IS ON THE TRADE RUMOR TRAIL
Now comes a first that has been assured since the ink dried on the home-and-home contract with Penn State: the first sellout at Lincoln Financial Field, Temple's first-class home since 2003, and the largest home crowd in the history of the university.
And that has Lee Roberts, Temple's assistant athletic director for facilities and event management for the last 10 years, psyched.
"We've been planning for this ever since it's been on the schedule," he said Monday night. "We began weekly operational meetings in preparation for this in mid-October just to make sure we were crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's. But we just want to make it a great fan experience."
This one should have the look and, more important, the feel of an Eagles game. Roberts said that for other home games the outer gates have been opened 2 hours before game time, with fans allowed to their seats an hour later. Saturday's schedule includes opening the parking lots around 7 a.m. for tailgating, the Headhouse Plaza at 9 and the suites at 10. The inner gates will swing open an hour-and-a-half before the noon kickoff.
"And that's basically the same timetable that the Eagles follow," Roberts said. "It gives people an opportunity to come and socialize before the game, then get in and watch their teams warm up, and that just takes us right through to kickoff."
Some of the focus on how the stadium handles this throng comes out of the long lines that accompanied the Aug. 31 opener vs. Navy. That game drew 30,368, the 10th largest crowd to see a Temple home game.
"In some of our games, you don't know what the actual attendance is going to be, so you guesstimate," Roberts said. "This game, we know what it's going to be. Being you know how many guests are coming to your home, you plan accordingly."
Mark Donovan, the senior vice president of business operations for the Birds, agreed.
"I'd say the key is that we've been working at this together for a while, so we sit down in an operations meeting on Thursday and we go through every single detail and both sides are in agreement as to how we're going to approach it," said Donovan, who traded compliments with Roberts on the state of the relationship between the school and the Eagles. "Sometimes you get caught, and that's a good problem to have for all of us . . . more people came to the Navy game than we expected."
Penn State has been the opponent in five of the 10 largest crowds to see a Temple home football game. The top five took place at Veterans Stadium:
_ 66,592, on Oct. 1, 1988, vs. Penn State
_ 53,103, on Sept. 1, 1978, vs. No. 3 Penn State
_ 43,808, on Oct. 5, 1991, vs. the No. 15 Nittany Lions
_ 42,094, on Sept. 20, 1986, vs. Florida A & M
_ 40,000, on Sept. 22, 1984, vs. Pitt
Capacity at the Linc is just short of 70,000.
So how will Roberts celebrate when all his work is finished?
"We're going to make sure coach Paterno is OK, and then we have to move on because we have our first women's basketball game on Monday," he said. "We're just rolling from the end of one season into the beginning of the other." *
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