Big Ten Conference should be changed to Big East Conference? (Ohio, teams)
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I think all conferences should be named without a number (like the SEC and ACC did). Conference realignment is not over and who knows how many teams the PAC 12, BIG 12 and BIG 10 will have 10 years from now. We could have 'Pacific Coast Conference', 'Great Lakes Conference', 'Great Plains Conference'...I remember the Big 8 -- gone. The Southwest Conference -- gone. The Verdigris Valley -- gone. So changing Conference names is not unheard of.
No . Other than Maryland , Rutgers and Penn State all the schools are located in the Midwest or the Great Lakes ( except maybe for Ohio State which is more in the Upper Ohio Valley)
The entire debate seems ridiculous in the light of the fact that the "Big 10" was originally founded as (and is still officially named) the Western Conference -- much as Chicago's biggest golf tournament used to be called the Western Open.
Speaking strictly for myself, I graduated from Penn State, and attended during the first years of the Paterno era -- two undefeated and untied teams, neither of which even got a chance to play with a national championship on the line, It was a time when, in the mindset of many sportswriters not identified with the media Establishment, any college east of Ohio and north of the Potomac was automatically lumped in with the service academies and the Ivy League. It was the time of Richard Nixon's faux pas in which he proclaimed Texas a National Champion -- then tried to cover his tracks by awarding a "duplicate" title; as Lyndon Jonson himself observed, this merely made Texas Number One and kept Pennsylvania Democratic.
My own memories of life in Happy Valley in the years 1967-72 invoke a culture far more in line with the "megaversities" of the day than of the faux intellectualism which is currently rampant. There was a saying at the time that "the Midwest begins at Pittsburgh", but a lot of us would have said it began at Allentown. We were there to get an education (and stay out of the draft for another four or five years) and we didn't expect the cushier amenities, elitism, and Political Correctness of the present day.
Nearly thirty years later, I spent about a year living in Omaha and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the perennial "Big 8" contender also had to deal with an identity crisis of sorts -- also that the Cornhuskers shared a couple of traits with the Lions, most notably an early and intense tradition of welcoming "walk-ons", few changes among coaching staff, and a practice of rehabilitating a couple of alums who'd made mistakes (Nebraska's Johnny Rogers and PSU's Randy Crowder). So I found it particularly gratifying that the two schools were the first welcomed into the expanded "Big 10".
Should Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Maryland and, hopefully, West Virginia and/or Syracuse find full assimilation into a "greater Big 10", that's fine with me; they also bore some of the burden against supposedly "Eastern" schools back in the early days. Beyond that, other conferences are a more appropriate match.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 12-08-2015 at 05:44 PM..
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