Pittsburgh wasn't in the Big East when the vote was taken on Penn St, it was 3 of the basketball schools who voted no, probably Villanova, Georgetown, and St Johns who had the most to lose if Penn St joined.Not only did Pitt voted to keep PSU out of the BE, their president was also the guy who was in charge of negotiating BE's last TV deal. BE turned ESPiN down with Pitt president as the ring leader. Had BE accepted that deal, BE would have been paid $13M to $14M per year per school.
Once BE pissed off ESPiN with threat of taking the TV contract to the open market, it was all over. ESPiN sent its favorite errand boy Swofford to break up the BE by taking SU and PITT in the middle of the night. Swofford is the slimiest commissioner and he knew exactly what he was doing. With uncertainty with the TV deal and the possibility of other BE schools defecting if they did not accept, SU and Pitt accepted ACC's deal in the middle of BE TV contract negotiation. In fact, they torpedoed the whole thing. I have little doubt had BE schools stayed together, they would have got a better deal than what ACC did in the open market. ESPiN worked with the ACC to destroy the BE so they can get media properties at a discount. It is a cut-throat business move for bunch of public universities. I am pretty confident ESPiN used its puppet the ACC to destroy the BE.
We will never know what would have happened had BE accepted that TV deal. With so much distrust between schools, it was easy for ESPiN's favorite errand boy to do its dirty work by played BE schools against each other.
In many ways, we are where we are today with Pitt played a huge role. If there is another school UCONN fans should hate more than BCU and the fruits, it should be SPITT.
