Posts tagged ‘Capital One Bowl’
How DO They Get Those Pants So Clean? (VIDEO)
The Parting Shot in our March/April issue – which Alumni Association members should have in their mailboxes any day now — features a shot of the Penn State offensive huddle during the Nittany Lions’ 19-17 win over LSU in the Capital One Bowl, where overuse and bad weather had turned the Citrus Bowl field into a mud bog. The result: State’s iconic blue-and-white uniforms were turned blue and gray.
And you think your laundry is a chore...
The picture also left us with a question: How on earth do they get those clean? Luckily, we knew where to get the answer.
(scroll down for video)
A few weeks back, our editor, Tina Hay, called Kirk Diehl ’96, ’05, the Nittany Lions’ facilities coordinator and the guy who, along with equipment manager Brad “Spider” Caldwell ’86, is responsible for maintaining Penn State’s pristine game-day appearance. (A quick aside about Kirk: We were classmates when he was a student manager for the team in the mid ’90s. I saw him walking off the field at the end of the ’95 Rose Bowl and yelled hello from the stands. He waved and threw me a pair of Nike football gloves. It wasn’t until we were back from winter break that I found out the gloves belonged to Ki-Jana Carter ’95. Yes, I still have them.)
Anyway… Kirk gave Tina a sense of how he and Spider got all those pants white enough to be worn again – which they will be, at the annual Blue White Game in April. On Tuesday, associate editor Amy Guyer and I headed over to the Lasch Building to see for ourselves. Kirk and Spider, working through piles of laundry from that morning’s 6 a.m. workout, were nice enough to host us and show us the very pants — now gleaming-white — that had soaked up all that mud in Florida. Kirk explains the pants’ long, smelly journey to cleanliness:
Why do they put so much time and effort into keeping those pants clean? Kirk told us that each pair costs $80 — that’s wholesale. Most schools will go through multiple pairs per player in a season. But, barring fabric damage that can’t be repaired (Spider’s wife, Karen Kessler ’90 Edu, serves as the team’s unofficial seamstress), each of the more than 100 players on the Nittany Lion roster will wear a single pair of game pants from the first game of the season through the following year’s Blue White Game. That’s a lot of money saved.
Of course, it also means a lot of time spent manning washing machines, especially after a game like this year’s mud bowl. Just how bad was it, Kirk?
Five loads of wash, in the team’s computerized, industrial-sized, 85-pound washers, just to get those pants clean. For this game, the focus was pretty exclusively mud, but grass, blood, and paint stains are another challenge for the guys. Spider later showed us the product they use to get out paint stains, particularly the blue that’s applied to the Beaver Stadium turf. As the company’s site confirms, the name of the product, PS-Blout, is an abbreviation of sorts for “Penn State blue-out.” Yup, our Lions have a detergent named after them.
One more thing: And the end there, it almost sounds like Kirk was asked if the team would considering wearing “Peter Pans” next season. I’m pretty sure he said “pewter pants.” Just so that’s clear.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Jay Paterno’s Photo of the Turf
In case you had any doubt about how mucky that field was for yesterday’s Capital One Bowl, Penn State assistant coach Jay Paterno ’91 took a picture after the game. It looks more like a cow pasture than a football field.
Tina Hay, editor
Tom Golarz Battling a Lot More Than LSU
Tom Golarz
Jill Semmer ’88, a member of our Alumni Council, called my attention to a very interesting article by Mike Lopresti in USA Today this week about a little-known Penn State football player and his even less well-known backstory.
Tom Golarz is a senior, a walk-on who plays mostly on special teams. Since he was 17 he has suffered from a rare disease called sclerosing cholangitis—the same liver diease that affected Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton and led to Payton’s death at the age of 45. Golarz is hopeful that his prognosis is better, given that his illness was diagnosed relatively early (the average age at which sclerosing cholangitis is diagnosed is 40), but even so, it’s likely that he’ll eventually need a kidney transplant.
Golarz’s official bio on the Penn State Web site doesn’t mention his illness, and the USA Today piece is the first that I’ve seen anyone write about it. The article is well worth reading. And if you want to watch for Golarz in the Capital One Bowl tomorrow, he wears No. 39 and is on the field mostly for kickoff and punt returns.
Tina Hay, editor
See You in Orlando
Joe Paterno and his staff haven’t even had time to look at film of their opponent, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early for Penn State fans to be prepping for a New Year’s trip to Florida. The pairing that most experts had been predicting has just gone official: The Nittany Lions will face LSU in the Capital One Bowl on Jan. 1.
And while there’ll be plenty of time over the next few weeks to link to stories about the game itself, fans interested in making the trip to Orlando don’t need to wait — you can get information on the Alumni Association’s Official Bowl Tour right now by clicking right here.
Ryan Jones, senior editor
Penn State and Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl?
That’s what David Jones of the Harrisburg Patriot-News is predicting. If the Lions don’t go to Tempe, Ariz., then Jones sees them playing in the Capital One Bowl in Orlando. By his analysis, the Orange Bowl is out of the picture for Penn State.
Bowl pairings will be announced next Sunday, Dec. 6.
Tina Hay, editor
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