RE: big east was the most under rated conference of all time
The disrespect of major college football in the Northeast goes back to at least the 1950s when the Ivies decided to stop playing (read: spending) major college football. As soon as that happened, the folks in the South and West began to look at CFB in the Northeast as almost like today people look at the G5 schools. That was always Paterno's primary crusade - establishing respect for major college football in the Northeast.
You have to remember that history always must be viewed in its time, not with the benefit of hindsight. That is almost always the mistake people make in these types of discussions. They fail to understand the time and place and therefore they don't understand (or remember) the landscape as a whole, which in turn leads to all kinds of false assumptions.
I want to make it very clear that Paterno was a brilliant man and that needs to be acknowledged before we can have any discussion on him or Penn State. He took a little cow college in the middle of nowhere and turned it into an absolute monster on every front. Also, as we all have seen over the pat few years, the entire university's culture has been constructed around not only the football program but also around Paterno himself. That is certainly scary on a lot of levels but it is also in some strange was, extremely impressive. I can't think of another university anywhere - not even Duke with Mike Krzyzewski or North Carolina with Dean Smith - whose entire institutional identity has been built around a single coach s happened up in State College.
In addition to being brilliant, Paterno was also extremely controlling and anything but altruistic. He didn't want to form a conference for the good of CFB as a whole or even for the good of CFB in the NE. He wanted to form a conference for his benefit and he had some very specific thoughts for how he wanted to do it. He wasn't interested in negotiating, it was his way or the highway - just as he had always operated up in State College.
Penn State went undefeated several times in the late 60s and early 70s and each time they were snubbed for the MNC by the voters primarily because of where they were located. Their schedule was considered too soft by the critics even though in reality their schedule was pretty similar to the teams they were being snubbed for. That is not at all differen than the criticism Miami faced when it was running the Big East in the 90s and early 2000s or that WVU faced when it took over after Miami, BC and VT defected to the ACC. It is also the same bias the AAC will face going forward even though most of that league is now in the South. Blind bias is always stupid and it will not be confined by petty geography.
Paterno believed that, by forming a conference, he could change that deeply ingrained mentality and that, he claimed, was always his impetus for wanting to form a conference in the first place. The problem was that he, like everyone else involved, wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to split revs equally in MBB and other sports but not at all in FB.
Also, in the late 70s and early 80s, Penn State played its basketball in a league called the Eastern Athletic Association, or as it was known at the time, "The Eastern 8." That league, which was the forerunner to the Atlantic 10, featured a number of different lineups but some of the key players were Villanova, Duquesne, Penn State, West Virginia, George Washington, Massachusetts, Pitt and Rutgers. Later, schools like St. Bonaventure, Rhode Island, St. Joe's and Temple joined but the Eastern 8 that I remember most fondly involved great rivalries between Pitt, Penn State, West Virginia and Duquesne (which at the time was seen as the best basketball program of the bunch by most outsiders).
Those were NASTY rivalries and a LOT of fun. Hell, at the time, Duquesne and West Virginia was more heated than Pitt/WVU. It seemed like every time those two schools played, controversy ensued in the form of bench clearing brawls, crooked time keepers, rowdy fans, you name it. It was a lot of fun to watch unfold.
Paterno, who was always a notorious, know-it-all pain in the arse to deal with - was Penn State's AD and football coach at the time. I think we now know that he remained in that capacity unofficially through the very end in a Vladimir Putin kind of way but that is a story for a different day. Anyway, the Eastern 8 was a great league and perfect fit for Pitt, Duquesne, West Virginia and Penn State. Unfortunately, Paterno came to believe that as long as the E8 and BE were around, his coveted all sports conference would never materialize. So, at the 1978 or '79 Eastern 8 league meetings, I can't remember which, he surprised everyone by promptly resigning from the league and announcing that he was taking PSU indie in everything - just as Notre Dame had done a few years before. However, what most upset everyone else was not that he resigned but rather how he choset to do it - via a press release that Tim Curley (who was then PSU's SID) slipped under everyone's hotel room door as they slept. There was no discussion, no debate, no nothing. Just a middle of the night press release that essentially gave everyone the finger.
So when people talk about this issue and fail to mention the ENORMOUS mistrust that existed at the time between everyone, I think that's a disingenuous discussion. It was MUCH more than the wise old sage Paterno saw the future and others did not. Everyone knew that the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of the CFA was a game-changer. Perhaps we all varied on how much of a game changer it would actually prove to be but nobody failed to recognize that it was going to change a lot of things. Where people disagreed (strongly) was with how the league would be structured and who was going to have the most say on various issues.
Paterno wanted to run the whole thing and that made everyone who had options nervous as they had seen how ruthlessly he operated and they did not wish to be under his control. So, when the Big East offered Pitt membership in the early 80s, we had no choice but to accept their offer. Turning it down would have been a very stupid decision on our part.
As an aside, Paterno's planned all sports league would have consisted of: Army, Boston College, Navy, Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, West Virginia and maybe Maryland. There was never any talk of adding the likes of Virginia Tech, Connecticut, Miami, Florida State, South Carolina, etc. Those are all byproducts of shameless revisionism.
Pfew...and to think that is the Cliff's Notes version of that story.
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big east was the most under rated conference of all time
