about the quirks and oddities of Beaver Stadium while also gaining a better understanding of all that goes into a football Saturday in Happy Valley. It’s a stadium that’s been the subject of potential renovations since Penn State released a facility masterplan in March 2017. The 20-year roadmap for all facilities did not have the stadium among the projects to be started within the first five years, but the future of the venue has to be decided sooner rather than later. Perhaps a possible home playoff game can help create more urgency.
During the 2020 season, Penn State did play a game in Beaver Stadium on Dec. 19, but fans weren’t allowed to attend. There have been instances before in which the “pain points” of the facility — the press box and the north upper deck — have been problematic, Combs said. Those two areas are hardest hit by the elements, meaning plumbing in those locations freezes quicker and is harder to thaw out. That could be worrisome as the calendar stretches into December.
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“When you go into a bathroom, you really don’t think about all the piping from the sink or the toilet to get into the ground level,” Combs said. “All of that infrastructure is exposed. .. It’s not behind a wall, it’s not insulated, it’s not in a place to get heat. … If you have 20-degree temperatures and a real feel of 10 degrees and winds, that’s just gonna make it undesirable and those areas are going to be the problem spot.”
For the regular-season finale in November 2018, the toilets on the press box side of the stadium weren’t functional, forcing everyone there to use the bathrooms in the main concourse. That problem has since been fixed, Combs said, by adding heat trace — electric heat tape — to all the domestic water lines and the sewer on that side of the stadium.
“I think it’s very feasible (to host),” Combs said. “I think initially people think about the outdatedness of the venue, but over the last number of years we have been taking provisions that when we have issues with freezing domestic water or sewer, we’re repairing those and adding heat trace elements to them. … The bigger challenges are really making sure that we have staff that will overlap with the holidays and hunting season and the student body being gone.”
Student workers serve as auxiliary officers who set up traffic cones and signage for game day parking. There are student groups that support concessions and catering, ushering and ticketing and the grounds crews. Student clubs and organizations also participate in venue cleanup.
“It’s always about manpower,” Combs said. “Where do you find the employees in this rural part of Pennsylvania? It’s not an easy task.”
Hosting the biggest game of the season at a time when many campuses are clearing out for winter break would also require cooperation from Penn State housing. Dorms and dining halls would need to be opened, something Penn State has done to accommodate students who attend home games that are played the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Penn State also relies on three third-party groups to help staff every football game. That includes GXC, which is a security company out of New York. Those three third-party groups combine to supply 650 workers. Making sure those companies understand that Penn State might need them — but won’t know for sure until a couple of weeks before the event — could create staffing challenges. Though kickoff times are often unknown, everyone knows for months in advance which Saturdays they’re working during the regular season.
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“Now look, do I think we can figure it all out? Yeah. But you can’t just whip that together,” Kraft said. “It takes truly a village to throw a game on.”
Should a playoff game also coincide with fall graduation, which is held across the parking lot from Beaver Stadium in the Bryce Jordan Center, that too would be a logistical nightmare. Graduation weekend is set years in advance, and this year’s is Saturday, Dec. 17. In 2024, it’s Dec. 21, the same week as first-round CFP games. If the entire college football calendar starts a week earlier, as has been discussed for 2026 and beyond, some of those issues could be lessened, but every school’s academic calendar is different.
There’s also a question of who would get the first crack at purchasing tickets and how that process would work. Penn State has 91,754 season ticket holders, which includes roughly 21,000 student season tickets.
“There’s a lot to peel apart to get to that point,” Kraft said.
Hotel rooms would probably be snapped up in a hurry, which could pose challenges for opponents that can’t take site visits in the summer and secure lodging in advance like they normally do for regular-season games. State College has long prided itself on ballooning to become the third-largest city in Pennsylvania on home football Saturdays, a stressor when it comes to traffic, lodging and even space at the University Park Airport, which hit max capacity when Auburn played in Beaver Stadium in 2021.
Throw in the unpredictability of winter weather, and it’s easy to understand why Combs and others in jobs like his have many different plans mapped out. While it’s an extreme example, Combs said he watched in November as the Buffalo Bills took their home game to Detroit because of severe snow accumulation in Western New York. Penn State would need to have a backup facility lined up in what Combs refers to as a “point of no return” situation.
“We’d have to evaluate the same thing in a severe weather event,” he said. “But the mission being at all costs you do whatever you need to do to host that event.”
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It might seem like doomsday prepping for a game that very well could end up being played on an unseasonably warm day and make all these contingency plans and years of preparation a moot point. Still, Penn State can’t take the risk of being unprepared.
“It is so much more than just the building. It’s the field. It’s the parking. It’s making sure there’s a safe environment all across,” Combs said. “There’s just so many things that come into play at that time of year.”
(Top photo: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
