As a Pitt fan who well remembers that time, I just want to set the record straight on this next part and at the very least provide some context...
Quote:In 1981, Penn State applied for membership in the eight-team Big East, but in a move that foreshadowed the league’s lack of vision, the Big East voted PSU down 5-3. At the time, Joe Paterno was the athletic director at Penn State, and he and Temple AD Ernie Casale wanted Syracuse and Boston College to leave the young Big East and form a seven- or eight-team eastern all-sports conference consisting of Boston College, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, and West Virginia, plus perhaps another university.
But BC and Syracuse refused, infatuated with their new basketball league, so Paterno did the next best thing he knew to do and petitioned the Big East for membership. They voted him down in 1981, which didn’t completely kill his idea of an eastern all-sports conference … until Pittsburgh, a long-time PSU rival, accepted the Big East’s offer of membership for the 1982-83 academic year.
It was a classic conference war: the Big East versus Paterno’s unformed eastern all-sports league. Pittsburgh’s move to the Big East dealt a mortal blow to Paterno’s dream and proved to be a fatefully stupid decision on the part of the Panther administration. It didn’t look like a dumb decision at the time, but it was, because it was made with basketball in mind, when in reality football would set the course of intercollegiate athletics in the coming decades. Paterno and Casale knew it then, but the rest of the college sports world wouldn’t know it for another decade.
Their dream of an eastern all-sports conference smashed, PSU and Temple joined WVU and Rutgers in the Eastern Athletic Association, or the Eastern 8, a non-football playing league which later became the Atlantic 10. That’s how things stood through the 1980′s … until Paterno and PSU themselves triggered the next wave of conference realignment, driven this time by football.
I have heard this narrative before and believe me when I tell you that I wish that it was nearly as simple as the author is suggesting. However, it wasn't and that changes the complexion of the entire discussion. I really think a lot of this is shameless historical revisionism on the part of a lot of people to absolve themselves of any of the blame for a Northeastern all sports conference failing to materialize.
You have to understand that back before any of this started, Penn State was always
THE financial Beast of the East. They regularly filled their then 76K seat stadium and they graduated annual classes of 30K+ students. They now have a 106K seat stadium and graduate 40K+ students annually. Pitt was probably the next most powerful school in the Northeast and Pitt Stadium held just 56K (which we rarely sold out) and Fitzgerald Field House seated 5K fans for basketball.
Basically they were
ALWAYS a Big Ten school playing a Big East schedule.
That
MUST be understood before anyone can progress on this issue. Penn State
NEVER saw Pitt, Syracuse or Syracuse as their equals and quite frankly, financially speaking, the Nits were absolutely right. Also, at the time you need to understand that West Virginia, Temple and Rutgers were a clear level or two below Pitt, Syracuse and Boston College. Nobody cared what any of those schools thought because they would go along with which ever side prevailed.
Also, up until the late 1960's, Pitt was a private school just like Boston College and Syracuse remain today. We have always been
MUCH smaller schools and therefore wielded much less power than did Penn State.
Pitt, Syracuse and Boston College well understood that fact and, perhaps more importantly, so did Joe Paterno. That is why the battle lines were formed as they were: Penn State vs. Syracuse, Boston College and ultimately Pitt.
Paterno wanted to form an Eastern Conference but strictly on his terms. Basically, what he proposed was that all of the revs in every sport but football be shared equally (gate, TV, NCAA Tournament credits, etc.). In football, the gist of it was that every school would keep all of the money it earned in that sport (TV, bowls, gate, etc.). Remember, Penn State consistently filled the 76K seats at Beaver Stadium and they struggled to fill half of 5K seat Rec Hall (not unlike today). Now, you tell me, if you are Syracuse and you just built a domed stadium (Carrier Dome was built in the late 70s) that seats 48K in football but can regularly draw 25K in basketball, would you be for or against that deal?
To me that had nothing/very little to do with those schools overestimating basketball's television future as compared with football. It was more a matter of them looking after their own best interests, just like Penn State was doing.
For Pitt and Penn State, it was even more complicated because at that time there was a very real dislike/mistrust of each other that extended into each other's administrations. I will spare you all of the gory details - and there are many - but I will say that for Pitt the final straw came at the 1979 Eastern Eight league meetings when Penn State's then SID Tim Curley, announced the Nittany Lions' withdraw from the conference via a press release that they slipped under the media and other school administrators' hotel room doors as everyone slept.
There was no discussion and no debate, just a Robert Irsay-esque middle of the night fleeing that left everyone else high and dry. Paterno believed that Penn State could be the "Notre Dame of the East" and for a few years the Nits were completely independent in all sports before realizing that was too difficult even for such a well-heeled school like PSU.
So again, tell me, if you are Pitt's administration and Paterno just three years earlier had pulled that type of bush league BS, would you trust him this time around? Yeah, well neither did Pitt.
Also, Paterno's proposed league was of the following schools:
Penn State, Pitt, West Virginia, Boston College, Syracuse, Rutgers, Temple, Army, Navy and (maybe) Maryland.
Again, you can't have an honest discussion about this issue and leave out Army and Navy - as the author did. That was a
MAJOR bone of contention for some of the other schools because they were already being downgraded in the national polls for playing too soft of a schedule. However, Paterno wanted a Northeastern league - not an Eastern league as so many people often state. He wanted cannon fodder for his school and he was never going to invite Miami for example. If he was open to inviting schools like South Carolina, Florida State and Miami then I would view that whole affair quite differently. However that was not his plan. His plan was to kill the Big East in men's basketball and control Northeastern football in the process.
Please note that mine is not an attempt to exonerate or vilify anyone involved in the process. Everyone was looking after their own interests and all of the main players involved were equally intransigent in their positions and as such they all deserve their share of the blame for an all sports league failing to materialize until at least a decade later. However, the notion that one side were visionaries while the other side were too stupid to see the future is just flat out factually incorrect.