What If... Joe Paterno's Eastern Conference was Created?

When doing research for my Big East video a long time ago, I came across a couple scenarios in which Penn State desperately tried to join the conference before electing to stay an independent up until their admission into the Big Ten. Oddly enough, this came at a time where famous coach Joe Paterno, divisive as he is now, moonlighted as the college's athletic director, before any major conference movement was made. While the Nittany Lions didn't get the votes necessary to join the basketball-focused conference, it wasn't Paterno's last effort on joining a primarily eastern league. As soon as the Big East voted them out, he devised a plan to create his own conference, featuring some independent schools and a whole lot of northeast flavor.

The Nittany Lions would be joined by West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Temple, Rutgers, Syracuse, Boston College, and Maryland. The only issue is that some of these teams weren't keen to leave their existing conferences, and Pitt joining the Big East put the final kibosh on the conference being made.

Of course, things ended the way they did in real life. But the question has been posed before: what if this conference was created? What if an eastern league had been made that focused solely on rivalry and familiarity? What if the Big East had been replaced by this new league? What would that mean for the ACC or Big Ten? Big 12? Joe Paterno? College sports in the northeast in general?

As always, tell me what you think would have occurred had this conference been created in the comments section below. Remember to be civil and kind with each other when discussing! Since this is all theory, nobody is any more correct than the other. Let's keep my comments section clean and toxicity free, like it has been for so long.

No aspect of this video belongs to me. Video, sourced through the universities of Temple, Boston College, and West Virginia, as well as their broadcast partners in 1989, 1983, and 1988, respectively, and the Big East conference is utilized under Fair Use for the purpose of education. Music is sourced from YouTube's free audio library. Text excerpts are sourced from their digital mediums and have their titles listed on-screen.