I am sometimes amazed at how short-sighted people can be. The Big East was founded in 1979 as primarily a basketball conference, but it contained a number of D-I football schools. Joe Paterno and Penn State had been clamoring for a football conference made up of Eastern schools, and in 1982 Penn State applied for membership to the Big East conference...was the Big East going to become a football conference as well?
No. Penn State's application was rejected, and it took ten years for the Big East to play football. Since then, the Big East has become the ugly step-child of the BCS system. Or whore, since it seems willing to accept anyone in an effort to keep its place at the BCS table. If we had a time machine, let us re-create a possible Big East football league:
Penn State
Pittsburgh
West Virginia
Syracuse
Boston College
Rutgers
Virginia Tech
Miami
Florida State
Army
Navy
Temple
What a colossal league that would've been. Would the schools bolt to greener pastures?