Meet the Penn State Football Fans Who Paid $1,800 to Run Onto the Field With USC

Jordan Mott wore Nittany Lions gear for a distinctly USC Trojans fan experience. He called it a "once in a lifetime" experience even before his video went viral.

Penn State football fans Jordan and Claire Mott are pictured at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before running onto the field with the Trojans for the Penn State-USC game. / Photo courtesy Jordan Mott

Surely, Jordan Mott assumed, someone was going to stop this. Either during the sign-up process, or when he and his wife Claire registered beneath the torch at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum or at the moment they stood in the stadium tunnel, wearing Penn State Nittany Lions gear, waiting to run onto the field with the USC Trojans.

But no one did. So the newlyweds, only a few weeks removed from watching Penn State football games on their honeymoon in Indonesia and the Maldives, ran through the tunnel and onto the field with the Trojans before the Penn State-USC game. They paid $1,800 per person for the experience, made a viral video and evidently prompted a USC policy change.

And the whole time, the Motts were "100-percent convinced" that, at some point, someone would politely tell them no.

"It was this thought in both my mind and my wife's mind, like there was going to be absolutely no way that they would let us run out with their football team onto their home field in all Penn State attire," Mott said in an interview. "We said, 'We're going to pay them 1,800 bucks, but it absolutely is not going to happen.'"

But it did. The Motts ran through the tunnel, shouting "We Are!" between the teams as they took the field for the first Big Ten game between Penn State and USC. The moment was one of several participatory experiences that USC offers fans on gamedays, including pre-game field access, fourth-quarter sideline passes or a photo with the USC Song Girls. Mott chose "Run with the team," in which fans get 60 minutes of pre-game field access before returning to the tunnel to follow the Trojans onto the field. Instead, the Motts essentially led Penn State out of the tunnel.

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A post shared by Jordan Mott (@realtorjordanmott)

Mott's Instagram video of his experience has more than eight million views, outpacing any expectation he had, and prompted replies from former Penn State player Adam Taliaferro and ESPN, among others. Mott was scheduled to speak with a member of Penn State's athletic department Wednesday. He'd love to run out of the Beaver Stadium tunnel sometime.

Then Penn State coach James Franklin called. "Jordan, you are the man," Franklin said in a video posted to Penn State Football's X account.

.@CoachJFranklin saw the viral video & had to get our guy on the phone 😂📱 https://t.co/1K5RIe46iQ pic.twitter.com/zyfS6r82ZE

— Penn State Football (@PennStateFball) October 16, 2024

What's more, this happened. USC's "Football Game Day Experiences" page now includes this clause: All participants must be in USC apparel to partake in Game Day Experiences. USC Athletics reserves the right to remove individuals who are not compliant.

As a realtor in San Jose, California, Mott knows contracts. He scoured USC's terms and conditions for the experience looking for any language that would disqualify him and his wife from running while wearing Penn State gear. Finding none, he made the purchase.

"Overall, it was just an absolutely epic experience," Mott said. "... The fact that USC updated their website makes it even more epic."

The story began like this. Mott grew up in Santa Clara, California, as part of a Penn State family. His great-grandfather, grandfather, father and uncle attended Penn State. Mott wore Penn State onesies as a baby. He missed a week of elementary school to attend his first game at Beaver Stadium. As homework, he kept a journal of his trip. So choosing a college was fairly easy.

"There was a part of me that wanted to go to San Diego State and hang out at the beach and not deal with the snow during the winter," said Mott, who graduated from Penn State in 2013. "But I mean, those family ties were something, and I had to continue the tradition."

Mott, who played quarterback at Santa Clara High, even tried out for the Penn State football team in 2010. He went through a walk-on tryout day at Penn State's Holuba Hall but quickly learned about the college game. With a do-over, he'd pick long-snapping.

"I'm 6-foot, 195 pounds, and those guys were 6-6, 300 pounds and run faster than I do," Mott said. "And it was funny, because I was decent in high school, right? And after the tryout, my mom said, 'I don't understand why you didn't make the team.' Then she came out to visit Penn State one weekend and she was like, 'Oh, my God. I'm so glad you did not play football here. You would have died.'"

Instead, Mott turned to real estate and recruited a new member into his Penn State fandom. His wife Claire didn't go to Penn State but was a willing participant in the USC gameday run. "She married into this," Mott said. They honeymooned during the first half of Penn State's season. Mott sweated out watching Penn State's win over Bowling Green at 5 a.m. in Indonesia.

So when the email from USC marketing arrived pitching its unique gameday experiences, Mott knew he had to try.

"We were talking to [a USC marketing representative] and asked, 'Have you ever had an opposing team's fan sign up to do this?' And she said, 'Absolutely not,'" Mott said. "And we're like, that's cool hospitality. But it absolutely was not what we expected to take place."

He did have one concern, though, upon seeing some looks from the USC players.

"I remember looking at my wife, and I was like, 'I think these guys want to punch us,'" Mott said. "And I absolutely did not want to get punched by any of these people."

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Penn State on SI is the place for Penn State news, opinion and perspective on the SI.com network. Publisher Mark Wogenrich has covered Penn State for more than 20 years, tracking three coaching staffs, three Big Ten titles and a catalog of great stories. Follow him on X (or Twitter) @MarkWogenrich.