In response to Brian Hofmann's Dec. 6 letter about a "new" Big East: Joe Paterno tried to get Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Boston College into a super Eastern conference years ago, before we joined the Big Ten, but they refused for various reasons. It's actually one of the reasons we don't play those teams anymore.

If they had joined the conference, we would still have all our old rivals, but they didn't, so we were forced to join the Big Ten and don't have room on our schedule for those other teams.

So as good of an idea as it may seem, Joe already tried it and those other schools wouldn't jump on board, so we're left with the Big Ten and no longer playing Pitt.