Blue White Illustrated

October 2021

Penn State Sports Magazine

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O C T O B E R 2 0 2 1 6 1 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M LOU PRATO | L O U P R A T O @ C O M C A S T. N E T T hree decades ago, Penn State shook up the college football world by ending more than 100 years of inde- pendence and joining the Big Ten Conference. Today, Texas and Oklahoma are causing another earthquake in college football by leaving their brethren in the Big 12 to join the SEC. John Coyle is the only Penn State official still living who was an integral part of the secret and intricate talks that be- gan in the late 1970s and climaxed in 1990 with Penn State's admission into the Big Ten, setting off a shocking and seem- ingly overnight realignment of all the major college confer- ences. From July 1, 1970, until his retirement on July 1, 2000, Coyle was Penn State's official faculty representative — a position that exists at all major universities to ensure there is academic oversight in the athletic department. "A few months before my retirement, [athletics director] Tim Curley was quoted as saying, 'There are few responsi- bilities more sensitive than those of the faculty representative, and that person has to have special insight and integrity,'" Coyle said. "I know I tried to live up to those words." When Coyle was appointed the university's faculty rep by Penn State president Eric Walker, he was a 35-year-old ten- ured professor in the College of Business who had only a casual interest in sports. His only involvement with the Penn State football program, he recalled, was as a freshman in the fall of 1953 "selling hot dogs at Beaver Field." After receiving his un- dergraduate and master's degrees from Penn State, he began working on a doctorate in business administration at Indiana University, finishing it several months after joining the Penn State faculty in May 1962. Throughout his 30 years as the faculty rep, he not only had a full teaching load every semester but additional senior ad- ministrative duties in the business college while also raising a family. Penn State presidents can select their own faculty representative. Four of Walker's successors — John Oswald, Bryce Jordan, Joab Thomas and Graham Spanier — decided to retain Coyle. "He has been a leader and a champion of academic integ- rity," Spanier said upon Coyle's retirement. Coyle's unpretentious, amiable personality was perfect for the stress and pace of his faculty rep responsibilities. As he recalls, it was during the 1975-76 academic year that Penn State officials first began discussing the possible finan- cial need to join one of the elite athletic conferences. Oswald asked Coyle to accompany him on the university's private air- plane to Ann Arbor for an informal meeting with Michigan's president, Robben Fleming, athletics director Don Canham and the school's faculty rep. "Oswald had been president at Kentucky and had no ties with Michigan, but he told me he had always thought Penn State had similar academic criteria and the same academic approach to athletics as Michigan," Coyle recalled. "He said he just wanted to talk about a possible relationship with Michigan and perhaps the Big Ten at some time." Neither Penn State athletics director Ed Czekaj nor head football coach Joe Paterno were involved in the meeting, and Coyle does not believe Oswald ever told them about it. "He didn't feel close to Czekaj or Paterno," Coyle said. "I guess he trusted me not to say anything, and I didn't." Coyle said the five men talked for a couple of hours. "It was a nice, friendly conversation," Coyle said. "Both Fleming and the faculty rep spoke highly of our program. At the end of the THE START OF SOMETHING BIG Penn State's entry into the Big Ten was years in the making. Longtime faculty rep John Coyle saw it all from the inside Coyle, who was a tenured professor in the College of Business, spent three decades as Penn State's NCAA faculty rep before retiring in 2000. PHOTO BY JONATHAN BEIGHTOL

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