We Are Penn State

“We are Penn State”
How would like to have 108,000 (well minus the thousand Beaver fans in attendance) yelling that in your ear? Since when did this phrase become common property for all colleges (I don’t know, NFL fans don’t say it do they?) to appropriate? I didn’t see the Marshall movie, but I imagine it’s to blame for the recent resurgence. I remember Virginia Tech fans using it last season (2007). It's one thing to have just gone through a major campus tragedy, but c’mon Penn State, what have you gone through lately?

I have two complaints with the ‘We are (fill in school allegiance)’ chant. One, its ubiquity undermines its purpose. We say who we are in order to emphasize our individuality and uniqueness – ‘we are Georgia’ means we are not Georgia Tech or Georgia State. But if everyone says it (I even saw a ‘We are Oregon State’ t-shirt at the game), how unique is the statement? I think de Toqueville said this best over two hundred years ago – that Americans insist on asserting their difference and their individuality, but each person does it in the exact same way. The content of the message may differ, but the medium is the same.

Two, I can’t stand the use of the ‘to be’ verb – ‘we are’, ‘I am’, ‘he is’. Needless to mention, the 'we are' chant states the obvious. Well, I certainly hope you are Penn State otherwise I drove nine hours and paid 70 dollars to see the wrong game. More importantly, by using ‘are’, the team or college that we happen to cheer for on Saturdays becomes an essential feature of our identity. Maybe it doesn’t matter, after all it’s just a football game, but the argument can be made that this is how racism, nationalism and every other dangerous ‘ism’ is constructed. ‘I am American’ and there’s nothing more important that you need to know about me. My nationality, regardless of the fact that being born and raised within the borders of the United States was an arbitrary occurrence (I recognize this is not the case for everyone) and regardless of the myriad of connotations of the term American or Estado Unidense (the more accurate term in Spanish) - determines who I am and perhaps more importantly, who I am not. As the increasingly popular use of ‘nation’ in sports (be it ‘Beaver Nation’ or ‘Red Sox nation’ I’m seeing this everywhere) demonstrates, the link between the logic of sports and nationalism is brilliant marketing if nothing else.

(As a side point here: does it bother anyone else that F-14s buzz over Reeser Stadium before the Civil War game? Can you think of anything less necessary in the world?)

It need not be this way. The Brits frame their team allegiance in terms of an action verb – ‘I support Chelsea’. Thus, it’s something you happen to do, but it’s not who you are. Granted, one might hear ‘I am a Chelsea supporter’ but have you ever heard someone say ‘I support Oregon State’ or even less likely, ‘I follow Oregon State’? For Americans, what you do determines who you are. ‘I am a runner’; ‘I am a Democrat’ – not ‘I run’ or ‘I vote for democrats’. Okay, fine, none of these categories necessarily hurt me unless I’m voting in Florida. Let’s think about the cases where one doesn’t get to choose to identify himself by what he does. For instance, why is it that doing sexual acts with the same sex (and is this even the definition?) comes to define you as a person – as a ‘homosexual’; ‘gay’; or ‘queer’? And yet, doing the same act (or nearly the same act) with a woman goes unlabelled? I mean no one needs to come out and say to the world, “I am heterosexual!” Again, it need not be the case. In Brazil, it is understood that the giver, or “top” as it were, is not gay. Rather, he is a straight man who happens to like putting his ding up other men (and in fact, in many cases, the receivers aren’t considered ‘men’).

Let’s get one thing straight – ‘I am not a blogger.’

Other Notes from the Penn State Debacle ….

Worst Insults
(After game) “Is your Beaver sore?”
“Oregon sucks” To which my brother responded, “So does University of Pennsylvania”
“Go Huskies!” Okay, closer yet, but obviously “go Ducks” was what you were going for, idiot.
Best Conversation
(After Penn St. fake punt in 4th quarter up 45-7; it turned out to be inconsequential since there was a flag on the play)
Beaver Fan1: What is Joepa thinking? Fake punt while up 38 points in fourth quarter. In the unwritten code of football, there is a rule against doing that crap.
Beaver Fan2: hey, if we can’t stop it, why not do it? We need to stop it.
Penn State Fan: You guys can’t stop anything.
Beaver Fan 2: Let’s not be self-degrading here. What does it say about us if they stop playing?
Beaver Fan 3: Well, at least we play everyone in our league. How the heck can you guys get off not playing everyone in the Big 10? You don’t play Michigan or Ohio St. this year.
Penn St. Fan: We do play Michigan and Ohio St. Everyone plays 8 conference games.
Entire Beaver section: Nope, the Pac-10 plays 9 conference games. We play everyone.
Penn St. Fan: Okay, so you have one hard game in SC and the rest are jokes.
(Particularly irate) Beaver Fan 1: The Pac-10 is much better than the Big 10. Last week UCLA beat Tennessee and Cal beat Michigan State.