Guido D’Elia sat in Beaver Stadium staring at Penn State’s student section during the early portion of the 2004 season. With Joe Paterno’s team coming off a 3-9 campaign, the Nittany Lions’ then-director of communications and branding came to a realization that something needed to change inside the second-largest stadium in the country.



“At that point, the crowds aren’t what they are like now,” said D’Elia, who is now known as a game-day doctor of sorts, focusing on enhancing the game-day atmosphere and branding for college programs. “They were fairly quiet. They were like opera crowds if you did something good. It was a down-in-front crowd except for the student section, which would get rowdy every once in a while, but it was kind of random without really understanding the game or what their power could be. We looked at the student section and said they’re just not having any fun and what is it?”



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