Armpits deep in a euphoric celebration, Ed Sirianni had just two goals in mind.
Find footing on top of the wall behind the goal posts, and lift the sign he made just in case his beloved Penn State football team accomplished what no team had ever been able to before.
It read: “Jesus Saves … But Not Today.”
One click of a photographer’s shutter captured the moment and immortalized both the Schuylkill County resident and a budding rivalry between two college football powerhouses on Nov. 13, 1982. A smiling fan, delirious with delight, holding up that sign, framed perfectly by the scoreboard flashing the historic final — Penn State 24, Notre Dame 14 — as the background. The Nittany Lions became the first-ever team to beat Notre Dame, in South Bend, in its first-ever visit there.
“That,” Sirianni said, “was a real, real memorable day.”
For Sirianni, that was game No. 6 in an epic streak that has made him a strong contender for the coveted title of king of Nittany Lions superfans. In a run that dates to an Oct. 9, 1982, loss to Alabama at Birmingham’s Legion Field, the New Philadelphia native was set to attend his 519th consecutive game Thursday night as Penn State once again runs into its old nemesis, the Fighting Irish, in Miami’s Orange Bowl, the site of the College Football Playoff semifinal.
For the overwhelming majority of those games, he traversed the open road, behind the wheel of vans and cars built to last for such occasions. As he rolled into South Beach this week, the odometer on his 2004 Toyota Camry topped 463,000 miles.
Add the miles up since 1982, Sirianni estimated, and he could get to the moon and three-quarters of the way back. On his list of important moments during this ride, he’s thinking the Orange Bowl will wind up ranking high.
“It’s got to be in the top five, for sure,” he said.
Sirianni and his fellow travelers have made plenty of memories, and dodged plenty of close calls, on the roads and at stadiums throughout the country.
He nearly got thrown behind bars for selling T-shirts he made too close to the gates at the iconic Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Jan. 1, 1995, Game 152. It was only against a doctor’s advice that, a day after undergoing shoulder surgery Oct. 28, 2011, he drove through a snowstorm with one arm in a sling to watch legendary head coach Joe Paterno beat Illinois for his record 409th and final game.
But for Sirianni, so many of the top memories occurred during those battles in the 1980s and early 1990s when the Nittany Lions and Fighting Irish met for 12 consecutive seasons.
One of the only times he missed kickoff during the streak came during game 31 in 1984, when his path to Notre Dame Stadium was delayed by campaigning President Ronald Reagan’s motorcade. A year later at Beaver Stadium, a bitter cold and icy drizzle cause a severely underdressed Sirianni to start shivering.
“My friend John, we grew up together, says to me, ‘If you don’t leave, you’re going to die,’ ” Sirianni laughed. “I couldn’t stop shaking.”
He stuck it out until late in the fourth quarter. Penn State beat the Irish, 36-6. Obviously, Sirianni lived to talk about it.
It was considerably warmer in Miami on Thursday.
With Penn State looking for a chance to play for a national championship for the first time since the 1986 season, Sirianni thinks it could get hot, indeed.
