How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
A good friend of mine called me this past Wednesday and enticed me with two tickets to the Penn State vs. Iowa football game on Saturday. Since I had never been to a college football game before, I quickly packed my bags and headed to the little oasis Pennsylvanians call "Happy Valley."
For years, the Penn State motto has been "We are Penn State." One side of Beaver Stadium shouts "We are!" as the opposing side responds with "Penn State!" Whether a student starts the chant after a touchdown or drunkenly yells it out at 1 a.m., the phrase is tattooed on the heart of every Penn Stater, young and old.
After my first college football experience, I learned one important thing: We are not Penn State.
Walking down College Avenue en route to the game, I saw thousands of students in step with me, proudly wearing blue and white. Alumni rolled up in decadent RVs, displaying attitude and pride as if they had just graduated yesterday. The brave few who wore Iowa colors were immediately ostracized by the 108,000 Nittany Lions who attended Saturday's game. This was their home. And they loved it.
Two hundred and thirty miles away was my home, New York University. It's been my home for the past three years. The school pride for NYU is embarrassing compared to Penn State. We may not have a premiere college football team, but we do have New York City. We have the greatest city in the world and our neighbors are the world's greatest collection of artists, poets, musicians, architects, dreamers, pessimists, heroes and junkies. Yet the colors of purple and white can only be seen in the small flags above our buildings.
That's the thing. The student body at NYU has developed a fear of school pride. Students wear other schools' colors more often than NYU's. Our neighbors see us more as conquistadors of gentrification than leaders of tomorrow. The common scenester crew would not dare to wear purple and white, but those people certainly find enough reason to pay $50,000 a year to come here.
While tailgating with a dozen or so Penn State students, a student asked me where I lived on campus. I told him I was a student at NYU and he immediately yelled, "Holy shit! I'm so jealous! That's my dream!"
Being ranked the No. 1 dream school was not a mistake. For millions of others, we are living the dream. We are not Penn State. We are not Iowa. We are NYU. Take pride in that. Stand tall in purple and white. Know that on Saturday afternoons, when 108,000 people are chanting for their favorite team, a large group of them are wishing they could switch places and enjoy another day in the greatest city in the world. That is something we take for granted too often.
Marshall Bell is deputy sports editor. E-mail him at mbell@nyunews.com.
