The enhancements stood out immediately.
The blue concert-like directional lighting. The glistening new paint job. The rather enormous 1-0 banner. They all smack you in the face, metaphorically speaking. All these changes (i.e., improvements) were installed in the Beaver Stadium south tunnel before the Nittany Lions’ home opener against Ball State on Sept. 11.
The south tunnel is off-limits to nearly all fans, though it doubles as one of the most prime pieces of real estate in the entire stadium.
Why?
For one: every single recruit who has field access passes through the tunnel. I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that each of them is imagining what it’d be like to run through that tunnel on game day when they’re playing college ball. In James Franklin’s best-case scenario, those recruits are playing for Penn State.
Another reason: The upgrades make for pretty darn good television. Franklin mentioned ESPN and ABC when discussing the enhancements, saying the team wanted to clean up those images a bit. Not that the images looked bad before, but slapping on a new coat of paint and installing those lights adds a ton of production value. You can see an up-close view with the above video, which shows Franklin and the team heading toward the field prior to kickoff Saturday night.
And going back to the recruits. Nearly all of them — and most of their family members — are holding up a phone recording the action. Whether it’s a visiting high school player, a returning letterman, someone watching on television, or a current player or coach, the visual impact hits.
“We just want to make sure that everything we do, we’re presenting Penn State in a way that everybody looks at and says, ‘That’s first class and that’s sharp and that’s impressive,’ and that was another opportunity to do it that way,” Franklin said. “So when the eyes of the world — specifically the sports world — are on us, that everything that people see and associate with Penn State is first class and creative and fun and represents our brand the right way. I feel like that does right now.”
Franklin continued:
“For our players, it’s a very short walk but I think they feel it too, they sense it as well. We want a first-class product. We want to make sure that we’re treating everybody in a first-class way on the front end, and I think we probably have more alignment with those types of things than we’ve ever had.”
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