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Message: [QUOTE="cto, post: 159820, member: 412"] I posted this story more than 10 years ago, but I am telling it again because it has some interesting aspects to it... I belong to an organization of senior corporate communications and public affairs officers called (I know this will sound dumb) "The Wisemen." (At least one other poster here belongs to the same group). Anyhow, the entire purpose of this organization is to hold seven dinner meetings a year with "interesting" speakers. Maybe 95 percent of the speakers (all of whom speak for free) are from the media or government/politics (e.g., NYC mayors, NYS governors, editors of NY Times and WSJ, former Presidents, prominent TV journalists, etc). About 10 years ago, our speaker was Joe Paterno (one of our members, who was a member of the PSU Board of Trustees and a big PSU supporter, invited him). Even though we had had such speakers as Richard Nixon (in practically his first speaking event after he resigned), the biggest draw of all was JoePa. The dinner kept selling out, and it kept being moved to larger rooms until the Harvard Club ran out of "larger rooms." That showed me what a fascination JoePa had on the consciousness of people who were not PSU fans -- and not even necessarily college football fans. Because I have a reputation as a college sports fan, the guy who arranged for JoePa's appearance asked me to be JoePa's dinner partner. Therefore, I sat next to him for two hours. I don't remember the specifics of what he said in his public remarks and in the public Q&A, except it was mainly about the "PSU Way" (or whatever he called it) and why it was so successful at PSU. What I do remember, however, are parts of our private conversation. He seemed enthralled with the fact that I was a woman who was a serious Syracuse sports fan and who knew something about why PSU was not a member of the Big East (or who at least knew enough to ask him about it). In essence, he was still very bitter about the way the Big East was set up [B]without[/B] PSU. He had nothing but praise for Jake Crouthamel for supporting PSU, and nothing but disdain for the Big East politics that eventually prevailed. I can clearly remember him saying ... "Penn State, Syracuse, Pitt, West Virginia, Maryland, Boston College, etc ... What a great conference that would have been." Obviously I then asked him whether he would have stayed in such a conference had the Big 10 come calling. His response: "Those were our traditional rivals. I felt that was where we belonged." Anyhow... It's a story that I hadn't thought of in many years. But just wanted to mention it today. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?