Try/Catch inside While in static main method

Try/Catch inside While in static main method

I don't understand the logic to this. If I run this code and enter a
non-int such as the letter f, I get stuck in an infinite loop outputting
the two println's and I am not given another chance to input an int to the
scanner...it just keeps spitting out words to the console.
public static void main(String[] args) {
Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in);//<<<<<SCANNER HERE
int opponents = 0;
boolean opponentsCreated = false;
while(opponentsCreated == false)
{
try
{
System.out.print("How many players: ");
int tempOpponents = scan.nextInt();
if(tempOpponents > 0)
{
opponents = tempOpponents;
opponentsCreated = true;
}
}
catch(InputMismatchException notAValidInt)
{
System.out.println("Not valid - must be a number greater than
0 ");
}
}
}
But if I simply change the Scanner to be declared inside the while loop,
all of a sudden the program works as expected:
public static void main(String[] args) {
int opponents = 0;
boolean opponentsCreated = false;
while(opponentsCreated == false)
{
Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in);//<<<<<SCANNER HERE
try
{
System.out.print("How many players: ");
int tempOpponents = scan.nextInt();
if(tempOpponents > 0)
{
opponents = tempOpponents;
opponentsCreated = true;
}
}
catch(InputMismatchException notAValidInt)
{
System.out.println("Not valid - must be a number greater than
0 ");
}
}
}
I honestly just sat here for 2 hours trying to figure out what the heck
was wrong with my program only to find out it was a matter of where I
declared my Scanner even though in both versions of the code the Scanner
was not out of scope. So now I'm really curious why it works this way