I agree with you except this is a bit of a stretch. Do you have any support for this statement?

Actually, Baylor, affiliated with the Southern Baptists, is a larger and politically stronger institution in Texas than the Disciples of Christ TCU. How does one think Baylor got into the Big12 in the first place? It took a little more than just then Governor Ann Richard's pull.

So what some team had a national championship many decades ago. That is for the history files and praise to be delivered at reunions. SMU was as high as #2 in the 80s and the program got canned a bit shortly afterward. USF or Georgia Southern didn't even have footballs not so many years ago. There is the Gestalt factor of the "here and now", not the time when former players, administrators, etc. have long left the scene.

This is definetely for another thread and I am probably sure its been discussed before but does anyone forsee a chance of a BCS or pseudo-BCS school getting the death penalty like SMU did?

The NCAA just doesnt have the legal authority to call people to testify, right? Maybe I am mistaken but that was one of the problems with the NCAA investigation with OSU and Clarrett - Clarrett didn't testify and wasnt legally required to do so?

PSU record and its over the hill coach JOKE PA have killed its lure in the NE.Your tv ratings are contray to reality in the NE.The affilation of Army,Navy and ND also significantly help the BE in football.

Panther97SC, isn't it amazing how many of us go off on tangents and deviate from the subject line of the thread?

I am not sure on the contents of the death penalty rule as it now stands. I am certain, it is still in the infractions section of the by-laws for repeat offenders whereby serious violations are continuing, or the school has refused, against good faith, to comply with probation requirements. Obviously, such has an appeals process as well.

Individual schools, groups, and conferences have taken the NCAA to court. I don't know if the NCAA has filed in legal forums against one of its own members.

Policing member schools has been an internal operation of the organization, but issues can get into the courts when individual schools or even one person has a grievance against set policies, interpretations, or certain sanctions. Certain conferences have imposed sanctions against their own individual members too, within the framework of the NCAA umbrella.

I am sure some other posters have deeper and more thorough information on this. I would like to see other comments. Again, excellent question, Panther97SC.

I don't have any scientific polls or TV ratings info to point to, but Penn State is closer to Pittsburgh than Philly and is able to sellout a 100,000-plus seat stadium every week no matter who they are playing while Pitt has only been able to sellout 65,000 seats at Heinz Field for games against West Virginia and Notre Dame. This is also based on conversations I've had with my relatives who live in Pennsylvania (and have no allegiance to either PSU or Pitt).

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I have a feeling that in a typical year, Penn State draws more interest and media coverage in Pittsburgh than Pitt. It's possible that Pitt might have drawn more coverage the last couple of years because they have been performing better than PSU, yet how did the atmosphere in the city of Pittsburgh around Pitt compare to the atmosphere in the city when Penn State was contending for national championships in the not-so-distant past?

A comparison: I'm a White Sox fan from Chicago and believe that the Sox have received more coverage than the Cubs this year because the Sox are in contention. However, the frenzy around the Cubs when they made playoffs in 2003 dwarfs the type of coverage the Sox have received this year. Thus, this exemplifies how the Cubs are more popular than the Sox in Chicago - all things being equal, the Cubs will draw more interest than the Sox.

All things being equal, does PSU draw more interest than Pitt in Pittsburgh? My educated guess is yes. However, a person from Pittsburgh, preferably someone who doesn't have a rooting interest in either school, would be able to shed more light on this.

A few down years for PSU doesn't change its status as the most popular program in the northeast. A couple of good years for a BE school doesn't make it into a TV market share powerhouse. More than pro sports or even college basketball, the power (and corresponding attractiveness to TV) of a college football program is tied to its tradition. PSU sells out over 100,000 seats even when it plays cupcake guarantee games. That's power that no other school in the northeast can even come close to.

Also, ND is no more affiliated with BE football than it is with the Big Ten (3 or 4 opponents a year) or the Pac 10 (2 or 3 opponents a year). Moreover, if there's one thing the public knows about ND, it's that it's an independent not affiliated with any conference. A continued insistence by BE backers that ND is an "affiliate" means nothing to the general public or even ND fans themselves. ND fans care about 2 teams: USC and, to a lesser extent, Michigan.

The relevance of Army and Navy only extends to the game where they play each other - no one cares about a Army vs. South Florida tilt.

I've seen the story from the San Antonio newspaper on the history of the SWC and the realignment of the 9 former SWC into 4 conferences and how they ended up there. It is rather obvious how Baylor got to be in the Big 12, and they are there. But of the other 4, TCU and Houston, according to the article, had some things going for them that made it sound like that they were the most competitive of the "other 4" with Baylor.

I know TCU's National Championship was many years ago. The mention of their history is related to anyone mentioning the history of any conference pre 1/4 century ago. Anything more than that is a different generation. Most in this generation of college football fans and players will not remember much before that time or remember much reference. I don't know much about stuff pre-1970, as far as remembering or having reference to it. So 1980 is the current cutoff for the current "gestalt". But in so doing removing the 25 year horizon, this is the collective members' national championship for each conference since 1980:

ACC: 9
Big East: 0
Big 10: 2
Big 12: 6
C-USA: 0
MAC: 0
MWC: 1
Pac 10: 3
SEC: 5
Sun Belt: 0
WAC: 0
Independents: 1

After doing this, people will respond with aghasts. So it is just easier to look at all the AP and Coaches Poll national championships, going all the way back to 1936, plus all the others that schools want to claim since 1867. Its hard to mark the "gestalt" line as some people will be aghast at this, so look at them all to get the picture of "tradition".

What the "tradition" means in this context discussed in this thread is related to the discretionary criteria that the BCS will use beyond the 3 primary criteria to determine a BCS auto bid conference. They may have a definition, and it may indeed be throughout the history of college football. But I doubt they will have a "gestalt" timeline in their head. And that is my point. When looking at the complete tradition you get 2 national championships among the members of the MWC. Plus two Heismans, and several Cotton Bowls. If this is what the BCS meant by "tradition" then the MWC will have this as an added element to their candidacy that the other non-BCS don't have.

Actually, SMU has the most recent SWC championship. Their last one was in 1984, TCU was in 1958.

Nope, not quite right, SportsKC. Actually I'm not quite right either.

In 1994, TCU tied with Rice, Baylor, and Texas Tech and Texas for the SWC championship. SMU's last conference championship was in 1984 as you stated. So I am slightly wrong in that Baylor and Rice among these 5 outside UT, A & M and TTU shared with TCU that SWC championship. But TCU and Rice being amongst the 4 non-Big 12 teams, Rice really didn't have a shot at being Big 12, given their enrollment and fanbase. I believe the tie had something to do with probation of A & M, at the time, which counts, because, well they cheated. So, yes, TCU has had the more recent conference championship compared to SMU and Houston.

First, State college is about the same distance from Both Pittsburgh and Philly. ITs about 3 hr 22 min from Pitt and 3 hrs 47 min from Philly - this is from Yahoo Driving Directions.

Second, you are talking apples and oranges with teh Cubs and WhiteSox compared to PSU and Pittsburgh as both baseball teams are LOCATED in Chicago.

Penn State is a State-Wide team and draws fans from all over the State. PSU has large Alumni Associations in Pittsburgh and Philly Area and is a much larger undergrad and overall enrollment than Pitt. Pitt is primarily a regional team. However, Pitt has more alumni than PSU in WPa.

Pittsburgh is a city with a population of 335,000 and State College is 38,000. State College is a college town and you will notice that the whole town is PSU. If I had to compare, I would compare Pittsburgh to Atlanta in a sense of covering colleges. BOTH UGa and GT share coverage (maybe Gunner can clarify this) while only one school is located in Atlanta (GT). However, UGa is a lot closer to Atlanta than PSU is to Pittsburgh.

If you would like to know the who gets more coverage all you ahve to do is to count the number of articles they have on Pitt vs. PSU. That'll give you the answer. I can tell you that Pitt gets more articles than PSU but its not an overwhelming majority - I would say its close to 50/50 but Pitt is definetely not a PSU town. ITs a Steelers town First.

THe Pittsburgh newspaper follow the college teams in this order:

1 - Pitt
1A - PSU
3 - WVU
4 - Smaller colleges (Duquesne, Point Park, Waynesburg, etc).

If you are talking about coverage with PSU to say Villanova or Temple in Philly, then no doubt about it that PSU wins.

As I see the lights beaming from Beaver Stadium and the Bryce Jordan Center-----

Huh?

Joke Pa forgot to turn off the lights last night.

Panthersc97,

I'll take your word that there's neither Pitt or PSU is markedly more dominant than the other in Pittsburgh and that Pitt may have the slight edge.

Similarly, Chicago is a Bears town first and foremost. Most people from outside of Chicago seem to think that the Cubs are the most popular team here because they've always been national media darlings, but they forget about the small (but just as passionate) White Sox fan base that seriously hates the Cubs. People who grow up here just don't cheer for both teams and it's separated by geographic boundaries. The Bears, however, unite the town and receive blanket newspaper and sports talk coverage beginning with the NFL draft up until the last game of the season (and this is when the Bears are terrible - just imagine how this town was around the Bears during the 1980s).

The interesting dichotomy in Chicago for college football is that Notre Dame is the individual school that gets the most coverage but the Big Ten in the aggregate gets more prominent attention. The Chicago papers follow the Big Ten race really closely no matter who is in contention (all bets are off when Illinois or Northwestern end up having a rare successful season).

ND basketball actually ended up distancing itself from the Chicago market when it joined the BE. The Irish basketball team used to be considered a Chicago "home team" on par with Illinois and DePaul, but that really dissipated when ND dropped so many midwestern rivalries in exchange for the BE conference schedule. Now, Illinois and the Big Ten dominate college basketball coverage with DePaul getting some attention (that also used to be the other way around). I believe ND basketball will be helped alot here by being associated with DePaul and Marquette again in the new BE, but it will still be hard for the BE to grab headlines from the Big Ten in Chicago.