re: Has college football basically slowly killed itself since Nebraska bolted for the Big Ten?

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Penn State, Notre Dame, BYU, and Miami were all independent juggernauts. It made sense back in those days for schools that were just good at football not to bother joining leagues outright. But, they saw the writing on the wall and knew that they had to align with someone, eventually. Notre Dame is the last big hold out, but they do have an agreement with the ACC. Nebraska leaving a powerful conference was definitely a different animal, and what has it really gotten them? They are outsiders to the B1G, and not very successful ones, at that. I agree that we are witnessing the slow death of CFB with the transfer portal, NIL, realignment, wokeness, 12-team playoffs, etc...

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PSU started looking for a conference in the early 80’s. Rumor has it there were high level talks with OSU when they played in the 1980 Fiesta Bowl.

However, Paterno really wanted to form an all sports conference with eastern independents in the early 80’s. Think the old Big East football teams plus FSU, Army, Navy. I would imagine a deal would have been worked out with Notre Dame too. However, Big East Basketball ruled the roost at the time and Pitt and Syracuse thought basketball was the better bet from a money standpoint and the three schools couldn’t get on the same page. Basically, they didn’t want to carry PSU’s putrid basketball program, and PSU wanted a bigger share of football revenues due to their draw. PSU needed a home for its non football sports and talks with the Big Ten started.

Looking back, The Eastern Conference with the independents plus ND would have been a great conference. But, who knows what NCAA Basketball would have looked like. Think about this line up for rivalry week:

Army- Navy
Penn State- Notre Dame
FSU- Miami