So TSUN was scared of letting them in?
Michigan wasn't scared --- their then-President was a guy named James Duderstadt, and he had an "Ivy League Mentality" (for lack of a better phrase) as regards the place of athletics in the greater context of a University. He thought sports were way too commercialized as is (and this was in the context of 1989, much less 2019!), and was against a further expansion of that commercialization.
A quote from a book he wrote (where he discussed the Penn State expansion and U-M's vote):
"The expansion of the Big Ten conference by adding Penn State University provides yet another example of how commercialism can distort college sports. As the saying goes, you win some, you lose some. The expansion of the Big Ten Conference was one of the battles Michigan lost, since we fought against it. We were not opposed to Penn State as an institution, but saw absolutely no reason beyond television market share that conference expansion made sense.
On the plus side, PSU was an outstanding academic institution, on a par with other Big Ten schools. It was the flagship public university of its state; it was a member of the AAU, and it had strong athletic programs. More to the point, it could provide the Big Ten with an important entry into the eastern television market. But adding an eleventh university would cause almost as many problems. It would create an awkward schedule. The 1000-mile distance between PSU and Iowa symbolized the travel difficulties. There was great uncertainty as to whether the addition of PSU would add any revenue to the Big Ten Conference, or whether it would just add one additional mouth feeding at the same trough."
There's more, but you get the idea. Link below (I actually have this book at home, but some of the pages are obscured in the free Google preview - Page 181 is the most relevant page:
https://books.google.com/books?id=R...thletics and the american university"&f=false
