I played basketball as a child and began following the sport more closely in high school during the late 1970s. I remember some of the great local high school players of that day -- and the colleges they went to:

Schenley swingman Larry Anderson (UNLV).

Allderdice guard Frank "Happy" Dobbs (Villanova).

Central Catholic forward Marc Marotta (Marquette).

Wilkinsburg's inside-outside tandem of Bruce Atkins (Duquesne) and John Ryan (Pitt), both of whom I've known since childhood.

And many more.

But one school that no local high school stars attended, to my recollection, was Penn State. A lot of people probably didn't realize that Penn State even had a Division I basketball program.

That's one reason I think the Pitt-Penn State "rivalry" is overrated -- it really existed only in football. In my view, to have a real rivalry schools must be more broadly competitive.

Before going to Pitt, I attended Georgia Tech, where I learned quickly that any game in any sport, including basketball and baseball, against the University of Georgia was a grudge match. To this day, I root for not only Tech but anyone who plays UGa.

By contrast, Pitt and Penn State don't have that kind of all-sports history. Pitt's primary men's basketball rival has always been Duquesne, and matches in other sports where Pitt and Penn State could compete, most notably wrestling and women's basketball, don't generate much fan interest.

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Ironically, it was men's basketball that caused the rift between Pitt and Penn State.

The lack of interest in Penn State's men's cagers prompted Joe Paterno, longtime football coach and, in the early 1980s, athletic director, to apply to join the made-for-television Big East Conference. He apparently hoped that membership in the fledgling but successful hoops-driven league eventually would attract top players and overcome the reputation of the rural Central Pennsylvania campus as being inhospitable to African Americans.

However, Penn State's inconsistent basketball tradition and lack of fan support were factors in the majority of Big East schools, predominately urban institutions without major football programs, turning him down. Another complication: Penn State isn't in a major television market, at the time an unwritten requirement for membership in the Big East.

Paterno later proposed a seven-team eastern all-sports conference, which would have included Pitt -- and Big East members Boston College and Syracuse. Needless to say, the Big East didn't appreciate the possibility of being raided, so the conference courted Pitt, which was vitally important to Paterno's plans but met the Big East's standard of being located in a major TV market. After Pitt made the jump from what is now the Atlantic 10 and Penn State about a decade later joined the Big Ten, a miffed Paterno announced that Penn State no longer had "room for Pitt on the [football] schedule."

That's why the Panthers and Nittany Lions no longer play each other on the gridiron. Given that a considerable number of Penn State alumni and fans live and certainly would attend a game in the Pittsburgh area, it appears that Paterno's refusal to play Pitt, especially at Pitt Stadium then and Heinz Field now, is meant to hurt Pitt in the wallet because he knows it rarely sells out its home games.

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Well, I'm fine with that.

Money aside, we Pitt partisans have for some time had a nice little thing going with West Virginia University, also stiffed by Penn State after the Lions joined the Big Ten, in both football and men's basketball.

There's the football "Backyard Brawl" (note that no one ever came up with a similarly snazzy name for Pitt vs. Penn State). And I was in the stands nearly two years ago when Pitt sniper Ronald Ramon slipped by a defender and drained that 3-pointer as the final buzzer sounded to sink the Mountaineers. No doubt Ramon will remember that shot for the rest of his life, in no small part because he nailed it against WVU on national TV.

Who, on the other hand, can recall any similarly magical moments when Pitt met Penn State on the hardwood?

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In December 2004 I made my only visit to State College, for a Pitt vs. Penn State men's basketball game -- for which I was able to buy a ticket at the door. Once inside the Bryce Jordan Center, as nice as or nicer than Pitt's Petersen Events Center, I noticed thousands of fans disguised as empty seats and heard the announcer publicizing programs to get them to attend future contests. And while the Penn State student section heaped abuse on the Pitt team as expected, everyone else was blah by comparison.

In fact, the banter between each side's supporters centered on football, with the Pitt rooters during the second half needling the home crowd with the chant "B.C.S., B.C.S." because Penn State had failed to get into a major post-season game that year. The retort: "Let's go, Utah!," a reference to Pitt's upcoming opponent in the Fiesta Bowl.

Bottom line, it felt like just another game, not an event. (By the way, Pitt won 84-71 -- and it wasn't even that close.) Few noticed, let alone cared, when Penn State decided a couple of years later to discontinue the basketball series against Pitt, which the Panthers had recently dominated. That spoke volumes.

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Maybe Pitt and Penn State will play each other again in football, though not until Paterno passes on. If they do, instead of the finale that it used to be, the game will be played earlier in the season due to Big Ten rules on non-conference games.

Still, without hostilities extending to other sports, especially hoops, it will remain an incomplete rivalry.

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.