I think think this could be it now.

Boston College
Connecticut
Syracuse
Rutgers
Temple
Penn State
Pittsburgh
Cincinnati
Louisville
West Virginia
Maryland
Virginia Tech

(02-27-2017 07:47 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  The eastern all sports conference that never was has always been one of those great what ifs of conference realignment. We all know what happened--egos got in the way and ultimately the basketball first faction of the Big East won the day and kept Penn St out dooming eastern football.

But what if they had been able to work something out? In the Eastern 8 Penn St had a built in faction that included Pitt, Rutgers, and West Virginia. Meanwhile, the power brokers who built the Big East were Syracuse, and non football schools Providence Georgetown, and St John's.

What if Penn St was able to convince BC and Syracuse that they could count on the new league to basketball friendly and focused on big eastern cities? Syracuse and BC could join a new league with the Penn St faction and basketball schools Georgetown and St John's could be part of the deal. That makes 8 schools, 6 with football.

To round out the league Temple and UConn could fill things out. Temple at the the time was unaffiliated with either side and didn't get into the A-10 until after the Big East formed and teams shuffled around but they did bring a big market and an FBS football program. UConn on the other hand was another basketball first school at the time and one that the Big East power brokers would invite to their league.

Take this league and add VA Tech as a football affiliate you have a pretty solid group. Wait a few years and when Miami (FL) decides to seek out a conference home the Hurricanes become the 11th full member and VA Tech gets full membership to make an even 12.

Thoughts?

Syracuse voted for Penn State and has never made a decision that prioritized basketball over football (see building the Dome and leaving for the ACC as obvious examples).

Your premises are deeply flawed.

An eastern conference never happened because Joe wanted to create the Big XII of the east, and that failed because the other relevant eastern schools had options.

But to answer your question, the following conference would be great:


ALL SPORTS
BC
SU
PSU
Pitt
WVU
VT
Miami
Rutgers (I'd rather UMD, but that would have been a pipe dream)

NON-FOOTBALL
Georgetown
UConn
Notre Dame (yearly BC & Pitt games and a scheduling alliance for 3 yearly FB games against the other 6)
St. John's
Villanova
Provedence (or Marquette - but that wasn't realistic in 1980)

(02-27-2017 09:32 PM)kreed5120 Wrote:  One has to imagine the conference realignment bug would have still hit at some point and even though that conference has some nice pieces, it still looks very poachable.

I 100% agree.

A PRIMARY reason that Penn State jumped to the B1G is because of Stanley Ikenberry. Ikenberry worked at Penn State for much of the 1970s, with Bryce Jordan as a colleague. A friendship formed. By the late 1980s - Ikenberry was the President at Illinois and Jordan was the President at Penn State. The conversations started there and the invite was made in late 1989.

Even if Penn State had joined an Eastern football league, I think those conversations STILL occur. And a B1G invite --- which alongside the Pac-10 is THE premiere academic/athletic conference in the land --- would have been way too appetizing for Penn State to pass up. PSU still would have joined the B1G in the mid-1990s (as in real life).

(02-28-2017 12:42 AM)Nittany_Bearcat Wrote:  

(02-27-2017 09:32 PM)kreed5120 Wrote:  One has to imagine the conference realignment bug would have still hit at some point and even though that conference has some nice pieces, it still looks very poachable.

I 100% agree.

A PRIMARY reason that Penn State jumped to the B1G is because of Stanley Ikenberry. Ikenberry worked at Penn State for much of the 1970s, with Bryce Jordan as a colleague. A friendship formed. By the late 1980s - Ikenberry was the President at Illinois and Jordan was the President at Penn State. The conversations started there and the invite was made in late 1989.

Even if Penn State had joined an Eastern football league, I think those conversations STILL occur. And a B1G invite --- which alongside the Pac-10 is THE premiere academic/athletic conference in the Midwest/West Coast --- would have been way too appetizing for Penn State to pass up. PSU still would have joined the B1G in the mid-1990s (as in real life).

FIFY

(02-27-2017 10:03 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  As far as the no votes go I'm guessing that they came from 3 of the following 4:
Providence, Seton Hall, Georgetown, and St John's
One of them voted yes along with Syracuse, BC, UConn, and Villanova.

The poster you replied to was correct. The 3 "no" votes were Georgetown, SJU and Villanova. The 5 "yes" votes were BC, Connecticut, Providence, Seton Hall and Syracuse.

Syracuse was definitely Penn State's BIGGEST advocate among the 5 (alongside BC).

5 votes was 1 vote short of course. And thus the Big East pivoted, and looked to Pittsburgh instead. Pittsburgh did get the votes, and that was that.

(02-28-2017 12:54 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  FIFY

Even if one DOES think the present-day ACC (I disagree, but I will grant the ACC is the only conference that can even make an argument) measures up both academically and athletically to the B1G or Pac-12, I was speaking from the viewpoint of the mid-1990s.

The ACC --- nor any other conference --- wasn't even close then.

(02-27-2017 09:00 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(02-27-2017 08:39 PM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  Here was Joe Pa's Eastern league:
Boston College
Maryland
Penn State
Pittsburgh
Rutgers
Syracuse
Temple
West Virginia

That's where I think they messed up--they needed to balance the football power with some basketball prowess.

The group I proposed would have given them that.

At the time, Rutgers had basketball prowess. They were a couple of seasons removed from the Final Four and had one of the best on campus arenas in the Northeast. The Nets played there for a couple of seasons while waiting for the Meadowlands Arena to be built. Indeed, the Big East invited Rutgers, and only invited Seton Hall when Rutgers said no. http://cuse.com/sports/2001/8/8/history.aspx

(02-27-2017 09:56 PM)Erictelevision Wrote:  Did the football-centric teams want Va Tech?

The lineup with Maryland was definitely the group that Penn State wanted. It is, of course, very possible that Maryland would have chosen to stay in the ACC, even though Maryland had an ongoing football rivalry with Penn State and would have been interested in the conference. If so, Virginia Tech would certainly have been high on the list as a replacement. However, if Maryland had left the ACC, it is also possible that VT would have gotten an earlier invite to the ACC.

(02-28-2017 12:42 AM)Nittany_Bearcat Wrote:  Even if Penn State had joined an Eastern football league, I think those conversations STILL occur. And a B1G invite --- which alongside the Pac-10 is THE premiere academic/athletic conference in the land --- would have been way too appetizing for Penn State to pass up. PSU still would have joined the B1G in the mid-1990s (as in real life).

I agree wholeheartedly. Even if PSU had been successful in creating this conference, it would have eventually ended up in the Big Ten.

(02-28-2017 01:00 AM)Nittany_Bearcat Wrote:  

(02-28-2017 12:54 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  FIFY

Even if one DOES think the present-day ACC (I disagree, but I will grant the ACC is the only conference that can even make an argument) measures up both academically and athletically to the B1G or Pac-12, I was speaking from the viewpoint of the mid-1990s.

The ACC --- nor any other conference --- wasn't even close then.

You're right. The ACC blew the B1G away even more before the UMD-UL trade.

...as does the Ivy League and probably the Patriot League - depending on how much of a premium you place on athletics vs academics.

Say Maryland went to the Joe Pa Eastern League, who would the ACC have added? Would the ACC and South Carolina have made up? Virginia Tech? Georgia Tech came aboard in 1980.

(02-28-2017 09:43 AM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  Say Maryland went to the Joe Pa Eastern League, who would the ACC have added? Would the ACC and South Carolina have made up? Virginia Tech? Georgia Tech came aboard in 1980.

Virginia Tech would definitely have been in the mix. I believe that they were considered at the time Georgia Tech was invited. Florida State may have been considered as well. It was just emerging as a football power under Bobby Bowden, with Orange Bowl appearances in '79 and '80, as well as multiple NCAA tournament appearances in the same time frame as a member of the Metro.

(02-28-2017 09:59 AM)orangefan Wrote:  

(02-28-2017 09:43 AM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  Say Maryland went to the Joe Pa Eastern League, who would the ACC have added? Would the ACC and South Carolina have made up? Virginia Tech? Georgia Tech came aboard in 1980.

Virginia Tech would definitely have been in the mix. I believe that they were considered at the time Georgia Tech was invited. Florida State may have been considered as well. It was just emerging as a football power under Bobby Bowden, with Orange Bowl appearances in '79 and '80, as well as multiple NCAA tournament appearances in the same time frame as members of the Metro.

Just think if the ACC had gotten South Carolina back. Florida State might have very well been in the SEC.

(02-27-2017 07:47 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  The eastern all sports conference that never was has always been one of those great what ifs of conference realignment. We all know what happened--egos got in the way and ultimately the basketball first faction of the Big East won the day and kept Penn St out dooming eastern football.

But what if they had been able to work something out? In the Eastern 8 Penn St had a built in faction that included Pitt, Rutgers, and West Virginia. Meanwhile, the power brokers who built the Big East were Syracuse, and non football schools Providence Georgetown, and St John's.

What if Penn St was able to convince BC and Syracuse that they could count on the new league to basketball friendly and focused on big eastern cities? Syracuse and BC could join a new league with the Penn St faction and basketball schools Georgetown and St John's could be part of the deal. That makes 8 schools, 6 with football.

To round out the league Temple and UConn could fill things out. Temple at the the time was unaffiliated with either side and didn't get into the A-10 until after the Big East formed and teams shuffled around but they did bring a big market and an FBS football program. UConn on the other hand was another basketball first school at the time and one that the Big East power brokers would invite to their league.

Take this league and add VA Tech as a football affiliate you have a pretty solid group. Wait a few years and when Miami (FL) decides to seek out a conference home the Hurricanes become the 11th full member and VA Tech gets full membership to make an even 12.

Thoughts?

The conference was stillborn for a reason. The proposal was set up so that PaSt would be first among equals and Paterno would be Boss of Bosses. Equal revenue sharing did not include the three big sports and - particularly in football it heavily favored TTFP.

(02-28-2017 12:04 PM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  

(02-27-2017 07:47 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  The eastern all sports conference that never was has always been one of those great what ifs of conference realignment. We all know what happened--egos got in the way and ultimately the basketball first faction of the Big East won the day and kept Penn St out dooming eastern football.

But what if they had been able to work something out? In the Eastern 8 Penn St had a built in faction that included Pitt, Rutgers, and West Virginia. Meanwhile, the power brokers who built the Big East were Syracuse, and non football schools Providence Georgetown, and St John's.

What if Penn St was able to convince BC and Syracuse that they could count on the new league to basketball friendly and focused on big eastern cities? Syracuse and BC could join a new league with the Penn St faction and basketball schools Georgetown and St John's could be part of the deal. That makes 8 schools, 6 with football.

To round out the league Temple and UConn could fill things out. Temple at the the time was unaffiliated with either side and didn't get into the A-10 until after the Big East formed and teams shuffled around but they did bring a big market and an FBS football program. UConn on the other hand was another basketball first school at the time and one that the Big East power brokers would invite to their league.

Take this league and add VA Tech as a football affiliate you have a pretty solid group. Wait a few years and when Miami (FL) decides to seek out a conference home the Hurricanes become the 11th full member and VA Tech gets full membership to make an even 12.

Thoughts?

The conference was stillborn for a reason. The proposal was set up so that PaSt would be first among equals and Paterno would be Boss of Bosses. Equal revenue sharing did not include the three big sports and - particularly in football it heavily favored TTFP.

Yup, he basically wanted the role of conference commissioner. Can you imagine Paterno on an even bigger power trip? Given his horrendous judgement and morals, thank goodness this never came to fruition.

(02-28-2017 12:19 PM)HuskyU Wrote:  

(02-28-2017 12:04 PM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  The conference was stillborn for a reason. The proposal was set up so that PaSt would be first among equals and Paterno would be Boss of Bosses. Equal revenue sharing did not include the three big sports and - particularly in football it heavily favored TTFP.

Yup, he basically wanted the role of conference commissioner. Can you imagine Paterno on an even bigger power trip? Given his horrendous judgement and morals, thank goodness this never came to fruition.

Ultimately, the Big East's willingness to invite Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh's willingness to accept that invitation without Penn State was the pivotal moment. If Pittsburgh had joined Penn State, Syracuse and BC would have had little choice but to follow. Essentially, all of Syracuse's annual rivals except BC and Navy would have been committed to the new conference. Conference scheduling commitments would have required most if not all of those schools to drop Syracuse from their schedule, effectively gutting the backbone of Syracuse's schedule if it declined to join.

Fortunately, Pittsburgh shared your general opinion of Joe Pa even then. Even if nobody knew how truly unscrupulous he was, folks did know how arrogant he was and didn't want to give it greater license. Dave Gavitt, Commissioner of the Big East, on the other hand, was a truly great leader and visionary.

Pittsburgh joining the Big East ensured a continuation of independent football in the Northeast for an additional 10 years. The Big East enjoyed the most stable period of its history - 9 years with no membership change - which coincided with its first Golden Age during which 6 members made Final Four appearance, collecting 2 National Championships.

Jake Crouthamel, AD at Syracuse at the time, described the events as follows:

"After only two years of existence as a conference formed specifically for men's basketball, football became an issue. Joe Paterno, head football coach and then Director of Athletics at Penn State, had been trying to put together an all-sports conference of the eastern Division IA independent schools. They included Syracuse, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, West Virginia and Temple. While our football fortunes would be well served through such an alignment, it would have been a step backward for men's basketball. To enter into such an alignment Syracuse and Boston College would have had to leave the BIG EAST. With the reluctance of B.C. and Syracuse to do so, Penn State then asked for membership in the BIG EAST. This was a turning point in the Conferences history. If Penn State was accepted, our football would be protected. If Penn State was rejected, B.C. and Syracuse might have no other option but to leave the BIG EAST, and join together with the other Eastern independents. To expand membership in The BIG EAST Conference six affirmative votes were necessary. The vote was 5-3. Instead of taking Penn State, we invited Pittsburgh as the ninth member. At that time Pittsburgh and Penn State were bitter rivals, and Pittsburgh was less than enamored with aligning itself with Penn State. Pitt's membership in the BIG EAST, along with B.C. and Syracuse, checkmated Penn State's eastern all-sports conference, and gave the Conference one more Division IA school. This football issue nearly caused the premature demise of the BIG EAST. Clearly, three schools in the BIG EAST had no concept of the importance of football, but the others realized that this decision not to invite Penn State would come back to haunt us. In fact, football would dictate every future consideration of membership expansion of our "basketball" conference."

http://cuse.com/sports/2001/8/8/history.aspx

(02-28-2017 12:54 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(02-28-2017 12:42 AM)Nittany_Bearcat Wrote:  

(02-27-2017 09:32 PM)kreed5120 Wrote:  One has to imagine the conference realignment bug would have still hit at some point and even though that conference has some nice pieces, it still looks very poachable.

I 100% agree.

A PRIMARY reason that Penn State jumped to the B1G is because of Stanley Ikenberry. Ikenberry worked at Penn State for much of the 1970s, with Bryce Jordan as a colleague. A friendship formed. By the late 1980s - Ikenberry was the President at Illinois and Jordan was the President at Penn State. The conversations started there and the invite was made in late 1989.

Even if Penn State had joined an Eastern football league, I think those conversations STILL occur. And a B1G invite --- which alongside the Pac-10 is THE premiere academic/athletic conference in the Midwest/West Coast --- would have been way too appetizing for Penn State to pass up. PSU still would have joined the B1G in the mid-1990s (as in real life).

FIFY

Nope - original post was 100% correct.

JoePa's dream Eastern Conference was never ever close to becoming a reality, based upon all the articles I have read. At the time (when the NCAAs controlled the cfb TV contracts), football and basketball monies were more evenly matched. He wanted a larger portion of the proposed leagues football monies but wanted to divide up the basketball monies evenly.

The closest an "Eastern" Conference came to developing was circa 1993/1994 (iirc) when the BE football schools ADs (yes, the AD of the football schools, not the BE commissioner - who couldn't since 6 full members of the conference were not represented while 4 who were not were represented) negotiated a very large initial contract with CBS.

When they brought the contract to the entire Big East (at that time 10 schools) and asked that the football schools not already full members of the BE become so, the basketball schools objected to it, feeling they had already comprised themselves with the addition of Miami as a full member and allowing the football schools to have their own conference using the Big East brand.

The football schools who were full members (Syracuse, BC, Pitt, and Miami), responded to the objection by saying if they rejected the proposal they had a plan to split with the football only members (WVU, VT, Rutgers, and Temple) and form their own conference. At that time the split plan was supposedly to also invite both Louisville and Cincinnati as well, to make it a 10 team conference.

This is the point when Mike Tranghese and the presidents of the full members (both football-centric and basketball-centric) told the ADs to get out of the room and they negotiated the compromise below:

1) WVU and Rutgers could have full membership - leaving VT and Temple swinging in the breeze.

2) the football schools would have to allow UConn and/or Nova to join them if within 5 years they decided to elevate to Div. 1A

3) the football schools would not object to the basketball schools bringing forth another school for membership who does play football on the condition their football was allowed to remain independent (citing the precedent of Miami being allowed to keep its men's baseball independent when they entered the league), even though baseball was a conference sponsored sport (unlike SU and lacrosse and BC and hockey).

4) everyone knew the above #3 was referring to ND.

I honestly think that the football schools thought VT would be invited as a full member when ND was, but that didn't happen until about 5 years later. Not sure why.

Anyway, as others have stated in regards to JoePa's dream conference of the late 70s/early 80s, even if this version of the Eastern Conference had come about the siren call of conference realignment would have dismantled it.

In other words, maybe what is was always meant to be at this moment in time?

Cheers,
Neil

(02-28-2017 08:53 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  The ACC blew the B1G away even more before the UMD-UL trade.

Not even close.

ACC is 3rd, behind Big Ten and PAC.

(02-28-2017 01:51 PM)omniorange Wrote:  JoePa's dream Eastern Conference was never ever close to becoming a reality, based upon all the articles I have read. At the time (when the NCAAs controlled the cfb TV contracts), football and basketball monies were more evenly matched. He wanted a larger portion of the proposed leagues football monies but wanted to divide up the basketball monies evenly.

The closest an "Eastern" Conference came to developing was circa 1993/1994 (iirc) when the BE football schools ADs (yes, the AD of the football schools, not the BE commissioner - who couldn't since 6 full members of the conference were not represented while 4 who were not were represented) negotiated a very large initial contract with CBS.

When they brought the contract to the entire Big East (at that time 10 schools) and asked that the football schools not already full members of the BE become so, the basketball schools objected to it, feeling they had already comprised themselves with the addition of Miami as a full member and allowing the football schools to have their own conference using the Big East brand.

The football schools who were full members (Syracuse, BC, Pitt, and Miami), responded to the objection by saying if they rejected the proposal they had a plan to split with the football only members (WVU, VT, Rutgers, and Temple) and form their own conference. At that time the split plan was supposedly to also invite both Louisville and Cincinnati as well, to make it a 10 team conference.

This is the point when Mike Tranghese and the presidents of the full members (both football-centric and basketball-centric) told the ADs to get out of the room and they negotiated the compromise below:

1) WVU and Rutgers could have full membership - leaving VT and Temple swinging in the breeze.

2) the football schools would have to allow UConn and/or Nova to join them if within 5 years they decided to elevate to Div. 1A

3) the football schools would not object to the basketball schools bringing forth another school for membership who does play football on the condition their football was allowed to remain independent (citing the precedent of Miami being allowed to keep its men's baseball independent when they entered the league), even though baseball was a conference sponsored sport (unlike SU and lacrosse and BC and hockey).

4) everyone knew the above #3 was referring to ND.

I honestly think that the football schools thought VT would be invited as a full member when ND was, but that didn't happen until about 5 years later. Not sure why.

Anyway, as others have stated in regards to JoePa's dream conference of the late 70s/early 80s, even if this version of the Eastern Conference had come about the siren call of conference realignment would have dismantled it.

In other words, maybe what is was always meant to be at this moment in time?

Cheers,
Neil

Good description of the events. This link includes an interesting discussion of the 1994 events from Virginia Tech's perspective:
http://virginiatech.sportswar.com/articl...1990-1994/

(02-28-2017 09:43 AM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  Say Maryland went to the Joe Pa Eastern League, who would the ACC have added? Would the ACC and South Carolina have made up? Virginia Tech? Georgia Tech came aboard in 1980.

It never would've happened. During that era, the ACC was run by Bob James, a Maryland man.

(02-27-2017 10:03 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(02-27-2017 09:39 PM)gosports1 Wrote:  

(02-27-2017 09:08 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(02-27-2017 09:02 PM)gosports1 Wrote:  BC and Syracuse didn't want to leave the BE Too bad they couldn't convince Georgetown St Johns or Villanova that Penn St was worthy of an invite. That may have delayed PSU's move to B10 and maybe a BE FB league with PSU would have attracted other schools (FSU? )

If they could have brought St John's and Georgetown into a league with Penn St maybe things would have been different. Villanova might have been able to be squeezed in too but it would have made the initial conference a 12 member affair and back then conferences that large were virtually unheard of.

st johns, villanova and Georgetown weren't in favor of adding PSU to the BE. they cast the 3 "unofficial" no votes. imo they would be unlikely to want to form a new conference when it would be easier to just add psu to existing one. Also gtown, st johns and pc were pretty tight at the time. (despite the differences in the quality of the BB programs at that time). i guess we'll never know

My thoughts were that the ideal time that this league could have formed was between 1976 when the Eastern 8 formed and 1979 when the Big East formed--that way it wouldn't be a matter adding a school to the Big East. It also would mean that schools like Seton Hall and Providence wouldn't have had a say.

As far as the no votes go I'm guessing that they came from 3 of the following 4:
Providence, Seton Hall, Georgetown, and St John's
One of them voted yes along with Syracuse, BC, UConn, and Villanova.

if the league formed prior to the BE that you have a valid point. Being indy meant more then I believe.
the actual vote (unofficial) on PSU was 5-3
yes: Syracuse, BC, PC, UConn and Seton Hall
no: Georgetown St Johns and Villanova