Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1410640
6 2 O C T O B E R 2 0 2 1 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M day, they said at this point in time and as far as they knew, the Big Ten was not interested in expanding. We said we appreci- ated them meeting with us and we would see what happens in the future." Coyle and Oswald had no way of knowing that the man who would make it happen in 1990 was then sitting in his office back at Old Main, Penn State's vice president of development, Stan Ikenberry. He was still years away from being the point man for the Big Ten Council of Presidents' decision to invite Penn State into the conference. After that secret meeting in Ann Arbor, Coyle recalled in- ternal discussions at Penn State in the early 1980s about the possible financial need for the university to relinquish its in- dependence and become a member of a conference. By then, Ikenberry had left Penn State, having become president of the University of Illinois in 1979. "We believed we needed to get into a conference that not only had high academic standards but also had strong support for women's athletics," Coyle said. "Some of the conferences seemed like they didn't pay much attention to the women's sports. And remember, we started a women's varsity program in 1964, long before the federal government stepped in with Title IX. When we entered the Big Ten, we had the strongest commitment to women's sports of any school in the conference." The reason for the financial concerns was a squabble by major independent football programs over the NCAA's re- strictions on televising games. Penn State and other major independents like Notre Dame had linked up with the elite conferences, excluding the Big Ten and Pac-8, to form the Col- lege Football Association in 1977. In the early 1980s, the CFA challenged the NCAA's television policies, and in June 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA, allowing the schools to set up their own television contracts. In 1980, Paterno became the university's athletics director, and he had a pair of informal discussions the following year with Wayne Duke, then the Big Ten commissioner. At the same time, Paterno also tried to form an Eastern all-sports confer- ence. The controversy over the ill-fated project still reverber- ates and much bitterness remains, especially with longtime rivals Pitt and Syracuse. Paterno stepped aside as athletics director in 1983, and his right-hand man and public relations guru, Jim Tarman, took over and helped launch Penn State into the Big Ten. "The Big Ten had an association that included the athletic director, the senior women's athletic director, the faculty rep and some coaches," Coyle said. "The presidents can be part of it, but they don't always meet. We were invited out for a meeting of that association. I think it was the summer of 1988. Bryce Jordan was our president, and he called me about the meeting and said we're probably going to be in the Big Ten. Some informal contact had already been made, perhaps by Jordan and Ikenberry. Tarman, Ellen Perry, our senior woman AD, and I flew out to Chicago but not Jordan. "We sort of got the cold shoulder when it was learned we might get an invitation to get into the Big Ten. Particularly, some of the coaches were not happy about it." Everything changed in the spring of 1989 when Jordan called Ikenberry, who was then chairman of Big Ten's Council of Presidents, which controlled the conference. Jordan asked if he could send a small group to talk about membership in the Big Ten. Paterno, Tarman and Steve Garban, the vice president of finances, met privately with Ikenberry, and the rest is now history. With Penn State entrenched as a Big Ten member in the mid-1990s, Coyle became the chairman of a special commit- tee that considered further ex- pansion of the conference. "In some of our discussions, we considered going from 11 to 12 to 14," he recalled. "When we were thinking of going to a 12th team, I made a presen- tation for admitting Rutgers. I thought they fit. There wasn't a high recognition of Rutgers in the Big Ten. I presented a lot of information about the quality of their education and their faculty. I had some data about the number of scholars they had, the quality of their students and so forth. Rutgers was as strong academically as at least half of the Big Ten schools. I also pointed out it would give us the New York [TV] market. "You know why they were rejected back then? They were unionized." Coyle said his committee also discussed admitting Notre Dame, Maryland and other schools. He said Penn State could have joined the Atlantic Coast Conference instead of the Big Ten. "When word got out that we were talking to the Big Ten, Gene Corrigan, the commissioner of the ACC, called and said he wished we had called him," Coyle said. "We would have been accepted in a heartbeat." Since his retirement in 2000, Coyle has continued to do consulting work and has updated his internationally respected textbook "Supply Chain Management: A Logistics Perspec- tive," originally published in 1976. It is now in its 11th updated edition and has been translated into four languages. Coyle also keeps in occasional contact with some of his students, such as retired Lt. Gen. Gus Pagonis, who was in charge of logistics during the first Gulf War. Coyle admits he was "really surprised" by the newest re- alignment sparked by Texas and Oklahoma. "I assumed that possibly one or two universities could change conferences, perhaps minor realignments," he said. "These changes are ma- jor, and so are the ramifications for major university athletic programs. Who knows what will happen next?" ■ "We sort of got the cold shoulder when it was learned [in 1988] we might get an invitation to get into the Big Ten. Particularly, some of the coaches were not happy about it." C O Y L E