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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4317800, member: 289"] - Firstly, let's not turn JoePa in a heroic visionary. There were proposals for an Eastern football conference for years before Joe's and he always said "No!" Why? "Because it wouldn't be good for Penn State." There were rumors of a national super conference of the top schools even then he didn't want Penn State dragged down by being through of as an 'eastern' team. When the Lions won a big intersectional game, he would always be asked if this "stuck a blow for eastern prestige" and he would respond by saying that "we don't think of ourselves as an eastern team. We think of ourselves as Penn State." Then the momentum for a national super-conference died down and he became athletic directors. Now he had to figure a way to pump up the basketball program's revenues. The opponents he dominated in football had formed the Big East basketball conference and were making big money off of that, (thank you, ESPN). He basically demanded to be let into the Big East but the basketball onlies turned him down. That's when he came up with his own plan for an eastern football conference and again basically demanded that State's traditional football rivals leave the Big East and joined the Paterno conference - for all sports. When they turned him down, that's when he demanded a 2 out of 3 set up where Penn State would get two home games and the rivals one, to make up for State's lack of basketball revenue. When that got turned down he contacted the Big Ten. - Football started in the northeast, then spread in stages to the rest of the country over several decades. It became a national sport only in the 20's. Eastern schools were still prominent but declined when there was an academic reaction against football. When two platoon football came, the large state universities started to dominate it because they were in a better position to recruit the army of players it required. The eastern schools other than Penn State didn't have to resources or wish to commit them to football in the way the big state schools did. - The fact that northern high schools play fewer games and, for the most part, don't seem to emphasize the sport as much as they do in the south is certainly a big factor. I think it's less that northern high schools lost interest than it is that high schools in the south turned it into a major source of revenue and they have produced more and more 'finished' players than the north can. I suspect they also force them to specialize in the sport more than is done in the north, (and I agree that that's not really a good thing.) Northern teams try to recruit in the south, but they are getting the southern 'C' listers and occasionally a 'B' lister while the southern schools get the 'A' listers and most of the 'B's. - They always used to say "Recruit size and strength in the north and speed and agility in the south: northern athletes are indoors 6 months a year - they are going to be lifting weights. Southern athletes are running around outside 12 months a year." And it was true - northern teams then to be big, burly, grind-it-out teams while southern teams ran wide or passed the ball and gang-tackled on defense. But when two platoon football came in and rosters doubled in size, you could no longer just recruit players from your area who were always aware of your program, (Ben never had a key player who wasn't from New York or an adjacent state). You have to recruit nation-wide for unlimited substitution football. To do that, you have to dazzle recruits when you get them to take a visit. Facilities that were decades old, even if they were sufficient to prepare the team to play, didn't dazzle and the facilities wars began. A major part of it has been fancy weight rooms. Everyone has them now - and everyone has size and strength now. It's like giving everyone a million dollars - a million dollars wouldn't make anyone rich. It would just be a minimum amount needed to survive. it eliminated the north's advantage. The south's advantage - speed and agility - is still there. [/QUOTE]

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