HERO Sports is counting down the 100 days until the kickoff of the 2018 college football season on Saturday, Aug. 25, with daily trivia. Each day, from May 17 through Aug. 24, we'll publish one college football trivia question.
[divider]RANKINGS: Top 100 Teams for 2018
MORE: Best FBS Player for Each Jersey Number
MORE: Best FCS Player for Each Jersey Number[divider]
In 1981, Joe Paterno was entering his 16th season as Penn State head coach. The then-55-year-old led the Nittany Lions to at least 10 wins in nine of his 15 years but was still chasing the program's first-ever national title. He was also chasing conference membership. But Paterno didn't want to join the Big Ten, ACC or another conference; he wanted to create a new all-sports conference, the East Coast Conference.
Which schools did Paterno recruit to join his proposed East Coast Conference?
[divider]
Answer
Boston College, Pittsburgh, Temple, Maryland, Syracuse and Rutgers
Others, including West Virginia, were rumored to be involved in talks for the East Coast Conference but the core teams were those six and Penn State. As Donnie Collins of The Times-Tribune noted in 2012, "Depending on who you ask, the conference fell apart over either minor disagreements or major ones."
'It's a shame,'' Paterno said in 1984 when discussions were underway for a football-only conference with similar members, ''that there were some short-sighted people who didn't realize the potential of an all-sports conference tied around football. Right now we would be on the threshold of a very significant conference.''
NEXT: Trivia Countdown Home
