Ok, so with CFB only a week away I figured it was a good time for some realignment timeline history. The retelling gets so shredded that every once and awhile we have to revisit it if folks want to actually understand. Fair warning, this is a long post. If I see a comment complaining about that, its a block so just stop reading now if you get triggered by long posts. The topic is the B1G vs ACC battle over Penn State. The B1G was trying to keep Penn State after their Nebraska expansion irritated PSU as it failed to deliver on a promise to focus on Eastern expansion. After all prior to joining the B1G, Penn State was trying to create their own Eastern Conference. Well, they pretty much lost that battle but it wasn't over for them. So Nebraska was announced on June 11, 2010. They joined officially on July 1st 2011. These dates are important. You see, this expansion allowed the B1G to begin their CCG finally. That started in December of 2011, almost 25 years after the D1 policy that allowed it to exist. That is 19 years after the SEC started theirs, 15 years after the Big 12 started theirs and six years after the ACC started theirs. The PAC didnt get theirs started either as they expanded with Colorado and Utah at the same time as the B1G's expansion with Nebraska. They waited that long and then just took the two best available because thats how valuable the CCG concept was at the time. With this, FOX finally got their two CCG's to showcase on that weekend. They had been waiting for years for this, all held up by...you guessed it, Notre Dame. That is what was at stake here when Penn State was unhappy that after waiting two decades for the promised expansion, they got western expansion instead. Now it was probably understandable to them why Nebraska was added as they were trying to maximize value for the deal they were about to make with FOX. The threat/worry of PSU leaving though, that put all this at risk. The whole thing, even including the PAC's game with FOX. That is the catalyst for the next expansion by the B1G. It is from that decision that the business folks had to figure out a way to sell the expansion. Market gain became that reason and the selling point afterwards because the gain was real. Also, no one wanted to admit that PSU was thinking about possibly giving in and going to the ACC. You doubt it? One can easily look at the actions of the ACC lined up in timeline in comparison to what was going on with the B1G and PSU. So Nebraska was announced June 11th, 2010. Sometime after this when PSU's frustrations would become known, the B1G and likely FOX would have started to put out feelers to potential additions that PSU had wanted for their Eastern Conference. There were rumors that multiple ACC schools were approached via third party but were not interested. This is how the ACC finds out. What did they do? They invited Pitt and Syracuse on September 18, 2011. Both of which were Universities that Penn State had wanted in their Eastern Conference. The ACC didnt even care that those two schools might have to wait 27 months to leave the Big East. It was a blocking move and the announcement was enough. There were even reports, including from ESPN, that the ACC was looking to add Rutgers too. I will include that article at the bottom of this post. That article is from Sep 18, 2011 written by Heather Dinich. With so many ACC members turning down such attention and now the ACC acting quickly to block these intentions, on their mind was the thought of actually getting Penn State. If it wasn't for the decision by Maryland to defect in the end, the ACC might be standing right now as one of the perceived P2 conferences. That Maryland defection did happen though and was announced on November 19, 2012. Rutgers was announced the next day. This is an interesting choice because word was that the ACC tried to stop it by raising their exit fee from around 20 million to around 52 million in September of 2012. Ten out of twelve Presidents voted for it. The two that voted against it were Maryland and Florida State. This made things interesting at the time because the easy connection to make was that Maryland and FSU were the two looking to join the Big Ten in order to make PSU happy. For whatever reason, perhaps a few Presidents not wanting to vote in FSU due to the state of their academics and research at the time or perhaps due to the fact that the ACC was looking at Rutgers as well. The third option, which I think is the most likely, is that the raising of the exit fee from 20 million to 50 million meant that the cost of Maryland/FSU went from 40 million to 100 million. The cost of just getting Maryland from the ACC became more than what was initially the cost for getting the Maryland/FSU combo. So in the end, PSU got their eastern expansion and seemingly that was enough for them to save face and not bend the knee to those other Eastern Universities that turned them down in regards to the East Coast Conference that PSU wanted to create initially. What they did not get was an addition that they considered worthy of being a rival. They let that be known with via the conference schedule that was created, and later scrapped, after the USC/UCLA additions. They called themselves Unrivaled. This is largely where the PSU/FSU connection comes from. Plans that go way back to the times above when FSU seems to have been looked at but in the end the Presidents weren't willing to pay the extra money for a University that they did not want to invite as a peer. Fast forward to today. We see Penn State's President sitting on the Board of Managers in the CFP. This is most certainly where horse trading is happening currently in regards to the future system and future realignment moves that go along with it. PSU is still very active in this regard and they still are Unrivaled. Who has been improving their facilities as well as improving their Academic and Research rankings considerably in the past few years? That's right, FSU is back in the mix again. This time they seem to be saving up themselves for their Exit Fee. At a time when so many other programs were paying extraordinary amounts to get rid of head coaches, they hung on to their head coach despite overwhelming pressure from fans and boosters. They are saving up. A lot to read there, nothing that I haven't posted about previously but I thought I might take the time before the CFB season starts to lay it all out. The B1G vs ACC realignment war is still active today albeit much less of a hot war. While the ACC didnt get PSU, they did get Notre Dame. Here is that link to the Sep 18, 2011 ESPN article by Heather Dinich. You will see in it that there was plenty of talk at the time about Rutgers and UConn possibly getting invites to the ACC as well. espn.com/college-sports/stor…