We posted a story last week about Deadspin's failure to infiltrate the Penn State football showers where Jerry Sandusky used to shower with boys. A reader later sent us this photo of what his friend says are showers in the Lasch Football Building. Exciting, no? The friend is a manager for the Nebraska football team, which played Penn State in State College a few days after Sandusky was arrested in November. While there, the manager snapped this shot of what, presumably, are the showers in the visiting locker room. Here's the full picture:
UPDATE: A reader familiar with Penn State ablution areas tells us that while the above photo is of PSU football showers, it's not of showers in the Lasch building, where Sandusky allegedly raped a boy. These are showers in the visiting team locker room at Beaver Stadium, according to the reader. Makes sense. The Lasch is close to the stadium, but there wouldn't a reason for the visiting team to soap off there. Here's what our tipster had to say:
When I was a student I worked both at the Beav and at Lasch, and that's the visiting team locker room in Beaver Stadium. Lasch has white tile throughout, from what I remember, and deep drains all along the wall along the perimeter of the showers.
If you mention this on the site, please don't publish my name. ...[T]he athletic department (especially football) is obsessed with silencing all leaks, and yes, something as stupid as what the shower looks like would cause them to freak the F out.
Another reader wrote us with a detailed description of the Lasch, including the building's futuristic anti-stink technology developed by a company run by former Nittany Lion Ki-Jana Carter:
I have been in the PSU locker room in the Lasch building. A few years ago I had occasion to tour the entire complex, which is about as impressive as you will ever see.
It is pretty much like you had heard - it rivals any NFL locker room. It's large and carpeted with a giant open area in the middle that has leather overstuffed couches, with a white S that you're not to step on (as a Notre Dame fan, I stepped on it when no one was looking). Wooden lockers, TVs, the whole bit. The equipment area adjacent is utterly ridiculous, with multiple rooms, including one with floor-to-ceiling racks of Nike boxed shoes. I only glimpsed the shower area but it was pretty standard - I think if you picture a big high school shower area you just pretty much get the idea. The weight room and rest of the building are equally impressive (JoePa's office, especially), as is the outdoor complex and Holuba Hall.
I've been in NFL locker rooms and you can't really tell the difference, except for one really interesting thing that struck me immediately that was different than any other locker room I've ever been in - there's no smell.
If you've ever been in a locker room for football or hockey, you know "that smell." But Penn State uses this anti-odor system produced by a company owned by - wait for it - Ki-Jana Carter, and that place smells as fresh as a daisy. This was back when MRSA was a hot topic, and we were fascinated by this Ghostbuster-like backpack that would deionize and sanitize all their equipment. That's the main thing I took away from it.
Finally, a sports editor at a local magazine wrote to confirm that Jeff Nelson, the assistant athletic director at Penn State and the media relations contact for PSU sports, is indeed a very reticent man and, when it comes to the press, perhaps also a little bit nasty:
[Nelson is] the only media contact in any sport, collegiate or pro, that never returned an e-mail for an interview which his own media department set up.