Chris Grassi nearly did a double take when a friend called and told him he was pictured in ESPN The Magazine.

Couldn't be, he thought.

"I was assuming he got confused and he thought he saw my name or something," said Grassi, the Paternoville Coordination Committee vice president. "But no, my face is in there."

ESPN The Magazine recently named Penn State's student section the best in the country in its Aug. 25 issue, and Grassi is pictured in a shot from behind Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen.

Clausen was out of focus, but Grassi and the rest of the white-clad student section wasn't.

"If you're not impressed with the White Out, you're probably one of those people who think the moon landing was faked in a TV studio," ESPN college football analyst Beano Cook said in the article.

Penn State's student section was ranked ahead of Texas A&M, Oregon, Florida and Notre Dame. It was also ranked the most fun student section, second-most creative behind Notre Dame and fourth loudest behind Florida, Oregon and Tennessee.

Grassi understood the rationale behind three other student sections considered to be louder, noting a minimal difference separating the top spot from the rest of the top five.

PCC President Tom Boroch, though, was surprised.

"Usually when teams come to play, they say helmets are always rattling while playing and we're the most difficult opponent to play at an away team's stadium in the Big Ten," he said. "In 2005, a lot of Ohio State players showed displeasure for not being able to hear any signals from QBs because we were so loud."

Count Guido D'Elia, Penn State's director of branding and communications, as another with trouble envisioning three louder student sections.

"I would like to hear the other ones," he said. "I would like to hear how anyone gets louder than the 21,620 that we have. I'll hold that to the idea that they didn't want to give us everything."

The student section is the largest in the nation.

"Our student body is definitely crazy," wide receiver Derrick Williams said Thursday on the Nittany Lion Hotline radio show. "It's the best football atmosphere you can imagine. Anything you dream is 10 times better. They give it to us week in, week out."

Grassi lived in the South for several years and has attended games at Alabama, Florida, Florida State, Michigan and Ohio State. He has been coming to Penn State games since 1993.

"I can say we are an extremely rowdy and good student section," Grassi said. "I'm not surprised when we're continuously mentioned as tops."

Grassi placed a copy of the magazine with the stack of other publications in which he's been quoted, but he's prouder of a 2,500-word story he wrote that was published several years ago in a video game magazine.

As for his family, that's a different story.

"Most people who read this aren't gonna know who I am," Grassi said. "My family's gonna buy nine million copies."