Panther, some thoughts on what the conferences might have looke like if the Eastern sall-sports thing had materialized along the lines I suggested.

BIG EAST BASKETBALL

Providence
UMass (replaces BC)
UConn
St. John's
Seton Hall
St. Joe's (replaces Villanova)
Georgetown
Duquesne (replaces Syracuse)

ACC

Virginia
Virginia Tech (replaces Maryland)
Wake Forest
Duke
North Carolina
NC State
Clemson
Georgia Tech

WRT the Missouri Valley Conference, back when the NCAA basketball tournament was really 4 regional mini-tournaments, the MVC champ won the Midwest region 13 times from 1954-79. Second most by any conference in that period was 6 by the Big Eight.

My what if would be: what if Gavitt and Paterno got together in 78-79 and agreed on one major eastern conference for hoops and football?

Big East:
Penn State
Pittsburgh
Syracuse
Boston College
West Virginia
Rutgers
Temple
St. John's
Georgetown
Providence

Paterno gets all eastern 1-A schools except Army and Navy, which couldn't compete in hoops and continued to play national schedules in football anyway. Also, remember Nova dropped football for a while because they didn't want to go 1-A, which had just been created at that time. Gavitt gets his big city league with NYC, Philly, Boston, DC and Pittsburgh plus national power Syracuse. Providence gets the nod over UConn because, after all, it was Gavitt's idea plus Providence was much stronger during the 70's.

The updated Eastern 8 at that time looks like this:
UConn
Villanova
Seton Hall
UMass
URI
GWU
Duquesne
St. Bonnie

Orangefan,

It certainly would have been interesting to see who would have been chosen for the 'Philly' market. There would have been advocates for both Temple and Villanova. Villanova didn't drop FB until a few years after the 1A/AA split (1978 was 1A split and VU dropped FB after the 1981 season). Maybe they would have never dropped FB? Villanova played many games in the 70s against BC and WVu. VU had a winning % of 43% during the 70s.

Temple was also regular on the other Eastern Indys schools too. Temple had a 0.604 winning percentage during the 70s and also had been to a bowl game in for the 1978 season. Maybe if Temple is part of this conference they don't fall that far and remain competitive.

Villanova certainly was competitive until the end, beating both BC and Temple in 1980. (see http://www.jhowell.net/cf/scores/Villanova.htm ). I think their problem was the stadium and attendance requirements of 1-A. They would have had to build a stadium or move off campus, neither of which they wanted to do. Query whether their view would have been different if entry into the Big East at the time was contingent on doing so. My guess is not. I think that they would have been comfortable that they could be competitive in hoops in the E8, and their risk aversion about upgrading football would not have changed by the opportunity to play in a conference. But, other opinions are welcome - this is why we are asking "what if?"