THE CULT OF PENN STATE.

A Mrs. Begonia Contretemp:

CULTURAL AUTOPSY.

Our European Correspondent, from the Nouvelle Vague Zwischenschaft [NVZ], the Council-of-Concerned-Conservationists Overseas Subsidiary

(filed from the tailgate fields of the American subconscious)

“When the laity mistake a stadium for a shrine, the collection plate becomes a cooler.”

— Mrs. B., addressing the Council at The Gist & Tangent Pub

I arrived in State College expecting a university; I found instead a tax-exempt corporation wrapped in polyester and piety.

The local faithful call it “Happy Valley,” though one detects more mania than mirth.

The air is heavy with the aroma of sanctified charcoal and self-congratulation.

It is less a town than a perpetual pep rally with parking.

The alumni are everywhere — prosperous, preening, performatively modest.

They speak of “the Penn State family” in tones usually reserved for cult rehabilitation groups.

It is the natural culmination of what elder Alain once observed as the moral failure of liberal capitalism — that when transcendence collapses, identity must be purchased retail. Where Europe once forged loyalty through lineage and locality, America fabricates it through licensing deals. The tribe, the parish, and the guild have been replaced by the booster club, the brand, and the alumni network.

Even Jean Shepherd, that prophet-of-the-mundane saw it coming half a century ago — that Americans would one day pledge deeper allegiance to their car brands than to their country. He called it with that nasal Midwestern clairvoyance of his, describing the man who “bleeds transmission fluid and thinks patriotism is a warranty.” Penn State, darling, is merely the logical end of that process: a pseudo-ethnos of affluence wrapped in team logo paraphernalia, mistaking corporate loyalty for culture and calling it spirit.

Their cars gleam with the sacramental decal We Are Penn State — a phrase that sounds suspiciously like the motto of a nation preparing to secede from reason.

And yet, as one drives out from the epicenter of this blue-and-white theocracy, something marvelous occurs.

Along the backroads, among the corn and silos, the disaffected make their pilgrimage through but not to the shrine.

Boys from the hinterlands — in dented pickups that smell of honest work and faint despair — slow down just enough to hurl a cob or two toward the campus gates.

It is the closest thing rural Pennsylvania has to a Jacquerie.

Their gesture, crude though it may be, has about it the dignity of satire.

The corncob flies like a javelin of protest against tuition, arrogance, and the idea that a degree in marketing confers enlightenment.

It is folk criticism in biodegradable form.

Inside the stadium, meanwhile, forty thousand elect sway as one organism, faces painted like Roman banners, chanting their creed: We Are Penn State.

I could not help thinking of Byzantium before the fall — a populace united in pageantry, incapable of repentance.

The tailgaters call it “spirit.”

I call it an ecstatic refusal to think.

They drink, they donate, they believe.

The women wear pearls to the pig roast.

The men smile the empty, managerial smile of those who mistake loyalty for morality.

Each game day is a high mass of civic self-hypnosis.

Every touchdown, an indulgence purchased with televised fervor.

To speak ill of the institution is to risk excommunication from polite conversation.

The cult protects its myth of virtue with the same zeal the medieval Church reserved for relics.

Their holy relic, of course, was a coach — until the scandal — at which point the myth conveniently shifted to “community resilience.”

Even their shame was monetized.

When I left, a kindly alumnus offered me a foam finger.

I declined.

I already have one — and it’s quite occupied pointing at the decline of civilization.

Council Note:

Upon her return, Mrs. Begonia reported feeling “spiritually sticky.”

John St. Evola prescribed two stiff martinis and a reading of Chesterton’s Heretics.

She replied that she had already taken three — of each.

***

POSTSCRIPT

by Ray Pierre-DeWitt, Chaos Coordinator, Council-of-Concerned-Conservationists

Editorial equilibrium requires that we admit it: football really is a great game. Rough-and-tumble, mud-stained, or played in the backyard with tagging rules and a half-flat ball — it’s civilization’s closest thing to ritualized courage without actual casualties.

Mrs. Begonia’s critique, however necessary, came from a European sensibility still loyal to the idea that sport should look like ballet and end without bruises. In her world, the foot, not the hand, is the chosen instrument of grace; in ours, the hand wrestles meaning out of chaos, sometimes by grabbing a pigskin.

So, yes — the Council offers a minor act of contrition to the gridiron. Someone had to puncture the cult; but let it also be known that we still salute the players who, unlike their spectators, remember what the game was for.

***