beginning of the end. Forming a Big East for all sports with PSU football as the keystone would have changed things dramatically. (not all for the good...Big East basketball was amazing for a long stretch). By the time they figured out that football mattered, it was too late...The Big East became a fractured league and the rivalries of the northeast got largely lost. BC Syracuse UConn Rutgers Temple PSU Pitt WVU Maybe VT Could have turned into a much stronger conference in the long run

Or maybe Cincinnati.

Psu wanted to join the big east and there was push back by cuse and the catholic schools to precent psu in and paterno hated the cuse ( we are finding how bitter and manipulative paterno was). Big east turned down psu and took pitt. Really?? That go psu focused on the big 10. We dont know what the impact would have been?? Also if psu was in would vt be in the big east. Lesson who knows what strategic impact happens when short term egos get involve

BC, Providence, Syracuse, St Johns, and Connecticut voted yes. They needed 6 votes, and it was 5-3. Then Dave Gavitt convinced the other 3 to vote YES on Pitt. The Big East was built on Television Markets (i.e. cities), and it was a basketball league. The Georgetown AD was not interested in solving a football problem at the time, so he led the push against. There is an ESPN 30 for 30 on the Big East, and he goes over it.

it was Georgetown, St. John's and Villanova that were the NOs and Seton Hall was on the other side.

I guarantee if Cuse demanded to bring PSU in ... it would have happened. This was the days of Eastern football and PSU and Syracuse was the big rival, (after Pitt) and Penn State had nasty games usually in the end of November in old Outside Syracuse stadium. Funny those damn catholic schools allowed Pitt in shortly after. Sounds like in 1978 when VT got a vote to get into the ACC (with Clemson sponsorship), but was not accepted (pushed by UNC), then 2 weeks later UNC sponsors Georgia Tech in (as a wonderful engineering institution)... The games we play, and still play;

It was about TV markets in cities and basketball. Penn State wasn't particularly good in basketball, and they didn't think Penn State had a market. I would argue that their market was the entire state of Pennsylvania, but they didn't see it that way. Pittsburgh was better basketball and a bigger market. So they went along with Pittsburgh.

basketball schools I just think you got one of them wrong. I believe it was St. John's NOT Seton Hall.

I had thought Seton Hall. The primary thing is it wasn't Syracuse. A lot of people think it was Syracuse blocking Penn State, but Syracuse voted to add them.

with you and that is the error of the OP spreading incorrect history. The whole vote was taken to appease Syracuse and BC, BE football schools, to keep them from leaving. Some of the BE basketball schools had a problem with PSU specifically and after the NO vote on PSU, Gavitt eventually brought it back around with Pitt and got it passed. The irony/karma is that those basketball schools sealed their demise, for the most part, as only Villanova is still really relevant. Georgetown, St. John's and the rest are candidates to have their pictures on milk cartons these days.

By not embracing Penn State, they sealed big time, regional Northeast college athletics, to never return. However, just to think, if PSU got in, there probably would have been no place for VT in the Big east.

And the Big East was founded as a basketball conference. Their attempt to put together something in football as a kluge. In the past 20 years Connecticut won 3 NCAA Men's Basketball Championships and 9 Women's Basketball Championships, Villanova won 2 NCAA Men's Basketball Championships, Syracuse and Maryland won 1 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, and Maryland won 1 Women's Basketball Championship. The last time anyone from the Northeast won in Football was Penn State in 1986. That's 35 years ago. Football has become a Southeast game. Every champion except for 1 Ohio State win has come from someone in the Southeast. One of the strong suits of the makeup of the ACC is we have strong representation from both the Northeast and Southeast. And ACC Teams have won both football and basketball championships.

Jay was probably the best dressed coach in any sport and at any school in the US.

....football revenues retained by the schools. For instance, if Syracuse sold 25,000 basketball tickets, under Paterno's idea that money would be shared. If Penn State sold 100,000 football tickets, then Penn State would have retained all of that money. That "plan" never had a chance, nor should it have.

Psu lost institutional control when they left that bitter old man lmtiminate the program. We are penn state not we are joe cult

There is no question nothing happened concerning football without him saying, yay or nay. I'm sure he had veto power with any athletic question if he though it might impact football in the tiniest way.

Just a bitter old man

regional rivalries existed in NE football. It never recovered.

always has been and if it survives, always will be. That's what made the SEC so successful. Regional rivalries within the conference so the games always mattered. That's what made the BigTen so successful, regional rivalries where every game mattered. When you have an region where teams don't play each other regularly, passion dies and then games don't matter as much. College football needs fan support from both teams to create that great college atmosphere. When you conference is so big that they can't travel, that adds to the problem. People from Atlanta, Clemson, and Miami aren't going to travel to Syracuse, Boston College, and Pittsburgh. It's too far and too costly. When you can get fan support for games that are supposed to matter, then the conference dies. The ACC should have been smarter from the get go with the divisions. Create a north/south set up regardless of how imbalanced things would have been to start. Eventually, it all would have evened out. Instead, the ACC took the approach of fabricating divisions and rivalries (VT/BC, Virginia/Louisville). think of how ferocious those games during the season would have been between Clemson, FSU, Miami had they had to play each other just to make it to the championship game. Great regular season matchups are what people want to watch ... not fabricated scheduling to set up a championship game.

...our natural rivals in the southern division.

Miami was our Big East rival. That died as soon as the ACC invite came. The 12 team ACC had potential. VT, MD, BC, UVA, UNC and NC State in the north Duke, Wake, GT, Clemson, FSU and Miami in the south. That would have been a much better lineup. Guarantee the Big 3 in the south some wins. The North winner would have earned it every year.

because it would give the South Division schools an unfair recruiting advantage in the Southeast Region (SC, GA, FL, and any other Gulf Coast states) because the only times the North Division schools would have access to those states is when it was their turn to play a cross-divisional game in said state. Besides the ACC wanting an all-FL conference championship game that was the other big factor in the ACC opting for the zipper model. Also, I suspect you would see UNC insist on Duke being their protected cross-division game. In theory NC State could want both Wake and Clemson (aka the Textile Bowl) as their protected cross-division games. If both schools got their wish, then it would create quirks in the ACC's cross-division rotation. Currently the Big Ten experiences quirks because Indiana-Purdue is the only protected cross-division game at the moment. Also, if the ACC was going to go with geographic based divisions, then the North Division would have Wake and Duke because Winston-Salem and Durham are both north of Chapel Hill and Raleigh. If UNC and UVA were placed in opposite divisions, then UNC would probably want 2 protected cross-division games; Duke and UVA (aka the South Oldest's Rivalry). While NC State probably would only want 1 protected cross-division game (i.e. Wake).

The I-95 corridor from DC to Boston has several issues that aren't favorable to high school football. In the urban areas, basketball is king. The best high school football players end up at private schools, mostly Catholic. Lacrosse and soccer are more popular in the suburbs than football. When I lived in Marylnd, I lived in Baltimore, Catonsville and Carroll County. High school football wasn't that popular in Baltimore City. I worked ith a few guys who graduated from Baltimore Poly High School in the 1980's and 1990's and they told me that they had a difficult time keeping players on the team because of grades. Baltimore Polytechnic was one of the city's top high schools. Hardly anyone went out to watch high school football games. They were usually played on Friday afternoon or Saturday afternoon. The Catholic schools like Mt. St. Joe's and Loyola had decent teams but many of their top players came from outside of the city. Baltimore County had a few good football programs. Carroll County wasn't known for high school football. Northern Baltimore County, Carroll County, Howard County and Harford County focused more on soccer and lacrosse, cross country and baseball. Howard and Baltimore counties had some decent public high school football programs but not close to the talent of Hampton Road or Charlotte. That was my expereince living in that area for 27 years. I grew up in southern Virginia where football was the top sport in high school. I was surprised that my high school with 450 students drew over a thousand fans to Friday night football games while schools in Baltimore area with 1,500 too 2,000 students attracted a few hundred. A lot of that had to do with the fact that there's a lot more to do in the urban and suburban areas on Friday night and that their high school football teams usually weren't the pride or identity of their community. It's also not a big social event like it is in the rural communities or even in the South and Midwest. The Northeast is also more diversed ethnically and football isn't the preferred sport in some areas. I remember reading that Park View -Sterling , once a very good VHSL football program had trouble getting football players since soccer was more popular to first generation American immigrants. I think the Northeast's lack of interest in high school and college football is culturally. The NFL is about all they really need to satisfy their football fix. When I lived in Maryland, I was the only worker except for one WVU grad whoever talked about college football. It was all about the Redskins (at that time) and Ravens.

There isn't a lot that one can do in the winter up north, except indoor basketball and indoor hockey. The South prefers more outdoor sports. Going to a football game in the Fall in the South, the weather is usually good to great. Blacksburg can be cold in November because of it's 2500 feet above sea level, but the Hampton Roads area, people are outside even between Christmas and New Years. Not that they don't have cold days, but there are plenty of days the weather is nice enough to do things outside. Those habits make a difference. The South dominates in Football, Baseball, Softball and even sports like Golf and Tennis. The weather is just better for those outdoor sports. The North dominates in basketball and hockey.

conferences at one point. And they didn't schedule each other much OOC.

VT won it 2 years. In 1995 and 1999.

I remember making a special diversion to go look at it before the East Carolina game that year. Based on specifics of my own formative years, I considered it to be a pretty big deal -- and a significant aspect of the feeling that our program was definitely coming up in the larger football world. "Eastern" essentially means "Northeastern" It's still awarded by media centered around the New York metropolitan area. Virginia is the farthest south for the eligibility boundary -- and that was apparently a direct result of the formation of the Big East Football Conference and I think that's when we first became eligible for consideration. Big East members outside of the defined region were considered eligible if they played at least four schools from within the territory. Miami and Cincinnati are the only beneficiaries of that modifier at the current FBS level.

Penn State won it 32 times. And the schools I mentioned (WVU-4, SYR-6, BC-5 and Pitt-6) plus Miami-4, Army-9 and Navy-5 1/2 all won it more than us. They do it for the lower divisions as well. Delaware (FCS) IUP (D-II) Rowan (D-III) have the most in their division respectively. Hard to believe we only won two. ** Edited by Maroon Baboon at 8/6/2022, 2:21:26 AM

The if you could change anything over the last 19 years, that would be it? I thought that Phillips would change that, and then he lets the Miami Virginia Tech game get replaced with Miami Louisville and Virginia Tech Wake. Good grief!!

This is why the ACC HQ should be in DC area, (not in Orlando, as a subsidy of Disney, FSU and Miami) or Charlotte and NC bias and direction.....(I surprised , there are only 4 UNC Votes and the rest should be unified and direct how the conference is going but I guess, there is some un holy water that feels every is safer in North carolina.

Can't force a rivalry if only one team senses it.

Sometimes you can find your enemies fast. Sounds its VT versus the rest in this conference.,,, no allies.

as an expansion candidate. And even without Miami, we could have done better than we did. Would have preferred GT to Wake. ** Edited by Maroon Baboon at 8/6/2022, 9:34:08 PM

You complain all the time about the ACC schedule, then you make excuses when the Commissioner shows a lack of leadership. You can’t have it both ways.