Penn State Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Pat Kraft is enthusiastic about the prospect of wrestling at Beaver Stadium, even if there are plenty of hurdles between the idea itself and that idea becoming reality.
“I said this before, we’re looking at every opportunity,” Kraft told StateCollege.com earlier this week. “I think you know, there’s a lot of logistical challenges that time of year. I think it would be an ultra success, but you also gotta we got to protect the field because you got to play a game there. What if the weather [is bad], etc?”
The concept — reintroduced by Penn State wrestler Carter Starocci, who cryptically tweeted in May “Now let’s sell out the beaver stadium in November” — isn’t a new one. Iowa hosted Oklahoma State for an outdoor dual before a crowd of 42,287 at Kinnick Stadium in November 2015, and 16,178 turned out to watch Rutgers host Princeton at the Scarlet Knights’ High Point Stadium in November 2016. While it seems unlikely that Beaver Stadium would sell out entirely, there’s no real question that an outdoor event would be popular, especially amongst fans who might not be able to get their hands on tickets to Rec Hall or the Bryce Jordan Center.
The weather, and the field, those are important considerations though. Wrestling generally begins in mid-November, while Penn State football will have no games at Beaver Stadium from Nov. 10 all the way until the regular season finale against Maryland the last day of the month.
“[The WWE] does WrestleMania right outside and in weather but that’s a multi, multi, multi-million dollar production,” Kraft added. “But I do think you can learn a couple things from that. So we’re looking at that; we’re looking at a lot of different things with it. I do think it’d be awesome, personally. I want to do it, but you also have to make sure you schedule right, and a lot of it is predicated on our football schedule, and we can get in wrestling that weekend. Not a lot of people like to come to Happy Valley and wrestle us. So there are a lot of moving parts there. And then logistically, can we do it? Can we keep everybody safe if it’s too cold. But I do want to do it, but when we do it, I don’t have an answer yet.”
So will it happen? Time will tell, but like most ideas on the table right now for Penn State, Kraft isn’t disregarding the possibility just yet.
