Welcome to Nittany Sports Now! Thank you for stopping by, and we hope Penn State and Central Pennsylvania sports fans everywhere will visit every day for news, notes, commentary and videos.
I’m Cory Giger, and I’ll be keeping fans in the loop with everything going on concerning Penn State football and the entire athletic department.
There are a lot of places you can get Penn State news. My goal with Nittany Sports Now is to go beyond just the news and to explain the big picture. I will provide daily updates and analysis, both in written form and in videos, so you’ll always be up to date on what’s happening in Happy Valley.
I’ve covered Penn State football since 2006 for the Altoona Mirror and have always tried to provide unique insight into the football team, the players and the Penn State athletic program. I also covered the Altoona Curve since 1999 and took great pride in giving local readers the best minor league baseball coverage in the country.
Unfortunately, I was working in a dying industry. Newspapers serve an extremely valuable purpose in this country, but sadly, the industry has been in a sharp decline for years. The coronavirus pandemic made the situation even worse for newspapers, with the loss of sports and advertising.
Without the Curve this year and with Penn State’s season initially canceled, I was furloughed and then let go by the Mirror. There simply wasn’t enough for me to do there to justify my salary, and I completely understood the decision.
That door closed.
This window opened.
Just a few minutes after announcing on Twitter that I had left the Mirror, I received a message from Alan Saunders of Pittsburgh Sports Now. He was wondering if I’d be interested in starting up a website to cover Penn State sports as part of the Sports Now family of sites.
This was exactly the kind of situation I had been looking for, and I cannot thank Alan, Joe Steigerwald and Mike Vukovcan enough for bringing me on board.
I live in Altoona with my wife, Dana, and 8-year-old twins, Chase and Callie. My family loves it in Altoona, and there was no chance I would be moving for a new job. So, with limited media options in this region, I faced the possibility of having to get out of the sports media business and go get a “real job.”
That possibility only lasted a few minutes and ended once Alan messaged me about forming this new website.
Joe has done an excellent job designing the site. We filled it with some recent and previously published stories at first to get things going, and you can go read all of them. From this point forward, we will have new items posted daily to keep you informed and hopefully entertained.
I cannot fully express how excited I am about this new venture and new part of my life. We’re going to have a lot of fun with this site, and I hope it becomes a big part of your PSU fan experience.
