"1989: Penn State joins the Big Ten

In December of 1989, after nearly a decade of peace and relative quiet on the conference front, Penn State shocked the world of intercollegiate athletics by announcing they had accepted an invitation from the Big Ten to join for all sports, starting in the fall of 1990.

Penn State’s decision to join the Big Ten was surprising, because it took the Nittany Lions away from their eastern roots, and rivalries with Syracuse, West Virginia, Pittsburgh et al, to the Midwest. By going to the Big Ten, Penn State created a tidal wave of conference moves and shifts that carried on for years. At the time, the Nittany Lions were one of a small handful of heavy-hitting college football independents who could write their own ticket to any conference: PSU, Miami, Florida State, and Notre Dame were the jewels any conference would be proud to put in their crown.

On a second level were independent football teams such as West Virginia, Syracuse, Boston College and Pittsburgh, along with Temple, Virginia Tech, Louisville, Cincinnati, South Carolina, and others that would nicely round out any conference that could boast any of the big four as their cornerstone.

Penn State’s move started an expansion wave that was centered around five conferences: the SEC, the ACC, the Big East, the Metro, and an unnamed, unformed “Eastern Seaboard Conference” (ESB). The formation of a new ESB would require teams such as Syracuse to leave their current basketball-centric conferences, and with PSU, the giant of eastern football, gone to the Big Ten, the ESB had less of a chance of forming than of the other conferences expanding to snap up the independents."



[Post edited by Will Stewart at 09/12/2017 5:23PM]