By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Once upon a time there was a group of colleges in a cold, northern part of the land who decided they would join together for their own mutual good.
Shortly after reaching an agreement on how they would put this conglomerate together, they decided they needed a name. Since there were 10 of them, and as colleges went they were quite large, they thought that should be included in the name, sort of to give them a unique identity.
“Why not call ourselves the Big Ten?” someone named Woody suggested, and everyone agreed, even the man named Bo, who did not utter a peep in protest.
So it was that we had a conference named the Big Ten. Shortly thereafter a group of eight schools out West came together and formed a conference, too. Lacking originality, they decided on calling it the Big Eight. And they came a group from the land of cattle and sheep, who opted to be the Big Sky Conference.
Not to be done back East, a group of their schools merged and became the Big East, to be followed by the Big South.
Everyone, it seemed, was happy, for they all were big in their very own way, until the Big Eight said, “Wait a minute, we can be bigger and better than ever if we can add four schools.” And so they did, becoming the Big 12.
At that same time an independent football school in the East, led by a wise old man so fatherly that he was named Paterno, clearly a takeoff from the word “paternal”, which means fatherly, begged to be included in the Big Ten.
And so it was that they added his school in the dead of night, hoping no one would discover it, for they did not wish to change their name to the Big 11.
So it was that the world of college athletics was quite successful and content, until the Big Ten realized it is very difficult to run a conference with an odd number of teams and that 12 would work so much better, especially if you want to possess the ultimate goose that lays the golden egg of a championship game.
They courted a highly religious school with a dome made of gold but the school, like so many modern religious leaders, already had its own television contract and millions of contributors across the land, making it economically unfeasible for it to join.
But now the seed was planted and the Big Ten never really gave up on the idea of adding a 12th team.
What they did or didn’t do seemed to have little effect on anyone, considering the Big Ten Conference had become more or less obsolete in the world in which we now live.
But then one morning we awoke and they were at it again and someone noted that perhaps the most likely school the Big Ten could court would be the Panthers of Pittsburgh, a school which fits their model quite nicely both academically and athletically.
Suddenly the earth beneath West Virginia began to quake. It was one thing for the Atlantic Coast Conference to steal away Boston College, Miami and even nearby Virginia Tech, but should Pitt be courted into the Big Ten, it would be as dastardly an act as anyone could pull on West Virginia.
The Mountaineers had already lost Penn State as a rival when the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten. It had lost Virginia Tech when it left to join the ACC. Even Maryland was now on again and off again as a rival.
If Pitt were to go to the Big Ten, what would become of West Virginia? Indeed, the Panthers would be renewing their rivalry with Penn State and the fatherly coach from the middle of nowhere, which would ease their departure. They would be adding Ohio State and Michigan and Wisconsin and Michigan State and Iowa to their schedule, one in which they would not want to drop playing Notre Dame or Navy, either.
Could Pitt keep West Virginia on such a schedule? Would they?
As much as the schools dislike each other, as deep as the rivalry runs, they are of the same DNA as are brother and sister, always squabbling, perhaps, but with their athletic history so interrelated that to split them up would be dangerous to the survival of each.
It is now only talk, but it appears the Big Ten is going to make some kind of move and it probably will affect the Big East, for if it isn’t Pitt it could be Syracuse or Rutgers, and that would set in motion more turmoil in the fairytale world that is college football.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
