Petition started to add ?Paterno Field? to Beaver Stadium

Is the field at Penn State's Beaver Stadium headed for a name change?

That's what several people are hoping by signing a petition to have the field named for late famous coach Joe Paterno, who passed away Sunday from lung cancer.

The petition, which was started by Blake Tobias at Change.org, has nearly 9,000 signatures in less than a day online. The petition is calling for 107,282 signatures, which is the capacity of the stadium.

Tobias outlined his reasoning behind starting the petition in his mission statement:

This is a simple way of giving back to a man who spent basically his entire life giving making sure that the students who went to Penn State would have the tools they needed, and the professional buildings that they needed to do their jobs. He was so much more then just a football coach, he was a mentor to thousands of students over the years, probably in the hundreds of thousands, and this is a way to honor the legacy that he worked so hard to create. We will stand tall, we will right the wrong that has been done to his name, we will not stop until this goal has been finalized, like Joe Paterno, we will not give up the fight!

Once he's collected enough signatures, he plans to present the petition to the Penn State Board of Trustees to complete the name change.

The stadium is named after James A. Beaver, a Pennsylvania governor and son-in-law of one of the university's founders, Hugh N. McAllister.

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Fist bump to The School Philly
Graham Watson is on Facebook and Twitter: Follow her @Yahoo_Graham

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