Powerful TV images of a White Out game sold Julian Smith on the entire Penn State experience at age 17. Now, all these years later, the junior from Seattle will finally experience his first one as USC ventures into a bleached-out Beaver Stadium this Saturday evening.
The only remaining question is whether it can possibly live up to Smith’s sky-high expectations. Will reality be worth his long wait, including striking out in Penn State’s lottery for student season tickets as a freshman and sophomore?
As he played Spikeball with friends amid the carnival atmosphere of Nittanyville recently, Smith was confident his first White Out would be everything he’d imagined as a high school student watching from across the country.
But Penn State’s signature game arrives after back-to-back losses by Coach Matt Campbell’s team. In the wake of these early-season stumbles, the entire Beaver Stadium experience is being questioned and criticized, even among once-diehard fans.
Smith’s enthusiasm remained undimmed, but he might be the exception.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, that is the atmosphere of a lifetime,’” he recalled thinking after watching, from 2,800 miles away, the electricity of 100,000-plus white-clad fans roaring with Lions loyalty.
“And so I wanted to go to Penn State,” he said.
But is a White Out still a White Out?
Losses to Wisconsin at home and Northwestern on the road — along with a raging debate over ticket policies and prices in a revamped Beaver Stadium — have sparked concerns that this quintessential Penn State experience could be fading.
Lots of empty seats in the new upper bowl on the west side of Beaver Stadium during the second quarter against Wisconsin on Sept. 26, 2026.
Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.comJoe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.comEmpty seats, rising prices
Swaths of empty seats were visible throughout the newly expanded Beaver Stadium during the Sept. 26 homecoming loss to Wisconsin. The jarring optics touched off a fresh round of debate among some fans who argue attending Penn State football games has become increasingly unaffordable and antiseptic.
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The complaints extend far beyond what’s happened with the team’s two successive Big Ten blunders.
Disgruntled fans are decrying rising ticket costs, steep university donations tied to seat locations, higher parking rates and the atmosphere-altering renovations from a $700 million Beaver Stadium makeover that’s heavy on premium seating.
Scott Paterno, son of legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno, is among the most vocal critics on social media.
“There are a LOT of people angry about the ticket and parking changes and 2027 pricing,” Paterno posted on X after the Wisconsin debacle. “That is something PSU might want to revisit because that situation is driving attitudes toward the team that are unwarranted.”
Greg Kincaid, Penn State’s assistant athletic director for communications, said the ongoing Beaver Stadium construction during this “transition year” was to blame for some of the empty seats.
“While construction is in progress, Beaver Stadium temporarily has more seats than it has had in recent seasons or will have when the project is complete, so a typical crowd can look different in the bowl,” Kincaid wrote in response to a series of PennLive questions late Tuesday.
“Turnout this fall has been in line with recent seasons,” he added.
For his part, Paterno declined PennLive’s request for an interview, preferring that his social media posts and the responses they provoked stand on their own.
“Anything I said on X is fair game, but please remember the context — I am just encouraging people who are upset to talk to the people in charge rather than ranting on X,” Paterno replied.
One of those “rants” was from a fan posting under the name ‘SCLion.’ The fan bemoaned the skyrocketing season ticket costs he’s been forced to shell out.
“Our tickets went from $6K to $20K, plus $10K donation,” SCLion wrote. “Huge increases are pricing most people out of the market.”
One result was the empty seats for Wisconsin. But a bigger consequence could be diluting the atmosphere that made Beaver Stadium a football epicenter for decades, the poster warned.
“Corporate donors will buy up the tickets, but it will be a very different atmosphere,” SCLion wrote.
Kincaid responded that Penn State “kept ticket prices essentially flat for several seasons while the project was planned and built. The biggest changes for 2027 come with new premium club areas, which are entirely new experiences. Those options help us avoid putting the full cost of the project on every seat.”
As for long-time ticket holders whose seats were affected by those high-priced new club areas, Kincaid said they were offered “the first chance to choose new seats elsewhere in the stadium” if they din’t want to ante up.
But some Nittany Lion loyalists posted online that they were contemplating abandoning their season plans altogether.
“I’ll most likely be turning in season tickets and buying 3-4 single-game tickets,” another fan posted on the viral thread spawned by Paterno’s post.
Above all, Kincaid assured the Beaver Stadium experience was not only being safeguarded, but enhanced, by the ongoing project.
“Preserving the traditions and atmosphere that make Beaver Stadium unique has been a priority throughout,” he said. “A change of this scale isn’t always easy, and we’ll keep listening to our fans.”
But it’s not just diehards who’ve been attending Penn State games for decades who are disillusioned.
It’s university students who consider Nittany Lions football part and parcel of their college experience.
The Penn State student section cheers during the second quarter on Sept. 26, 2026.
Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.comJoe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.comLottery for 21,000 tickets
Their gripes center on a university-wide lottery system for student season tickets. It was instituted three seasons ago in the name of fairness.
“The lottery is designed to give every eligible student an equal chance at season tickets,” Kincaid told PennLive.
But some students say it renders the commitment of die-hard fans meaningless.
Prior to the lottery system, student season tickets were sold on a first-come basis on sites like Ticketmaster. The most fervent student fans would juggle multiple computers to access the queue and score tickets. Of course, there were complaints then, too, as the available tickets sold out in minutes.
Now, it’s just a numbers game. The university-wide lottery is open to an estimated 86,000 students across all PSU campuses vying for about 21,000 student season tickets each year. What’s not known, and what the university doesn’t reveal, is how many eligible students enter the lottery each season.
Without knowing this, it’s impossible to calculate the odds.
Penn State fans cheer on their team as the Nittany Lions shut out Marshall, 45-0 on Sept. 5, 2026.
Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.comJoe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com
“We don’t release request totals, but demand has exceeded the allotment every year, and we work to accommodate as many students as possible in one of the largest student sections in the country,” Kincaid responded.
Based on the experience of Julian Smith, who finally won the lottery in his junior year, the odds could be one in three. While he’s ecstatic to be attending his first White Out game, he’s already worried whether he’ll score tickets for his senior year.
“I know a few people who are seniors that didn’t get the tickets,” Smith said.
Lottery losers often face the painful prospect of paying through the nose to attend hot-ticket games like Saturday night’s USC clash.
“When you’re a diehard fan and you want to go to a White Out game, it gets up to $500 for minimum ticket. And it’s like, okay, what are we doing here?” Smith said.
Secondary market
Students camp out in Nittanyville outside of Beaver Stadium in preparation to be the first in line on game day.
September 24, 2026.
Zach Gleiter | Special to PennLiveZach Gleiter | Special To PennLive
On a crisp autumn evening in Nittanyville, students tossed footballs, played Spikeball and gathered around televisions playing Madden football video games. Others cuddled under blankets in camp chairs, their snug sleeping bags awaiting inside nearby tents that populated this pigskin town.
On the surface, it seemed like autumn as it ever was in Happy Valley.
But as a PennLive reporter conducted spot interviews, one topic dominated conversation.
Money.
After losing the lottery, Emily, an advertising sophomore, entered the secondary market.
She found a season-ticket package for $600 after seeing packages listed for as much as $2,000.
“I was planning on getting White Out tickets anyway,” she said. “I figured it was gonna be like $700 just for one game.”
She made the deal, paying more than double the price for student season tickets, which have a face value of $246.
Virtually all of the students PennLive interviewed said they personally know students with little interest in football who took part in the lottery anyway. A few sold their student season ticket packages at face value to friends. This works out to a very reasonable $35 per game.
Olivia, a senior in speech pathology, was among those who benefited from a benevolent friend who isn’t a football fan.
“My roommate applied and she’s just been transferring her tickets to me,” she said.
Other students enter the lottery looking to strike it rich. Instead of benefiting a friend, they look to make bank on big-money games like the USC White Out. This way, they turn a $35 ticket into $450 or more, students said.
Many such deals occur through social media platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat, despite Penn State’s official resale marketplace, the students added. Unfortunately, some of these back channels are rife with fraud, they said.
At least one student said she was swindled by this process when a seller on Facebook insisted on a digital down payment but never sent the tickets.
Students camp out in Nittanyville outside of Beaver Stadium in preparation to be the first in line on game day.
September 24, 2026.
Zach Gleiter | Special to PennLiveZach Gleiter | Special To PennLive
“My freshman year, I looked on Facebook and I thought I was being real careful. Apparently I was not,” the student said.
Others cited Snapchat as brimming with student ticket sellers and some unorthodox offers. One proposed making an East Halls dorm swap part of the season ticket deal.
Kincaid encouraged students to use “the official student resale marketplace via Ticketmaster.” He said it’s available “exclusively to registered Penn State students for verified, secure transactions.”
Moreover, Kincaid added, “Penn State Athletics actively monitors ticket resale activity. Tickets may not be purchased for the primary purpose of resale and ticket holders may have their tickets revoked or canceled if they violate ticket terms and conditions.”
Savvy students said they often use social media instead of Ticketmaster for fairer, fee-free deals. To avoid fraud, they insist on meeting ticket sellers in person, ensuring the digital ticket transfers and payments occur as promised.
But they’d rather have a better system for student tickets in the first place.
Price Plunge
Everything changed in wake of the Lions’ crushing 34-13 loss to Northwestern last Friday. Like air and enthusiasm draining out of Beaver Stadium, a once-hot market for tickets to the USC White Out game turned ice cold overnight.
Penn State head coach Matt Campbell and defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn leave the field following the 34-13 loss to Northwestern on Oct. 2, 2026.
Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.comJoe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com
On re-sale sites like SeatGeek, StubHub and Vivid Seats, get-in prices to the game plunged by an average of 60 to 70 percent, bottoming out around $90-$100, fees included, for upper deck level seats, according to reports by both PennLive and Sports Illustrated.
The secondary market for student tickets also weakened. But these coveted seats remained more expensive.
SeatStock showed the lowest-priced student White Out ticket at $249, with additional listings around $250 – $280. The Average completed-sale price on the site stood at $327, with 81 tickets sold. Another 95 remained available as of Tuesday.
The price plunge is reminiscent of one of the biggest downfalls in Penn State football history.
Then-coach James Franklin’s abrupt Oct. 12, 2025, firing resulted in a fire sale for tickets to remaining home games.
Julian Smith, the Seattle fan shut out of student tickets to Beaver Stadium his first two years, saw his chance.
He scored student-section seats and witnessed one of the most thrilling games of the year — the Lions’ last-second loss to eventual national champion Indiana.
All for a mere $20.
Even the ticket gods can be benevolent sometimes.
But Coach Campbell has to hope Penn State’s thorny ticketing issues among both longtime fans and fresh-faced students aren’t settled in a similar manner this season.
Kincaid vowed this week’s White Out would be as passionate as it ever was. The constant isn’t the stadium, or even the team.
It’s the fans.
“Nights like the White Out are built by the people in the seats, and that isn’t changing,” he said.
Still, students frustrated by the current lottery system are proposing some changes of their own.
Who gets the Penn State experience?
Sierra, who experienced both the old queue system and the current lottery, said she preferred the earlier approach.
Penn State fans cheer on their team as the Nittany Lions shut out Marshall, 45-0 on Sept. 5, 2026.
Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.comJoe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com
“At least I felt like I had a more fighting chance, whereas the lottery is just complete odds,” she said.
It comes down to the luck of the draw. Loyalty is left out of the equation.
To improve the current lottery system, Sierra proposed a tracking system to cut down on resale abuse.
“I personally think that there should be a tracker of people who sell their tickets. I know someone who got them just to sell them. And it’s frustrating because there are people who actually care and want to go,” she said.
Isabella, an international politics sophomore, wants the university to reward loyalty, not luck.
“The people that go to more games — softball games, women’s soccer and stuff — I think that they should have a priority,” she said. “I think that they should have a priority because they show that they are interested in more than just football.”
They all want a better way to get more student tickets into the hands of true fans.
Kincaid said the university shares this goal and regularly reviews the system and seeks out student feedback.
“We’re always exploring ways to improve it, and we talk often with our student section leadership groups,” he said.
One coming change will recognize and reward students who support Penn State teams beyond football through what Kincaid called “the next evolution of the newly-launched Penn State Rewards program.”
This could be the best chance for keeping Penn State White Out games as bright as ever.
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