West Virginia
Gameday Coverage: No. 8 Penn State Vs. West Virginia
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It’s finally here, folks.
Penn State opens its season Saturday against West Virginia at Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium. In the first year of the expanded College Football Playoff, the Nittany Lions are facing immense pressure to earn their spot in the 12-team field.
Before that, though, James Franklin and Co. first have to get past the Mountaineers. Here’s everything you need to know about today’s season opener.
Television
After being the featured FOX game twice last year, Penn State will open the 2024 season on the network for Big Noon Kickoff. Gus Johnson will provide the play-by-play while Joel Klatt will provide color commentary with Jenny Taft as the sideline reporter.
Radio
Penn State Sports Network — Steve Jones and Jack Hamm
Local: 99.5 & 103.7 FM/ 1450 AM, Sirius/XM/Internet: 83/83/80
Weather
Saturday will be a mix of clouds and sun with an 86% chance of precipitation and a high of 86º, according to AccuWeather. There is also a chance of a late thunderstorm, which could delay the football game.
Last Meeting
Penn State opened its season last year at home against West Virginia, winning 38-15. In his debut as the starting quarterback, Drew Allar racked up 325 yards and three touchdowns.
Injuries
Over the offseason, Franklin said both quarterback Jaxon Smolik and wide receiver Peter Gonzalez suffered “long-term” injuries and would miss significant time. On Monday, Franklin said wide receiver and punt returner Kaden Saunders was dealing with some “bumps and bruises,” but was hopeful for Saturday’s game.
Betting Lines
The Nittany Lions are -8.5-point favorites over West Virginia with a -316 moneyline, according to FanDuel Sportsbook. The over/under is set at 51.5 points.
Media Coverage
Onward State will have you covered throughout today’s game. Find big plays, analysis, photos, and more on our main Twitter account @OnwardState as well as play-by-play commentary from @OnwardStSports.
Football writers CJ Doebler (@CDoebler) and Mitch Corcoran (@MitchCorc18) will provide you with coverage from inside the press box, while Nolan Wick (@nolan_wick) will do the same from State College.
Photographers Hailey Stutzman (@stutzhailey) and Mikey DeAngelis (@mikey_deangelis) will provide visual updates from the field.
Onward State
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West Virginia
Nick Saban breaks down West Virginia vs. Penn State Week 1 showdown
![Nick Saban breaks down West Virginia vs. Penn State Week 1 showdown Nick Saban breaks down West Virginia vs. Penn State Week 1 showdown](https://on3static.com/uploads/dev/assets/cms/2024/08/30145457/West-Virginia-Penn-State.png)
Penn State Vs West Virginia Game Predictions
The Penn State vs. West Virginia rivalry will renew on Saturday as the Mountaineers host James Franklin’s club in Morgantown. West Virginia fans are fired up for the matchup and showed up and showed out as former WVU player Pat McAfee hosted his show in Morgantown on Friday.
McAfee had West Virginia native and ESPN analyst Nick Saban on to preview the matchup and discuss a number of topics. Saban believes the Mountaineers are capable of pulling off the upset.
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“Well, I think West Virginia’s proven that they can run the ball effectively against just about anybody they play. I think that’s going to be the challenge for them against Penn State,” Nick Saban said. “Penn State’s a pretty good defensive team and they like to pressure a lot and create negative plays. So I think if the quarterback for West Virginia can create a little balance in the game for them, throw the ball effectively, that’ll have a huge impact on the game.”
Garrett Greene is the West Virginia starting quarterback and he’s getting a little Heisman buzz after accounting for more than 3,100 total yards and scoring 29 total touchdowns in 12 games a year ago.
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The dual-sport star could give Penn State some issues, as could the WVU crowd.
Saban discussed how the energy and noise in Morgantown could give Penn State some trouble.
“There’s a buzzsaw in Morgantown. That’s a hard place to play,” Saban said. “The fans there have great passion. It’s going to make it very difficult for Penn State, especially in the opener, to manage the noise, to manage the game, to be able to stay focused on execution and not get sidetracked by any of the other things that are going on, because it’s going to be difficult for them.”
Saban added that the fact that the game is the opener for Penn State will make it even more difficult.
Penn State does have a veteran at quarterback in junior Drew Allar, but there are some young players on the Nittany Lions roster who will have to step up in a tough environment.
“You’re always worried as a coach in your first game about how your team’s going to execute,” Saban said. “And that’s going to be really, really the challenge for them, playing on the road, at West Virginia, in the first game.”
West Virginia
Penn State Football Calls For Road White Out Against West Virginia
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Penn State football wants you to wear white on Saturday.
With the Nittany Lions’ game against West Virginia quickly approaching, Penn State called on fans to don white clothing on the road at the Mountaineers’ Milan Puskar Stadium.
West Virginia is planning plenty of festivities of its own for Saturday’s game. The Mountaineers are doing their own version of a Stripe Out in anticipation of a sold-out crowd. Rally towels will be distributed to all fans attending the game and two F-16 Viper Jets from South Carolina will do a pregame flyover.
Penn State vs. West Virginia is set for a Big Noon Kickoff on Saturday, August 31. The game will be broadcast on FOX.
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West Virginia
In West Virginia, US-China personal exchanges find a home, flown in from Yunnan
![In West Virginia, US-China personal exchanges find a home, flown in from Yunnan In West Virginia, US-China personal exchanges find a home, flown in from Yunnan](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/og_image_scmp_generic/public/d8/images/canvas/2024/08/30/2400c58d-9246-4042-8bc6-2dd6700880be_2119b2a5.jpg?itok=DZrfwMyU&v=1724954639)
Over time, the house has become a small oasis for people-to-people ties amid high-level US-China tensions.
The very reassembling of the house tells a grass-roots story of bilateral cooperation.
It began as a joke, Flower recalled. Hearing that the colourful yet otherwise unassuming structure was to be demolished to make place for a dam, Flower mused to its previous owner, Zhang Jianhua, ‘I wish I could take it home’.
And so he did – with the help of hundreds of Chinese and American volunteers, young and old.
Zhang sold the house to him for US$6,000, and Flower returned in 2017 with a few former students, a fellow history teacher from the Sidwell Friends School in Washington and a guitar maker from Virginia.
Together with local craftsmen of the Bai ethnic community, they began the arduous tasks of deconstructing the three-decade-old wooden structure and convincing the local government to let them move the planks out of Yunnan.
Flower had always intended to find the house a setting similar to its former mountain home, aiming to take it “from the Himalayas and Mekong River to the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah”. What sealed the deal was an offer from the Friends Wilderness Centre, a Quaker non-profit group, which leased the land in West Virginia to him for US$1 a year.
The planks arrived in the US in September 2017. What didn’t arrive with them were craftsmen whom Flower had hoped would help with the reassembly – they could not get visas.
So in 2019, the reassembly project broke ground with a group of Sidwell students and a West Virginia timber framers guild. Over the next few years, Flower said, volunteers logged at least 21,000 hours restoring the house and its surroundings.
“It usually takes a village to make a house,” he said, “but in this case it took a house to make a village.”
As the project began, Flower established a non-profit, the China Folk House Retreat, hoping to attract enough financing to turn the structure into an educational centre.
Flower, who started visiting China in 1991, was drawn to the house because it reflected China’s diversity. The house’s original owners were ethnically Tibetan; the architecture was a mix of Bai, Han and Tibetan; and the village in which it was located had a Naxi chieftain. He was also struck by its simplicity and its potential to tell stories about ordinary Chinese life.
“The house is a living text,” Flower said, as he passed out bowls of Yunnan noodles to visitors.
![John Flower in the sitting room. “The house is a living text,” he said. Photo: Bochen Han](https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/08/30/ba6c3a8c-786b-4db3-912a-01bcc30d8c66_0d9c687e.jpg)
Inspired by his educational mission, a university in Yunnan sent over some 15,000 roof tiles and Chinese architecture models to be featured in the house.
Flower is in the process of staging thematic rooms to showcase different aspects of rural Chinese life, putting architectural models and explanatory plaques on display, and cultivating a garden with plants used in Chinese cuisine.
His partners in Yunnan were thrilled that Chinese culture and architecture would be shown to a wider, international audience.
But for Flower, the project was only partly about preserving and sharing a piece of Chinese cultural history. He also hoped that the house would become – as it increasingly did – a link between two countries whose leaders were at odds, particularly as first Covid-19 restrictions and then schools’ increasing liability concerns about travel hindered exchange.
If he couldn’t bring students to China, he thought, he could bring China to them.
Flower only returned this summer, citing airfares that have yet to recover from the pandemic for the delay. A group of American high school and college students went with him.
For students unable to travel to China, he and his wife, anthropologist Pam Leonard, host an annual summer camp where participants learn about Chinese traditions and architecture while helping to rebuild the house and its surroundings.
The mostly reassembled structure, open to the public by reservation from March to December, has already attracted hundreds of visitors, offering something different for everyone.
Chinese tourists have flocked to it, impressed by the couple’s dedication to preserving Chinese architecture. A local gardening club took interest in the plants surrounding the structure.
Diplomats, too, have taken notice. In 2022, Qin Gang, then China’s ambassador to the US, visited the house and dedicated a piece of calligraphy on the structure – after belting out John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, now one of West Virginia’s state songs.
The house has also earned the support of Chinese and American financial backers who share Flower’s belief in taking US-China relations into their own hands. Since 2018, the house has accepted grants from the likes of The Asia Group Foundation and Dalio Philanthropies.
He Daofeng, an entrepreneur from Yunnan who is a major donor, was drawn to Flower’s initiative for its potential to connect young students from the two countries. “We can’t control the relationship between the governments, but we can do something on the people-to-people level,” he said.
He was initially sceptical about the project but Flower’s commitment impressed him: The cost of deconstructing and shipping the house alone was US$40,000.
“He’s a crazy person who walks the talk,” He said of Flower. “I don’t even think Chinese people themselves would have the courage to do something like this.”
He was also moved by Flower’s long history with China. After studying Chinese history and philosophy at the University of Virginia, Flower gave up a tenured position at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2007 to teach Chinese history at the high school level. Since 2009, Flower has brought his students to rural China.
He, the Yunnan native, never saw the house in its original location, but like many Chinese tourists said that the reconstructed version tells a story of his upbringing.
Still, despite the abundant support from his community, Flower, now 64, said that the burden of maintaining the house remained mostly his and Leonard’s. He left his position at Sidwell Friends earlier this month to focus fully on it.
As the project grows, Flower is trying to strike the balance of keeping the initiative grass-roots and finding sufficient funding – with all the complications and conditions that may come with it.
Other Americans have found the house an inspiration for their own efforts to build connections with Chinese people. Jesse Appell, a Massachusetts native trying to overcome bicultural misunderstandings through comedy and sharing Chinese tea culture, is one of them. In March, he brought a group of friends to see the house and film it for social media.
![Flower (fourth from right) leading a tour around the property. Photo: Bochen Han](https://img.i-scmp.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/08/30/4a32ff86-1287-4c6c-b5f1-950e4325f08f_b3ee84ec.jpg)
“When I go to DC, I hear a lot of downer stories about US-China,” Appell said. “This is such a refreshing breath of fresh air … it’s definitely after my own heart.”
For Terry Lautz, the author of Americans in China: Encounters with the People’s Republic, efforts like Flower’s help provide “a more balanced, multidimensional understanding” of China’s behaviour.
“Americans tend to analyse China’s actions and motives exclusively in terms of its top leader, Xi Jinping,” he said.
“Looking at Sino-American relations and Chinese society from the perspectives of individual Chinese and Americans presents a far more nuanced and complete picture. It also allows us to see where there is room for shared interests and common ground.”
In the near future, Flower hopes to lay the final tiles on the house’s roof and complete the education centre. He also has new initiatives under way, including running more trips to Yunnan; facilitating exchanges between Chinese and American craftsmen; and co-hosting an intensive Chinese-language programme with the University of Pennsylvania, with the house as its venue.
Yet, amid these grand plans, Flower still remains committed to making each guest feel personally welcomed. “I can’t promise Yunnan noodles to every visitor,” he said, “but I’ll try.”
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