Penn State has a large football following
and attracts tens of thousands of visitors to its campus; the
surrounding area is known as "Happy Valley" for tailgating and games on
autumn Saturdays in Beaver Stadium. The stadium is the second-largest in
the country with a seating capacity of over 107,282. The largest crowd
ever at Beaver Stadium was on September 14, 2002, as 110,753 watched the
Nittany Lions defeat the University of Nebraska by a score of 40-7. The
school has long been known as "Linebacker U" for the number of quality
linebackers that it has produced. Joe Paterno has been the head coach
for the Nittany Lion football team since 1966. He has led Penn State to
354 victories, placing him second for all-time Division I-A wins,
trailing only Florida State University's Bobby Bowden with 359. These
two coaches faced one another in the 2006 FedEx Orange Bowl. It took 3
overtimes and 5 hours before Penn State kicked a game-winning field goal
for a 26-23 victory.
Penn State plays in two football "trophy games" with other members of
the Big Ten. They are for the Governor's Victory Bell with the
University of Minnesota and the season-ending Land Grant Trophy game
versus Michigan State University. Penn State has won the prestigious
Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy, awarded for Eastern football supremacy, a
record 26 times as of 2005.
Penn State was founded on February 22, 1855 by act P.L. 46, No. 50 of
the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as the Farmers'
High School of Pennsylvania. Centre County became the home of the new
school when James Irvin of Bellefonte donated 200 acres (809,000 m²) of
land—the first of 10,101 acres the University would eventually acquire.
In 1862, the school's name was changed to The Agricultural College of
Pennsylvania, and with the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act,
Pennsylvania selected the school in 1863 to be the state's sole land
grant college. In the following years, enrollment fell as the school
tried to balance purely agricultural studies with a more classic
education, falling to 64 undergraduates in 1875, a year after the
school's name changed once again to The Pennsylvania State College
