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NEW YORK -- Penn State coach Joe Paterno said Thursday night that he has pushed within the Big Ten conference to expand it to 12 teams as a method of leveling the playing field in college football.

"We go into hiding for six weeks," Paterno said, referring to the hiatus between the end of the Big Ten regular season and the BCS bowls. The other major FBS conferences play into the first weekend of December.

"Everybody else is playing playoffs on television," Paterno said. "You never see a Big Ten team mentioned. So I think that's a handicap.

"I've tried to talk to the Big Ten people about, 'Let's get a 12th team -- Syracuse, Rutgers, Pitt -- we could have a little bit of a playoff.'"

Paterno spoke to several college football reporters before a booster meeting at the Plaza Hotel. The comments came in response to a question on whether a team from the Northeast could win a national championship. The 1986 Nittany Lions are the last No. 1 team from the region.

"The only [Northeastern] team that's got a shot would be us, and yet we've got a tough job because the Big Ten is not as visible in the key times as the Southeastern Conference and the Big 12."

Asked what sort of response he had received, Paterno raised his eyebrows in a facial shrug.

"You know, it's a conference that's dominated by a couple of people," Paterno said. "If I start talking, they're polite, but they snicker.

"They don't know I know they're snickering, but they're polite. ...I wish I were younger and going to be around [another] 20 years."

With the conference commissioners holding so much power, Paterno said, the whole landscape could change if two or three people change.

PSUSyr5

Wednesday May 6 2009, 02:58 PM

I agree with you on most things here. Yeah, Big Ten doesn't need a 12th team (would they then call the conference the Big Dozen?), but it does make sense. I mean, they already don't have a round robin schedule, and are the only major conference that doesn't have either round robin or a title game. Having the layoff as big as it is (which will be fixed a little bit by having byes into the schedule sometime in the future) definitely hurts as well. I'm also against the conference title games, but again, if it's not going to be round robin, at least there's a way to make it so teams don't get a conference title just because they just so happened to not play a power team.

As far as I know, there isn't a true network called the Big East network, it's simply ESPN regional tv that happens to have Big East games. At least that's my understanding.

The team I believe Big Ten should go after is Temple. First off, it gets the MAC back down to 12 teams which makes more sense than 13, at least for football. Temple is a full member of the Atlantic 10 and I don't know too much about that conference, except that they also have more than 10 full members. That said, I believe the team most likely to go would be Syracuse. They were ready to bolt for the ACC years ago, but a funny thing happened: they didn't get an invitation, BC did. If they were ready to leave then, they'd probably be ready to jump now. Syracuse doesn't really have a Big East football rival...maybe Pitt, but that's about it. They play West Virginia for a trophy, but no way is that near the rivalry of Pitt-WVU or even Cinci-Louisville.

If it's Temple, no real restructuring of conferences needs to be done. If it's Syracuse (or Pitt or Rutgers or any other Big East school), then we might just see another conference shake up like the ACC raid and the following Big East restructure created years ago. Probably not as big as the ACC/Big East thing, but still I'd imagine quite a few conferences would be impacted.

ESPN

 

Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez says the Big Ten will soon make a more aggressive push toward adding a 12th member.

Speaking to Wisconsin's athletic board on Friday, Alvarez, the former longtime Badgers football coach, said the conference already has investigated possibilities for expansion "from all over the country." And though he places no timetable on the search, Alvarez thinks conference commissioner Jim Delany will respond to a group of athletic directors and coaches who want expansion.

"I have a sense he is going to take this year to really be more aggressive about it," Alvarez told the board. "I just think everybody feels [expansion] is the direction to go, coaches and administrators."

Penn State football coach Joe Paterno has been the most vocal advocate of a 12th Big Ten team, and he has support from several of his fellow coaches.

A 12th team would allow the Big Ten to split into divisions and hold a conference championship game. The Big Ten typically ends its football season two weeks before the other BCS conferences, though the addition of a permanent bye week in 2010 will shrink the gap by a week.

ESPN

 

The Big Ten Conference will actively explore the possibility of expansion in the next 12-18 months, according to a statement released Tuesday from the league's Council of Presidents/Chancellors.

At a Dec. 6 meeting at the Big Ten offices, the council (COP/C) asked league commissioner Jim Delany to begin the process of identifying and evaluating options for possible expansion from 11 to 12 teams. The Big Ten last expanded in 1989 with Penn State and hasn't seriously pursued the possibility since 1999, when it had discussions with Notre Dame.

"The COP/C believes that the timing is right for the conference to once again conduct a thorough evaluation of options for conference structure and expansion," the statement reads.

After the evaluation period, Delany and his staff, in conjunction with the league's athletic directors and presidents, will decide whether to make a recommendation for expansion. At that point, they will inform Michigan State president Lou Ann K. Simon, the chair of the Council of Presidents/Chancellors, as well as the commissioner of the affected conference before pursuing a specific school.

"Only after these notices have occurred will the Big Ten engage in formal expansion discussions with other institutions," the statement reads. "This process will allow the Big Ten to evaluate options, while respecting peer conferences and their member institutions."

The movement to expand the Big Ten has gained momentum in recent months.

ESPN

 

The Big Ten's decision to study expansion brings back an oft-asked question -- would Notre Dame consider joining the conference, which includes a number of its regional football rivals?

The answer is no, athletic director Jack Swarbrick told the Chicago Tribune.

"Our strong preference is to remain the way we are," Swarbrick said, according to the report. "Independence is a big part of the tradition of the program and our identity. We'd sure like to try to maintain it."

Notre Dame, which declined Big Ten membership in 1999, is one of three remaining major college football independents, along with Navy and Army. The Fighting Irish play in the Big East in other sports, including men's and women's basketball, and in the CCHA in ice hockey.

Swarbrick acknowledged that the major football conferences make even more money from their own media contracts than the $9 million Notre Dame is paid annually by NBC for the football rights. In the Big Ten, TV and radio rights fees generate $20 million a year for the schools.

But Swarbrick said the football program considers factors other than revenue, according to the Tribune.

"All of this has a lot more to do with our priorities than it does with business issues," Swarbrick said, according to the Tribune. "Our independence is tied up in a lot of the rivalries we have. We play Navy every year and have the tradition of USC weekends. Frankly, it works pretty well to play USC in October at home and in November at their place."

Notre Dame is not the only school that could be courted by the Big Ten. Missouri also previously has been mentioned as a potential expansion choice for the conference, due to geographic and academic factors.