Signing day confirms Penn State's hip status

	The Walk-On Jenny Vrentas is a Penn State senior and is the sports editor for The Daily Collegian. She got her first hug from the Nittany Lion mascot when she was one.
	Happy days in Happy Valley are here again. Photo by Getty/Jaime Squire

By Jenny Vrentas

Penn State is hot, and very hard to turn down.

This really can't be disputed when, in a single day (Jan. 24), three 18-year-olds who could pick any college in the country to attend, announced they were switching their commitments from other schools and would be rolling into Happy Valley next season.

This trio of high school senior football players -- quarterback Pat Devlin and linemen Antonio Logan-El and Phillip Taylor --come with four and five-star rankings and a whole lot of talent. Even better, though, is that in order to come to Penn State, two of the three broke it off with longtime suitors -- Devlin with Miami and Logan-El with Maryland.

These boys aren't alone in finding Penn State irresistible. Over the last few years that wasn't always the case. But one 11-1 football season, a Big Ten title and a win over Florida State in the Orange Bowl were all it took to convert blue and white into the little black dress -- traditional, but, yet, alluringly sexy.

This isn't sexy simply when compared to the local cow pastures. This is nationwide sexy. Designers know it: Marc Jacobs found blue and white en vogue enough to showcase it -- in the form of the marching Blue Band -- at Fashion Week 2005. And W magazine devoted 47 pages of images to PSU "All-American Chic."

Why? Because wearing all white on the road is no longer boring, it's dominating; Joe Paterno is no longer old, but rather finely aged; and Nittany Lions receivers flash the dynasty symbol when they zoom into the end zone. These things were affirmed soon after Oct. 8, the day when Penn State beat Ohio State, 17-10, at Beaver Stadium.

For the record, Penn Staters actually haven't changed much -- other than our mood -- over the past year. We're all about the legacy and doing things the tried and true way. But while we've always known how to party in central Pennsylvania, the difference now is that everyone wants to party with us.