April 23, 2010
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.; -
By Lou Prato
A football game-day tradition that dates back to Joe Paterno's first year on the Penn State campus returns this Saturday as part of the annual Blue-White game activities. It's Band Day once again, an event that once brought 60 high school bands together every year for one football game during the season to perform with the Penn State Blue Band at Beaver Field and its successor, Beaver Stadium.
Nittany Lion fans under the age of 30 probably have never heard of Band Day while some octogenarians may remember seeing the first one at Beaver Field in 1950. It was a popular tradition for 24 years, and it was at the 1971 Band Day that another Penn State football tradition was born, one that continues to this day--the Drum Major's pre-game flip.
After 24 musical years, Band Day came to an unceremonious end before the 1975 season. It was revived for the Blue-White game in 1984 but it wasn't the same, with only a handful of bands participating, and Band Day disappeared completely after the 1988 spring scrimmage game.
Guido D'Elia, director of football branding and communications, decided to bring back Band Day as a way of enhancing a weekend of various activities that in the last few years has transformed the Blue-White game from a simple scrimmage into a popular attraction for the Nittany Lion fans of all ages.
"We just thought fans might like to see a parade and that high school bands want to play inside Beaver Stadium," D'Elia said. "So, it's a great matchup of high school bands performing on a weekend that has become a massive Penn State reunion."
The original Band Day was the brainchild of Hum Fishburn, the head of Penn State's Departments of Music and Music Education who had also been director of the Blue Band from 1938 to 1947, and his protégé, Jim Dunlop, who took over the Blue Band in 1948. As described in the 1999 book, "The Penn State Blue Band" authored by one-time Blue Band members Thomas Range and Sean Smith, Fishburn and Dunlop started Band Day as a recruiting tool--not for football players but for future band members. "(It was) a way to get high school musicians from the Central Pennsylvania region to experience a Penn State football game, in hope of attracting the better musicians to the college and the Blue Band when they graduated," wrote Range and Smith.
So, on a cold and chilly November 11, 1950 Band Day was born when Fishburn and Dunlop invited nine bands from Centre County to the Nittany Lions game against West Virginia. "Before the game, the bands were allowed to march onto the field and perform a three-minute show each, "wrote Range and Smith, and at halftime "the Blue-Band treated the 700 high school students to a collegiate-level marching band halftime show." At approximately 12:15 pm., 45 minutes before the kickoff, bands from the high schools in State College, Bellefonte, Phillipsburg, Howard, Gregg Township, Port Matilida, East Penn Valley, Centre Hall-Potter Township and Ferguson Township marched onto the field in three minute intervals and played the tunes they had practiced during the week."
A crowd of 18,000--12,000 less than capacity--watched the bands perform and then sat back and enjoyed a 27-0 victory over the Mountaineers that brought the Lions' record to 3-3-1 with games left against Rutgers and Pitt (that they eventually won). But if the high school bands impressed the crowd, they certainly didn't make an impact on the writers covering the game.
There was no mention of the bands' performance in The Daily Collegian, The Centre Daily Times sports pages, or Ridge Riley's popular, weekly Football Newsletter to alumni. However, on the morning of the game, the Collegian had published a front page story with details of the event, writing that "...Fishburn said...that the high school `Band Day' may become an annual practice."
The next year, Fishburn and Dunlop invited 56 high school bands that were directed by Penn State graduates to perform at the West Virginia game on October 27 and 24 bands accepted. This time, the 1,600 band members marched through downtown State College three hours before the game, and in the pre-game ceremonies, the bands joined the Blue Band on the field in forming the letters, "PSC," and then playing a couple marching songs together. Because West Virginia had brought its band, the high school bands remained in their seats at halftime.
This time a crowd of 17,206 saw Penn State win, 13-7, and the high school band members were counted among the attendance in both 1950 and 1951 as well as in future years. That's because it was the dearth of spectators that allowed Band Day to become such an annual fixture. Unlike today, very few Penn State home games were sellouts, and over the years Band Day was utilized to beef up attendance at games that had little attraction except for the most devout Nittany Lion football fans. As the years evolved, Fishburn and Dunlop capped the high school participation at 60 bands. The pre-game parade through State College that started in 1951 became part of the tradition as did the trademark mass forming of the letters "PSC"--and "PSU" after 1953 when Penn State College formally became a university--- but at halftime, rather than during in the pre-game ceremonies. Fans and bands alike looked forward to the annual Band Day affair and it became as popular as the Homecoming game.
What brought it to an end was the ultra success of the teams coached by Joe Paterno. As his Lions vaulted to the elite of college football with undefeated teams in 1968, 1969 and 1973, the demand for tickets accelerated. On November 16, 1974--when Beaver Stadium had a seating capacity of 57,536--a sellout crowd of 58,700, augmented by 6,000 high school band members, watched a 7-2 Penn State team close out the home season by beating an undermanned Ohio University, 35-16.
No one in the crowd realized that would be the end of the annual fall Band Day tradition.
In the spring of 1975, the athletic department informed Dunlop that Band Day would have to be dropped for financial reasons. "Athletics could no longer afford to donate almost 6,000 tickets to the Blue Band to seat high school students, "wrote Range and Smith in their book, "when many times that number [of] paying sports fans were clamoring to get tickets."
Although there is no proven correlation, a few months later, on August 7, Dunlop died suddenly from a heart attack.
Nine years later, Dunlop's successor as Blue Band Director, Ned Deihl, and his assistant, Dick Bundy, persuaded the athletic department to resurrect a downsized version of the Band Day tradition for the annual Blue-White game that concludes spring practice in late April. However, from the start, there were problems with the participation of the high school bands because most the scholastic marching bands had finished their year and packed their uniforms. After the 1988 Blue-White game, Deihl and Bundy decided Band Day was no longer feasible.
So, this Saturday, Band Day is back--at least for a year. Six high school bands, including one from New Jersey and another from Washington D.C., will march along Curtin Road from the Intramural Building into Beaver Stadium, starting at 11 a.m. The bands will also perform inside the stadium during the player autograph session, during the breaks in the game, and for 20 minutes after the game ends. Somewhere, Hum Fishburn and Jim Dunlop will be cheering.
**Lou Prato is the retired director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum. His fourth book about Penn State football, Game Changers: The Greatest Games in Penn State Football History, was published in October.