Look, it’s safe to call the 2025 Penn State football season an unmitigated disaster that not even the biggest hater could’ve imagined.

The consensus was that Penn State would be, at worst, 6-2 right now with a very good chance of being 7-1 or 8-0 heading into a ranked home matchup against Indiana. While the Hoosiers are way better than most thought in year two under Curt Cignetti, this could’ve been a blockbuster top-five matchup that would have major College Football Playoff and Big Ten Championship implications.

Instead, the Nittany Lions are 3-5 with zero conference wins, a five-game losing streak, an interim head coach, a backup quarterback starting, and the entire program essentially looking to run out the clock to get to the most pivotal offseason in program history.

It’s been a nightmare that we can’t seem to wake up from, but at the end of the day, a Penn State football gameday experience is as good as it gets, and what we all look forward to every year.

For one, as a student, you don’t get many of these games. In four years, there might be around 30 home games to experience in total, fewer dates than any other major sport. Now imagine how much lower that number gets when you don’t get student tickets for a year, or go home for Thanksgiving, or even decide to leave at halftime during a non-conference blowout. All of a sudden, the number of times you get to experience the raucous environment of Beaver Stadium decreases.

So, just because the team itself is in the doldrums, that’s enough to not go if you are able? I don’t buy that. One of the things that gives Penn State the reputation that it has is that fans show up, no matter the circumstances.

In the aftermath of the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal and in the midst of the program-crippling sanctions, over 96,000 fans still filled Beaver Stadium, on average, every Saturday. Since the addition of the upper deck on the south end of the stadium in 2001, it’s never dipped below 90,000 for a single game, no matter what. This program has been through so much worse and still creates one of the best environments in college sports every year.

This is the penultimate home game of the 2025 season. This roster is full of seniors who have been a part of the team’s three consecutive double-digit win seasons, and many of them were key contributors to the team’s run to the College Football Playoff Semifinal in January. If you can’t make it to the Nebraska game to honor them on Senior Day, honor them with your support against the Hoosiers for all they’ve done for this program.

But aside from sticking with the team through thick and thin, there’s a separate motivation for showing up on Saturday. Penn State is rarely a home underdog, an experience that, while it usually leads to losses, is one of the most fun experiences as a fan. But at least in the last decade or so, when Penn State has been a home underdog, they’ve had a fighting chance in several “big games” that didn’t have you feel like an underdog should.

What’s fun about being a true underdog at home against a team like Indiana is that you have nothing to lose. You’re a two-touchdown ‘dog, facing the No. 2 team in the nation that’s known for running up the score, and the program itself has absolutely nothing to lose.

All of the team’s once-achievable goals are long gone, and the only realistic goal left is a bowl game. For the first time since Ohio State rolled into Happy Valley as the No. 2 team in the nation in 2016 in a White Out, the Nittany Lions are truly the hunters, instead of the hunted. We all know how that game ended.

We don’t know how long it’ll take for the football program to fully recover under whoever Pat Kraft hires in the coming weeks. We don’t know if we, as students, are going to experience the big game feelings that we’ve been accustomed to again before we graduate. It could be a slow rebuild, so there’s no point in waiting for it to happen.

The feel is entirely different for Penn State football now compared to just over a month ago, but as things change, one constant must remain the same. Beaver Stadium should be packed, loud, and as hostile as imaginable for Indiana on Saturday in the Helmet Stripe game.

We Are… not fairweather fans.