Inviting Penn State Ill-Conceived Idea, Says Schembechler

Bo Schembechler has already announced that he will retire as Michigan’s football coach after the Rose Bowl game against USC Monday in Pasadena.

However, he is still the school’s athletic director and, as such, he questioned the wisdom of bringing Penn State into the Big Ten Conference.

Schembechler made it clear that he is not necessarily opposed to Penn State, but said the addition of the Eastern school presents scheduling and geographical problems.

He is also annoyed that Big Ten athletic directors were not consulted by conference presidents as to the advisability of inviting Penn State into the league.

“Penn State coming into the league was a shock to all of us,” Schembechler said Tuesday. “It kind of tells you of the prestige and position of athletic directors.

“A new team is brought into your league, and then you’re notified that it has happened. I didn’t take that very lightly, not that I’m opposed to Penn State.

“It may be sound and for good reasons to have Penn State in the league, but I don’t think it was very well thought out. I think it was a buddy system, and that’s how it happened.”

Schembechler explained that the “buddy system” is the fraternity of college presidents, adding:

“They (conference presidents) extend an invitation to Penn State and they accept, and then it’s dumped in the laps of the athletic administration, and they say work it out and maybe it’s not workable.

“Penn State is not exactly strategically located to be playing in the Big Ten Conference. The Big Ten is historically a Midwest conference. They certainly will bring a good football team into the conference, but in our case, we have 20 other sports.”

Schembechler said he didn’t have any advance knowledge of the presidents’ decision to invite Penn State into the Big Ten.

“My president told me when I came in on a Tuesday to resign (as football coach). It was a done deal at the time, but I didn’t know that it was.”

Asked why the athletic directors weren’t consulted, Schembechler said: “Why don’t you consult the president of the University of Illinois (Stanley Ikenberry)? I think he engineered the whole thing. Why did it have to be such a secret? Why we had no feasibility study. We had nothing like that.”

Schembechler may not have to deal with problems that the admission of Penn State into the Big Ten might bring.

He has hinted that he might not remain as athletic director, that he doesn’t want to be in the position of looking over the shoulder of his successor, Gary Moeller, now an assistant coach.

Asked about his plans, Schembechler said: “I have some thoughts, but I’m not going to talk about it until after the game. Now isn’t the time.”

It was suggested that it will be more difficult for Michigan to recruit in the East now that Penn State has joined the conference.

“That’s true,” Schembechler said. “They’ll dominate the East more than they ever have before.”

Schembechler said the Big Ten presidents’ decision on Penn State was demeaning to the athletic directors and predicted that there will be problems.

“The way it was handled sends a message to me loud and clear.

“The presidents dominate the Big Ten, and down here somewhere the athletic directors are counting the pencils and stuff like that.

“My prediction is, in the next five years the presidents will completely confuse intercollegiate athletics. It will be some kind of a mess. It will be dumped on the athletic administrators. They’ll say you straighten this out and we might be back to normal about the year 2000.”

He also didn’t discount the possibility of Northwestern, a doormat in football, leaving the Big Ten.

“I see Northwestern under pressure, even though they deny it,” Schembechler said.

“In the chain of events, in my judgment, you research what the effect of the addition of a new school would be before you ever tender it an invitation.

“Suppose this is unworkable. Do you tell them (Penn State) to back out now, because there’s a distinct possibility that it can happen?”

Penn State is not expected to be on Big Ten football schedules until the middle 1990s, if then.

“I don’t see how we can play Penn State for 10 years,” Schembechler said. “There are some people that would like to get out of meeting with us and maybe that can happen, but I don’t see a regular schedule of us playing Penn State for some time.”