Regrets On Leaving the BE

Also, had Penn State been in the fold, the conference could have been much more proactive. Someone like Maryland would have had no problems ditching the Carolina mafia to be linked up with PSU, Pitt, WV, SU, etc. The state of Virginia maybe would have been pushing UVA into the Big East instead of trying to get VT out of it. You also might see SU better as a result, and Pasqualoni doesn’t get fired. Or, in an effort to stay competitive with Penn State, fires him earlier. Either way Voldemort G-Rob never comes into the picture, and as we’ve seen the conference is at its best when SU is. I’d bet anything Rutgers becomes competitive much earlier, too, and UConn might decide to go D1A earlier.

If the Big Ten would have stayed at 10 way back when, and in 2010 decided they wanted to expand to 12, I’d bet Penn State would be one of their first choices, sure. But the Big East would have been in a much better shape at the time, and it’s possible they never want a 12th without an 11th. There is a 0% chance the Big East would not have been better off, and it’s insanity to suggest otherwise.

You are so sensitive. Drogs is a Cuse guy so I used Cuse as an example in his reasoning regarding the original big east conference. And maybe hawk is cleaer in his post tha I was, but psu was not coming in for football or anything related to football. It was for hoops and Pitt was and is light years better. Thats why Pitt came in over psu. All I am saying is that if psu was the savior everyone is saying it was, the football schools would have left in the eighties to form jopa’s conference. They wereball invited to do so and all said no.

Where did I do that? They looked out for their own interests. That’s fine. Just don’t act all high and mighty as if the basketball schools were bending over backwards for football. And anyone who didn’t have the foresight to see a football conference coming down the pipe was behind the times, which unfortunately became a staple of the Big East. Not to mention Pitt basketball was hardly anything to write home about before the Big East.

And if Syracuse is a “basketball school” because the football team had a bad period under Greg Robinson, than the majority of the “basketball schools” are just wastes of life.

And what is it with people continuing this “Syracuse was against Penn State” thing? Tranghese and many others involved have squashed that myth many, many times. Why people still bring this up is mind boggling. And yes, Georgetown, Villanova and St. John’s were the biggest in opposition to Penn State. That has been documented before, including in a New York Times article the other day-
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/sports/ncaabasketball/big-east-pays-the-price-for-not-embracing-football.html

Tranghese tried to tell the Big East’s university presidents and athletic directors as much as early as 1989 when he was Gavitt’s assistant. Gavitt thought the conference needed to bring Penn State into the fold. Penn State was an independent at the time, looking for the security of a conference.

The membership voted no, with St. John’s, Villanova and Georgetown leading the resistance. At the end of the meeting, Gavitt asked Tranghese what he thought about the decision. "I said, ‘We will all rue the day about this decision,’ " Tranghese said. "I understood how big football was. I didn’t understand how big it was going to become.

Listen, the basketball schools wanted what was best for them. That didn’t, in their view, include Penn State. That’s completely fine. No one is complaining about that. But let’s not pretend that’s what they’ve done the whole time in the same manner that Syracuse and Pittsburgh did in leaving for the ACC. There is no treason involved, the schools don’t owe each other as much as everyone wants them to owe each other.