What If... Joe Paterno's Eastern Conference was Created?

When doing research for my Big East video a long time ago, I came across a couple scenarios in which Penn State desperately tried to join the conference before electing to stay an independent up until their admission into the Big Ten. Oddly enough, this came at a time where famous coach Joe Paterno, divisive as he is now, moonlighted as the college's athletic director, before any major conference movement was made. While the Nittany Lions didn't get the votes necessary to join the basketball-focused conference, it wasn't Paterno's last effort on joining a primarily eastern league. As soon as the Big East voted them out, he devised a plan to create his own conference, featuring some independent schools and a whole lot of northeast flavor.

The Nittany Lions would be joined by West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Temple, Rutgers, Syracuse, Boston College, and Maryland. The only issue is that some of these teams weren't keen to leave their existing conferences, and Pitt joining the Big East put the final kibosh on the conference being made.

Of course, things ended the way they did in real life. But the question has been posed before: what if this conference was created? What if an eastern league had been made that focused solely on rivalry and familiarity? What if the Big East had been replaced by this new league? What would that mean for the ACC or Big Ten? Big 12? Joe Paterno? College sports in the northeast in general?

As always, tell me what you think would have occurred had this conference been created in the comments section below. Remember to be civil and kind with each other when discussing! Since this is all theory, nobody is any more correct than the other. Let's keep my comments section clean and toxicity free, like it has been for so long.

No aspect of this video belongs to me. Video, sourced through the universities of Temple, Boston College, and West Virginia, as well as their broadcast partners in 1989, 1983, and 1988, respectively, and the Big East conference is utilized under Fair Use for the purpose of education. Music is sourced from YouTube's free audio library. Text excerpts are sourced from their digital mediums and have their titles listed on-screen.

[skipinator]

I'm not sure if I commented on your conference series before, but I once thought about doing a series like this once, but you're a much better talent than me, so thank you for doing this.

[alexandersutler]

A couple notes. 1) NEC would have had a massive media market covering the most populous section of the country, 2) Doug Flutie did play WVU 4 times and lost all 4.

[tjchapman]

The one thing left out of the video is the main reason for Pitt and other teams saying no to the NEC was Paterno would not agree to revenue sharing. None of the schools in that group had the income that PSU had and couldn't sustain an athletic department without the revenue shared from a conference.

[kylethomas]

Some videos on basketball conferences with interesting histories like the MVC or A-10 would be cool.

[ChrisBakerauthor]

Another interesting fact is that Boston College kept its football rivalry going with Holy Cross all the way up till 1986. They were still playing home and home, too.

[ChrisBakerauthor]

In the summer of 1988, negotiations around the PSU-Syracuse rivalry came to an end because PSU wanted a ten-year agreement with SIX games at PSU. Syracuse wanted a five-five deal. The final game was played in 1990. At the time, PSU was Syracuse's biggest football rival, if you are going by number of games played in the history of the series.

Penn State had the largest football stadium at the time. They also had some uneven agreements with Boston College.

[tmcobb]

As a wvu fan, I would love this, a conference with wvu, pitt, Penn st, and even Syracuse and Virginia tech would be so much better than having to drive to Texas every year to play football and now Utah and Arizona with the new teams

[mrterp]

Considering how disliked JoePa and PSU were by the rest of the “Eastern Independents”, I’m not surprised this didn’t work out.

[garygrassler]

If you look at Penn states all time match ups it’s still Pitt, cuse and wvu at the top. Great video

[marshfellowman]

As a Syracuse fan, I wish this had happened. It's so hard for a lot of people to be interested in the program because half of our conference games are played south of the Mason-Dixon Line

[andrewsever]

I love this series. Its a great way to explore history.

[girlwithaguitar]

Something that might be a fun thought exercise for a video would be to create your ideal conferences - like, if you were the god emperor and money were no object, what would you create for conferences? Here's mine:
Big East: BC, Syracuse, Rutgers, Penn State, Pitt, West Virginia, Louisville, Cincy, VT, Miami
ACC: Maryland, Virginia, UNC, Duke, NC State, WF, South Carolina, Clemson, GT, Florida State
Big 10: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Northwestern, Indiana, Purdue, ND, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State
Big 12: Iowa, Iowa State, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Colorado, Colorado State
SEC: Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, LSU, Kentucky, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Georgia, Florida
SWC: Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, SMU, Houston, Rice, Arkansas, Memphis
MWC: Utah, Utah State, BYU, Arizona, Arizona State, Nevada, UNLV, Boise State, Wyoming, New Mexico
PAC-10: Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, Cal, Stanford, Fresno State, USC, UCLA, San Diego State
Everyone plays a round-robin schedule, and the champions of each conference face off in the corresponding bowls around Christmas:
Peach Bowl: Big East/ACC Champs
Orange Bowl: Big 10/Big 12 Champs
Cotton Bowl: SEC/SWC Champs
Fiesta Bowl: MWC/PAC-10 Champs
Then the semifinals on New Years Day would be Rose Bowl (Orange Bowl winner vs Fiesta Bowl winner) and Sugar Bowl (Cotton Bowl winner vs Peach Bowl winner), with the two winners facing off in the national championship.

[PaBa]

Would love to see a video on the full story of the Southern Conference. I’d guess that very few modern fans know this mid-major featuring UNC Greensboro and East Tennessee State used to be the original superconference, with both future SEC and ACC powers in the league.

[colyhope]

I grew up in the Mid-Atlantic and lived through this time and every college football fan I knew believed that Paterno real motivation was Penn State reaping most of the benefits of the conference and leaving scraps for the other schools.

[andrewmartinyt]

JoePa would’ve had an almost complete dream had the Big East accepted them. By adding them & West Virginia early on to go with rivals like Pitt & Syracuse (for football sake and keeping them around), the conference could have survived through realignment madness.

[lazarbro]

Depending on how much involvement Paterno has personally, the vision of preserving northeast regional rivalries might lead to Navy and Army being added together rather than staying serpersted for so long like in our timeline.

[thomaskeane]

Pitt fan here. There was (and frankly, still is) a LOT of stubbornness between both Pitt and PSU. BTW, Art Rooney Sr. wanted to hire Joe Paterno as the Steelers head coach in 1969, but Paterno turned it down, and the Steelers hired Chuck Noll.

[MetalGod]

Excellent video, Lukas! Ever since I saw you were gonna do a video on Joe Paterno's Eastern Conference idea, I was so stoked. And you, my man, have scored another touchdown. I loved your take on what would've happened in an alternate universe with a Northeast Conference. Perfectly presented, thoroughly researched, and enjoyable to listen to. Keep up the great work!

[Jackal_McCackle]

I was scared this content would falter or even cease once you go through all the FBS or maybe even FCS conferences, but the constant quality of these non-history videos keep me excited for the future

[erics]

I loved watching this video and thinking what could have been. It's particularly interesting now seeing the mess that college athletics have become with excessive travel and fewer regional rivalries. Nice work!