Sept. 10, 2007
By Sara Ganim, Centre Daily Times
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Down by three, Penn State successfully completed a two-point conversion and was on its way to what players called an old-fashioned Nittany Lion comeback.
After trailing by nine for much of the second half, the Lions tried with a touchdown and a two-point conversion to get back on top.
But they came up short, falling 16-15 to Notre Dame.
It was a fantasy come true for Notre Dame fans and players alike. And for Penn State players, too.
The game was the first Fantasy Bowl played Friday by members of the Penn State and Notre Dame Fantasy Football teams.
The players — whose ages averaged in the mid-40s — are part of the fantasy football camp that took place this summer at both universities.
“This is just the ultimate fan experience,” said Scott Heiser, 43, of Princeton, N.J., who scored the game’s first touchdown for Penn State.
Global Football’s Fantasy Bowl I was the first of its kind for the organization, which has held fantasy football camps at Notre Dame for five years and at Penn State for two, spokesman Michael Preston said.
Thirty-five fantasy Nittany Lions played 35 Notre Dame counterparts in Fantasy Bowl I, Preston said.
Penn State and Notre Dame are the only schools this year with the weeklong camp, during which players are issued gear and spend a week playing with former coaches and players and prepping in the team’s actual locker rooms, Preston said.
Emotions run high and hearts pound, Heiser said.
Players were grunting, shouting and arm throwing, too. Fans jumped, howled and cheered.
Heiser scored first Friday, and Notre Dame’s James Barry, 27, of Chicago, tied the game 7-7 soon after.
Notre Dame scored again with 48 seconds left in the first half, followed by a safety in the third quarter.
The game is semi-contact flag football, but there are still tackles, blocks, pile-ups and lots of falling down.
“I’m surviving,” Notre Dame’s quarterback Mike Haveard said at halftime. The 45-year-old Pensacola, Fla., man said he was hurting “a little” after a few first-half sacks. But he said it’s all worth it.
“To actually come out and play against somebody else at another university, it’s something you dream up when you’re little,” he said. “We’re all old now.”
It was no white out, but it still was a dream come true, said Gary Binsberger, who was part of the Penn State fantasy football camp. After opting not to play in the bowl game, Binsberger came out to support his teammates.
As a die-hard Penn State fan, he said he doesn’t know what more he could ask for, than to be able to live out the fantasy of playing as a Nittany Lion.
“Except cold,” he said. “And playing in the snow.”
On the Notre Dame side of the field, 4-week-old Brady Johnson, son of Notre Dame fantasy player Bob Johnson, of Lititz, fussed a little as his mother, Kris, held him on the sidelines. She told her son — named after former Fighting Irish quarterback Brady Quinn — he couldn’t go to sleep until he greeted his father after the game.
“This is our Super Bowl,” Bob Johnson’s parents, Bob Sr. and Dot, said. Unlike many fans attending, they don’t have tickets to today’s big game.
About 620 people, fans from both sides, showed up for Friday’s match, Preston said. Many fans predicted tonight’s game will go another way.
“Notre Dame’s going to lose,” said Notre Dame fan Cindy Reynolds, who traveled from Florida with her brother, a Penn State fan.
— ND —