Mike Poorman is a senior lecturer in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism in Penn State’s College of Communications. He has covered Nittany Lion football for the Collegian, the Centre Daily Times, the Associated Press and Blue White Illustrated. In his column today he retells JoePa’s telling of how Eastern Football came apart at the start of the Big East, and how he pushed for an all-sports league. I’ve always heard Villanova blamed for keeping Penn State out of Big East basketball, but I guess Joe is a reliable source

On Joe Paterno’s Eastern football:

Joe tried to change it in the 1980s, by imploring Syracuse, Pitt, UConn, Boston College and West Virginia to buy into his dream and abandon the Big East, which was formed in 1979.

“I wanted the thing” (all-sports conference), Paterno recalled on Tuesday. “So I kept working at it, and then of course the people that pulled the rug from us were the Pitt people. They ended up going to the Big East for the basketball. They were the ones that…because we had five, six teams. If Pitt had come in, BC would have come in and Syracuse would have come in.”

In Paterno’s retelling of the story, Big East power brokers Jake Crouthamel, the Syracuse athletic director, and Dave Gavitt, the Big East commissioner, are also painted as villains.

Now, it seems as if Paterno finally wants bygones to be bygones. Hard to believe, though.

“But hey, what do you do?” Paterno shrugged, the vitriol finally drained from him, at least on the outside. “We ended up in the Big Ten, so why should I be mad. It’s been pretty good for us.”

Still, it ain’t Eastern football.