ALTOONA, Pa. -- But, Rutgers will add the New York TV market. That's what we heard. That was the reasoning. Competitiveness and common sense be damned.
Gotta chase the almighty dollar. Or in this case, the almighty TV viewer.
Yeah right, like sports fans in New York care about Rutgers.
The Big Ten's decision still feels wrong nine years later. It still angers me, not only as a lifelong Syracuse basketball fan, but as a college sports fan in general, and someone who covers Penn State.
Rutgers should not be in the Big Ten.
Maryland should not be in the Big Ten.
The league should have added Pitt and Syracuse instead.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. And I don't give a damn about TV markets or extending the league's footprint or anything else. Obviously, those were the reasons the Big Ten chose Rutgers and Maryland when it expanded in 2012.
Has it worked out financially as well as the Big Ten would have liked? We can't know for sure, because we don't see all the financials. But I can surmise that Syracuse would have brought more of a New York TV market than Rutgers. While I can't necessarily make the same argument for Pitt over Maryland -- because Penn State already brought the Pittsburgh TV market to the Big Ten -- it still doesn't change my stance on any of this.
Rutgers doesn't belong in the Big Ten, because it never earned entry into the prestigious and wealthy conference through its play on the field -- in football or basketball, but really this is all about football.
Rutgers played in the first college football game way back in 1869, and yet it has appeared in only 10 bowl games. Ever. How ridiculous is that?
I could go on and on listing the myriad ways Rutgers has never been relevant in college football, save for a few rare instances. But anybody who knows anything about college football already knows that.
The Rutgers athletic department also has embarrassed itself and the Big Ten on numerous occasions.
Rutgers was officially added to the league on Nov. 20, 2012, and less than a month later, men's basketball coach Mike Rice was caught on tape abusing his players and was fired. Football coach Kyle Flood was fired on Nov. 29, 2015 after an altercation with a professor, and AD Julie Hermann also was fired that same day following numerous embarrassing situations within the department.
None of this is new, and I've written about all of it several times before. Because I'm reminded during Penn State-Rutgers week every year how much I dislike having this team in the Big Ten instead of Pitt and Syracuse.
We all would love Penn State to play Pitt more often. It can't really happen much now because the teams are in different leagues and face different financial situations. But man, if Pitt were in the Big Ten, think about how great it would be to jumpstart that football rivalry, and we'd also get to see two basketball meetings every year.
Syracuse would be better off in the Big Ten for basketball, which is my primary interest, and for football. The money from the league would help that program, as well as Pitt, compete at a higher level.
Instead, Rutgers won the college athletics lottery when it was handed a winning ticket by the Big Ten.
We know now that the Big Ten places heavy emphasis on its schools being members of the Association of American Universities, made up of most of the top education schools in the country. Pitt is in the AAU, so it could have been eligible for the Big Ten, but again, the league already felt it had the Pittsburgh TV market with Penn State.
Syracuse is not in the AAU, so it probably never had much chance of getting into the Big Ten. And never will in future expansion, either, unless it raises its standards to become an AAU member.
The good news about Rutgers is that it has developed a solid men's basketball program, which adds something to the Big Ten from a competitive standpoint. Major props to coach Steve Pikiell for the work he's done there.
Greg Schiano made the football program very competitive during his first go-around, when Rutgers was in the Big East, and he's trying to do the same during his second stint. The Scarlet Knights went 3-6 in his first season last year and are 5-5 heading into Saturday's game at Beaver Stadium.
Even a struggling Penn State team that has dropped four of five is favored by 18 points over Rutgers. The Nittany Lions are 29-2 all-time against Rutgers, which won the first meeting back in 1918 and only one other since then (in 1988). Penn State has won the last 14 meetings, and only one was by less than double digits (13-10 win in 2014).
So, as you're digesting all of those numbers and expecting another lopsided Penn State victory Saturday, try not to think too much about how this actually could be a Penn State vs. Pitt matchup this week, or even Syracuse.
Because when I think about that, it just makes me loathe the fact that Rutgers is in the Big Ten.
