UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Even before the Big Ten conference opted to postpone fall sports last week, Fritz Smith felt dread.
A week earlier, the president and CEO of the nonprofit Happy Valley Adventure Bureau was dismayed when Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour confirmed that, if fall college football did happen, there would be no fans at Beaver Stadium, given statewide restrictions on outdoor gatherings.
“Once it became a reality that if we had games there weren’t going to be fans, we knew that our region would lose most of the economic impact that football provides,” Smith said. “The disappointment came in waves. The decision to cancel games wasn’t quite the kick in the head because we already took a big one the week before with no fans.”
The eerie silence from one of the largest stadiums in the world will have a wide-reaching effect on the Centre County region. No football is bad news for communities across the country, and Happy Valley is a prime example. Unlike Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio) or the University of Wisconsin (Madison, Wis.), Penn State isn’t in a state capital. The region’s livelihood thrives on football in the fall.
Smith estimates the Penn State area will lose $70 million to $80 million in visitor spending without games, not to mention millions more spent by Centre County residents. On football weekends, when some fans arrive Thursday evenings to check into their hotels and don’t depart until Sunday, the area’s population can rise to around 200,000, temporarily making it the third-largest city in the state behind Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Those football weekends result in about 17% of the yearly revenue for hotels in and around the region, according to Smith.
“Not having the games was another step in a series of disappointing events since the pandemic began,” he said. “It hurts not to have games, but we got the most depressing news once we realized there couldn’t be fans. Happy Valley relies on those seven home games in the fall.”
Hit on hospitality
At Champs Downtown, a five-minute walk from the Old Main Building on Penn State’s campus, lines start to form down the street and around the corner on South Allen Street at 6 p.m. on fall Fridays. Those large crowds don’t let up until late Sunday evening, after that day’s NFL action winds down.
“The economy here revolves around the university and, more specifically, Nittany Lion football,” said Dave Lucchesi, the popular sports bar’s manager. “We base our business here on about 10 weekends a year. Eight of those weekends are football with the fall games and spring game. Then the other two are graduation. This is a devastating blow for us.”
Lucchesi said the success of the men’s basketball team — which seemed poised for a rare NCAA tournament berth months ago before COVID-19 scrapped the event — big hockey weekends, wrestling and other sports performing well helped the establishment post record-setting numbers in January and February. But things took a turn in March with the pandemic and no Blue-White Game or graduation in the following weeks and months.
The Big Ten and others have their sights set on a football season in early 2021, and Lucchesi hopes the return of students to campus can keep the bar going until then.
“We are doing our best to hold on,” Lucchesi said. “We are doing the best we can to survive this long term. We believe that if we can survive this, we can thrive as things return to normalcy in the future.”
Two blocks away, the Bradley’s Cheesesteaks & Hoagies on South Pugh Street has been closed for months, with the location’s size and dine-in restrictions not making it feasible to open. The off-campus, North Atherton Street location has been up and running, but there’s a different feel at the on-campus spot, where Caleb Henderson, a 21-year-old senior from Idaho, says he was hoping to cook up steaks until 3 a.m. or beyond on football game weekends in the coming months.
“On game night, we make about three times the sandwiches we would make on a normal night,” Henderson said. “We will get people coming in anywhere from 1 and 2 in the morning after the bars close on game night. We are going to lose so much money. We’ve already lost a lot since March, but this will hurt a lot more.”
According to Smith, hospitality workers make up 5,000 of the 80,000 workers in Centre County. As a sign of the times, nearly 3,750 of those hospitality workers are unemployed, and almost 21% of the unemployed in Centre County are in the hospitality industry, Smith said.
“We’ll have bartenders making over $1,000 in tips on a single night,” he said. “There are so many ways that money gets recycled in the community. When our hospitality workers aren’t making money, they aren’t able to support our other businesses.”
Henrik Bloss feels fortunate to be one of the hospitality employees still working. He’s employed at Jack’s Beer Shop, which shares building space with Bradley’s on North Atherton. The 48-year-old Bloss grew up in Philipsburg, about 30 miles west of Beaver Stadium, and his family often made the drive over to watch games and tailgate during the fall.
“Everything is so fluid,” Bloss said. “We are still processing all of this. It feels like every week, there are new challenges. We hope that we can weather the storm.”
Gutting it out
On some level, Barbour and the university feel responsible for helping the community get through a fall without football. Earlier this week, on the “Representation Without Taxation” podcast hosted by sports law attorney Jill McBride Baxter, Barbour said the school faces $100 million in losses without football, though a spring season could help recoup some of those shortfalls via TV money and potential ticket sales.
“It will be difficult for local businesses without football,” Barbour told reporters Monday. “As an athletic department and a university, we will continue to encourage our fans and alumni to buy locally. Buy from your local bookstore instead of the online behemoth. We need people to keep supporting local restaurants and other establishments.”
Penn State football coach James Franklin shared similar sentiments Wednesday.
“I know the impact that the team has on the community,” Franklin said. “I feel the weight of that. I am ingrained in this community. Our program has a significant impact on the businesses and people of our community.
“In a perfect world, would you love to have games in Beaver Stadium this winter and be able to have fans there and be able to help the local economy? Yes, without a doubt, 100%. But based on all the information we have, I don’t know how realistic it is now.”
Big Ten players and parents have petitioned recently for the conference to reconsider its decision to postpone the season. In what was called an “Open Letter to the Big Ten Community,” league commissioner Kevin Warren on Wednesday laid out some of the specific reasons for why it was made, including rising COVID-19 transmission rates and uncertainty about recovery from and long-term effects of the virus.
“The vote by the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors (COP/C) was overwhelmingly in support of postponing fall sports and will not be revisited,” Warren wrote. “The decision was thorough and deliberative, and based on sound feedback, guidance and advice from medical experts.”
On a somber Sunday a little less than a week after that initial decision, uncertainty languished over the Penn State area like a cloudy day. But there was at least a little bit of hope in the air — about football and more — as students started to trickle into the town for the start of the semester.
“We know it will be hard to get through this,” Smith said. “If everyone stays vigilant with their social distancing, we can get through the fall semester with students on campus. It won’t be an easy fall. As hard as it will be, I believe that we can get through this if we all stick together. If we do, then our region can be poised for a nice bounce back in 2021.”
The Associated Press contributed. Nubyjas Wilborn: nwilborn@post-gazette.com Twitter: @NubyjasW
First Published: August 21, 2020, 9:00 a.m.
Updated: August 21, 2020, 9:40 a.m.
