Historical Portal: A vision becomes reality

Flipping conference realignment on its head with one simple move

Jun 11, 2025

Note: This is the fourth installment of our Historical Portal series - an alternate history experiment with some of the biggest what if’s in recent history. You can find the page hub of all the Historical Portal series stories here.

The year is 1982. We’re in University Park, Pennsylvania at Pennsylvania State University, better known as Penn State. We’re in the office of the man with, debatably, the most power on campus at that time: Joe Paterno.

You see, JoePa isn’t just the head football coach for the Nittany Lions. He’s also the athletic director overseeing all athletics. And he’s been cooking up something wild. Something outlandish.

Up until this point, Penn State has always been unaffiliated with these new-fangled conferences. But Paterno knew that couldn’t stand. College athletics was changing at this point. TV rights, although held by the NCAA at this point - the landmark Oklahoma Board of Regents v. NCAA case wouldn’t be heard by the Supreme Court until 1984 - were starting to burgeon.

And without a conference home, Penn State was starting to suffer. Football, of course, was fine. Independence suited them well and gave them plenty of windfall. But it wasn’t enough to support Olympic sports like wrestling, track, cross country, and others. Something needed to change.

So Paterno went to the drawing board. He thought about making his own league, floating the idea of an all-sports Eastern conference. He even met with Big Ten commissioner Wayne Duke alongside Penn State’s president, John Oswald, ahead of the 1980 Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State. Paterno’s vision, according to a 1984 article in The New York Times, was to unite all of the independent east-coast programs under one banner. Those teams: Penn State, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, West Virginia and Temple, with both Army and Navy teased. But it didn’t come to fruition.

Paterno was frustrated, but you can’t keep JoePa down long. He immediately turned his attention to the conference home for some of those Eastern Conference potential teams: the Big East.

In the 1980’s, the Big East wasn’t just the Catholic basketball powerhouse you see today. Back then, it still reigned as one of the - if not the - premier basketball conference with powerhouses like Georgetown and Villanova churning out NBA talent. But it also had some solid football programs that were included in Paterno’s Eastern Conference dream like Boston College, Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

In real life. Paterno went to the Big East in 1982 seeking entry into the conference for all non-football sports as opposed to their recently-departed Atlantic 10. He needed to secure six of eight members’ yes votes for entry. Only five voted yes, with dissenting votes coming from basketball-only schools Georgetown, St. John’s and Villanova.

But what if that wasn’t the case? What if Paterno was able to flip one of those votes and get the Nittany Lions into the Big East in 1982?

Let’s step into the Historical Portal.

Come meet the new home, same as the old home

Let’s start with which vote would’ve flipped to allow the Nittany Lions in. Based on all the reporting at the time, the basketball schools were worried that an influx of football talent would pull the conference’s eyes away from the hardwood onto the gridiron.

Of the eight members, the voting went mostly on party lines between football and non-football schools. Yes votes came from FBS schools Boston College, Syracuse and UConn, along with two non-football schools in Providence and Seton Hall, who discontinued their D-III program that season. Of the no votes, none of Georgetown, St. John’s or Villanova had a football team.

At least, not in 1982. Villanova did have a football team - one that was discontinued the year before for poor attendance and results. With the school pivoting away from football, they voted accordingly to keep their basketball-based interest at the forefront of the conference. After all, Penn State wasn’t a quality basketball program with a 15-12 record as independents in 1981-82.

In the background, Villanova’s alumni and students were incensed by the decision to shelve the Wildcat football program. It took just under four years for football to return to Villanova in 1984 for their Spring game and an official restart in 1985 in the Division III ranks. They later transitioned into Division I-AA, now known as the FCS, in 1987.

If one vote were to flip for a decidedly football powerhouse school like Penn State, I expect Villanova to be the one to flip. Perhaps the pressure for discontinuing football grows too large and the school’s powers that be decide to quiet the noise by paving a path for Big East football to start.

Speaking of, the Big East didn’t sponsor football in the 1980’s. It wasn’t until 1991 that the conference took to the gridiron officially when adding football-only members Rutgers, Temple, Virginia and Virginia Tech alongside full membership to Miami⁹.

So where did the Big East’s football members compete until 1991? Mostly as independents.

Remember, in a world where the Board of Regents case was either brand new or not even argued, media rights weren’t as big a piece of the puzzle as they are now. In fact, they were barely a piece of the puzzle at all. Up until the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling, the NCAA owned all the media rights for member institutions and negotiated directly with the television networks to secure game-by-game schedules. It was woefully underselling the big brands and limiting the number of times blue bloods could appear on television, limiting their revenue possibilities. It was a classic antitrust violation, one that was remedied in the Supreme Court’s decision in the case.

Once the case was decided upon, media rights moved away from the NCAA to the structure we have right now where conferences negotiate on behalf of their member schools. And, just as right now, independent schools could negotiate their own media deals. That’s why you see Notre Dame play on NBC/Peacock every week - the Irish have an incredibly lucrative deal with the network and they don’t have to share their treasure with any pesky conference mates.

Even with the Big East not sponsoring football, its member schools would’ve been fine. For Paterno’s Nittany Lions, literally nothing would change on the gridiron. They’d still have their run of dominance and two national championship wins in 1982 and 1986. For nearly a decade, the college football world remains completely unchanged.

Expand and Ascend

While independence was a viable way to live in the 1980’s college football world, it was quickly going out of style. The model wasn’t sustainable, especially as media deals started to grow for conference packages where networks could assure themselves quality matchups like Ohio State-Michigan, Oklahoma-Texas and USC-UCLA. Olympic sports, which were bankrolled by football’s revenue, were starting to stretch their budgets.

The Big East in 1991 saw that as a chance to take a swing, collecting independent programs like they were going out of style. And they were. The conference added independent powerhouse Miami, fresh off of the Howard Schnellenberger years, along with regional programs like Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Boston College, Syracuse, Virginia Tech and Rutgers. And it wasn’t just the Big East, the ACC nabbed Florida State. Arkansas and South Carolina joined the SEC. What was a 32-team strong independent coalition at the turn of the decade quickly dwindled down to nine in 2000.

In the real-life timeline, the death of the independent team and the Big East’s expansion explosion were set off by a familiar face in Joe Paterno and Penn State announcing a move to the the Big Ten in 1990 with the Nittany Lions officially competing in the conference starting in 1993. Then, the Big East panicked and added all their schools listed above. The SEC and ACC expanded. The SWC died. The first true wave of realignment happened and reshaped the entirety of college football.

But would that happen in our timeline? You could say the landscape was much more stable with Penn State firmly in the Big East. Despite an uncharacteristic 5-6 season in 1988, the Nittany Lions were still very much a national brand. And with a conference home already secured, they didn’t have to go hunting for one when the money started drying up. Instead, the Nittany Lions would’ve had the Big East media deal to fall back on to prop up their non-football sports while Paterno’s boys on the gridiron would’ve basked in independent glory, rolling in even more money for the school through football-only media deals.

Think how Notre Dame has it in the ACC. Their non-football sports have a home competing among some relatively nearby schools (ignore the asinine Pacific contingent) while football gets to sit back and count their cash coming from the NBC deal and CFP payouts.

While that’s appealing, it doesn’t help the other programs like Florida State, Miami and Pitt who are operating as true independents. They don’t have the conference homes for non-football sports and are struggling to make ends meet. We saw that same thing happen at Penn State in the real timeline at this time.

So the realignment craze continues to hit. Everyone ends up in their same homes, save for Penn State in the Big East instead of the Big Ten.

Would the Big Ten add another school? Probably not. The conference is notable for their insistence of new members carrying Association of American Universities (AAU) status. Its member schools were also notably against expanding, but Penn State provided the perfect situation with longtime AAU status and fitting into the Midwestern footprint, albeit a bit further East than before. In fact, even inviting the Nittany Lions to the Big Ten almost shattered the conference.

So, in our alternate 1993, the Big Ten stands at its original ten members. The ACC added two independent powers in Florida State and Miami.

Wait, Miami? As in, the Hurricanes that would go on to join the Big East? The very same. You see, Miami was added out of desperation from the Big East to stabilize its football side of the conference. Penn State already accomplished that much earlier and fits the footprint better. With the Nittany Lions essentially filling the same void that Miami did for the early 1990’s Big East, the conference elects to stay within their footprint and Miami, still looking for a conference home, fits better in the ACC overall.

So, that leaves us with the Big East’s football arm featuring Penn State, Syracuse, Rutgers, Boston College, West Virginia, Pitt, Virginia Tech and Temple. Not too far off from Paterno’s Eastern Conference vision, is it?

At the risk of repeating way too much Big East content in this season of Historical Portal content, we won’t get too into the weeds of how the conference would play out. Instead, we’ll focus on the overall effects of moving Penn State out of the Big Ten and into a new and improved Big East.

In our timeline, once the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten, the win totals jumped back up. Would they see that same success in the Big East? Probably, as it wasn’t as much finding a conference home as Paterno’s teams rebounding that led to those record jumps.

Our first major domino comes in 1994, when Paterno’s Nittany Lions rolled to a perfect 12-0 record in the Big Ten. In the real timeline, that landed Penn State in the Rose Bowl, where they notched a 38-20 win over Oregon and finished second in the AP Poll.

In this new timeline, though, Penn State isn’t in the Big Ten. It’s in the Big East, a conference that just so happens to have a tie-in with the Orange Bowl. That means the 1995 Orange Bowl would’ve been a true national championship, pitting No. 1 Nebraska against No. 2 Penn State.

The real timeline has a hotly-contested debate on whether or not Penn State should’ve received a split share of the national championship alongside Nebraska. Not here. In our timeline, it’s going to be solved on the field.

Nebraska didn’t play well in the Orange Bowl, getting bailed out in a massive comeback that many at the time were chalking up to ref ball. Penn State, in their Rose Bowl, played incredibly well behind a standout rushing performance by Ki-Jana Carter. Based on that, I’d wager that Penn State would come out on top against Tom Osborner’s Cornhuskers.

Penn State fans, rejoice. You’ve now won the 1994 National Championship.

Fresh off the heels of that national championship, the Big East announces that Notre Dame has joined the conference for all non-football sports starting in the 1995 season. The conference is looking to become one of the strongest in the nation across multiple sports.

The Rift

As Penn State continues to roll as the preeminent power in the Big East, there’s some issues brewing below the surface in the conference.

There were two distinct factions within the Big East - the basketball teams and the football teams. The basketball teams were growing increasingly frustrated by the conference’s long dalliance with football. They wanted to go back to the days of their hardwood dominance, with the pillars of the Big East looking like Patrick Ewing instead of Ki-Jana Carter. The football programs wanted to keep pushing the envelope and growing their football revenue. But, more importantly, they were seen as second-rate citizens sometimes.

Programs like Temple were admitted as football-only members. Others like Georgetown, St. John’s and Villanova were non-football. There were essentially two conferences running: the one that competed on Saturdays in the fall and the one that competed in all their other sports.

Even though on the field and on the hardwood, the conference seemed to be a pillar of the Power Six at the time, the backrooms and meetings behind the scenes belied a different story. This was a broken conference.

Also brewing at that point in time was a battle to be waged between the two preeminent East Coast conferences - the Big East and the ACC. Both leagues sat below the 12 members required for a conference championship, and with media deals starting to soar, that extra game would mean a lot of green for the conference and its members.

Which conference was going to give? The Big East was looking like a solid conference, but the ACC had the historical pedigree of being a better conference. At this time, there wasn’t a Power Five of big conferences. Instead, it was the Power Six with the Big East included and earning a BCS bowl bid for a New Year’s Six game.

In the real timeline, 2003 spelled the true beginning of the end for the Big East, as Miami and Virginia Tech bolted to the ACC, who would come calling a few more times to pick clean the carcass of the once-proud Power Six league. Would that happen again here?

First, Miami is already in the ACC, so they sit at 10 schools, needing two more to get that sweet, sweet extra television revenue. Despite the success of Penn State in the Big East, I feel like the ACC still seems like the premier conference of the two. So, they come calling to Big East schools. Just like in the real timeline, the ACC targets Virginia Tech - fresh off an exciting Michael Vick tenure - and Syracuse, but ultimately decides against the Orange. I think they also target a big-name school like Penn State to round out the conference.

But do they leave? I think Virginia Tech does. After all, it gives them a conference home for the Commonwealth Cup against Virginia and they frankly fit into the footprint of the ACC better than the Big East. They also nab Boston College, much to the chagrin of the Big East. But Penn State?

Paterno is still in charge here, and boy, this conference really seems like the embodiment of his Eastern Conference dream, minus a few schools. The Nittany Lions have respectable conference homes for all sports and a great scheduling arrangement. Plus, they have built-in rivalries with in-state programs like Pittsburgh and Temple. What could the ACC offer them that the Big East didn’t already have? The Nittany Lions say thanks, but no thanks and stay in the Big East. Virginia Tech is the only departure, giving the ACC 11 members and leaving the Big East with seven.

Just, a different seven, since Temple was given the boot based on poor on-field performance as a football-only member. In their place, UConn was given full membership into the league.

But that was the football contingent. And they felt that other conferences were rightly planning around the true money-making sport in football. They believed that the Big East was falling behind with its insistence on basketball-first, leading to a host of football-only memberships. Reports at the time indicate that the football-playing members of the Big East were considering splitting off to form an all-sports conference of their own. Even commissioner Mike Tranghese at the 2003 Big East Football Media Days said “We can’t be evaluated until we know who we are.”

The writing is on the wall for a conference split. Especially, with the league having its eyes on a football-based expansion targeting that conference championship game.

It doesn’t come in 2003, though. Instead, the league continues to be a conglomerate of football and basketball schools. In all reality, it’s truly two conferences.

For the time being, the Big East adds three members in Louisville, South Florida and Cincinnati, bringing their football membership up to 10. Both the ACC and Big East sit just a few short members shy of the 12-team conference championship requirement.

Jerry and The End

We skip ahead to 2010. Much of the same still existed during our latest time jump - West Virginia balls out under Rich Rod, Brian Kelly builds Cincinnati into a contender, Paterno keeps Penn State relevant and strong, rattling off six straight bowl placements and four wins. They have a great 2005, but nothing was going to unseat the collision course between Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush’s USC and Vince Young’s Texas in the 2005 Rose Bowl National Championship.

Behind the scenes, the rift between the football schools and the basketball schools was growing. The so-called Catholic Seven - basketball-only DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall and Villanova - were growing weary of the consistent griping and jockeying from the football sector of the conference. Especially as they continue to add inferior basketball schools to satisfy the football broadcast machine.

Ahead of the 2010 season, the all-important conference championship game became a driving point for the Power Six. The Big Ten announced it was looking to move from 10 (in our timeline, remember, no Penn State) to 12, while the then-PAC-10 was looking to do the same. It didn’t take long, as Nebraska kicked off the realignment craze by becoming the Big Ten’s 11th (in our timeline) member in early June.

The PAC-10 kicked into high gear as they added Colorado, but kept courting other schools.

Realignment was suddenly a hot topic, especially as the ACC loses Maryland to the Big Ten. Once again, the showdown between the Big East and ACC takes center stage.

The Big East started flirting with programs to get to that magic 12-team number. Their primary target was TCU, a football-driven move that definitely spurned the basketball-only schools. Doubly so when the football-playing members started pressuring Villanova into jumping up from the FCS ranks to join their conference mates on the gridiron. The conference also was looking into UCF - the rival of member South Florida - as well as having teams like Temple and Houston being considered as backup options.

All of this movement was planning to come to a head at the April 2011 Big East meetings, where all the athletic directors and university presidents could get together and figure out what’s best for the conference - including a possible split between the football and basketball schools.

Too bad the wheels fell off just before then.

March 31, 2011 marks a day all hardened Penn State fans know well. It’s when Sara Ganim, a reporter for The Patriot-News, flipped not just the university, but the collective nation on its head with reports that former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was the subject of a grand jury investigation. Things would only get worse from there.

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you know how the Jerry Sandusky scandal played out. For those who don’t, Sandusky was charged with 21 felonies, athletic director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz faced criminal charges for covering up Sandusky’s abuse, Paterno is fired after it was revealed he also covered up the abuse, and the entire university was thrust into disarray. The PSU Collegian has a great recap in case you wanted to see the full timeline.

With the worst coming in November, the April 2011 Big East meetings feature some talk and worry about Sandusky, but not too much. With Penn State still staying and spearheading the conference, things can stay strong. The conference weathers some calls from the ACC, believing in their plan to expand and create a better league.

Just like in our timeline, TCU agrees to join the Big East. They now have 11 teams. UCF seems to be the natural addition, giving South Florida their rival, so the Knights get an invite as well. That gives the league their long-wished for 12 program membership.

Then, the 2011 season kicks off. And the wheels fully come off.

The Sandusky scandal breaks fully, with all of its putrid details out in the open. The Big East is now showing serious cracks in the foundation.

The Catholic Seven - remember them? - take this as an excuse to shove off the football schools, forming their own hardwood-focused conference. The Big East media deal falls through without the basketball arm, especially as the league is trying to strong-arm ESPN for more money. That money goes dry when ESPN commits $3 billion to the PAC-12, up from the reported $1.3 billion on the table for the Big East.

Without the media deal and the Penn State scandal looming over the league, realignment becomes a hot topic. TCU and UCF back out of their deals. The ACC poaches away Louisville, Pittsburgh and Syracuse. UConn follows the basketball contingent, focusing their efforts on their championship-winning program instead of the middling football offering that now plays as an independent. West Virginia wins the race for the Big 12. Rutgers is off to the Big Ten.

It’s easy to think that blame would rest on Penn State for the conference’s failure. As Cincinnati and South Florida are left to pick up the scraps, they look down on the battered and beaten Nittany Lions. When they raid Conference USA to form the American, Penn State isn’t offered a spot. The Nittany Lions are independent once again.

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The Wheel of Time

Even Penn State couldn’t get the Big East to survive its downfall. Or get Notre Dame to pick a conference like the Big East so desperately wanted.

Following the implosion of the league, having the Nittany Lions go on as an independent just feels right. It’s how they spent most of their existence, after all.

The Bill O’Brien years would be tough on Penn State. The university would have to broker a media deal out of nothing, which would likely be incredibly difficult. With the Sandusky scandal looming over the school, who knows if they could get any biters. I’d expect them to sign a modest deal, nothing too extraordinary.

But O’Brien worked magic in Happy Valley in his two years. We’d still see him bring in gluts of talent because he’s that kind of coach. With scheduling deals likely in place with Big Ten and ACC schools, alongside some Group of Fives and Notre Dame, Penn State could survive as an independent.

If this is how the wheels of alternate history spit out the alternate future of Penn State, I think they’re in a good spot. Would they join a conference? Probably. It’s hard to assume they don’t get picked up by either the Big Ten or ACC following the PAC-12’s implosion. Maybe the ACC adding Penn State makes them leave Stanford and Cal out west?

Either way, modern Penn State would look a whole lot different. As will the entirety of college football history. All because little old Villanova way back in 1982 decided to take a chance and let Penn State into a basketball conference.