I am in the process of hashing out a college sports scenario. The Point of Divergence is a different wording to one of the articles in the fourth Kentucky constitution in 1890. Among other changes, (such as the survival of two state institutions of higher education that in real life went under) U.K. was not invited to join the Southern Conference at its formation and instead looked north to the Western Conference (the predecessor to the Big Ten, taking Iowa's place) but Louisville was (and ultimately joined the SEC.)

I currently have two main branches of the timeline I'm having trouble with, both involving the mid-late 60s and 70s.

1. With the Kentucky branch, in this timeline, basketball power Kentucky casts the deciding vote for Notre Dame in the big Ten instead of Michigan State, forcing that school to remain in the Mid-American conference. This vote keeps Michigan State and Wayne State rivals, so Wayne state doesn't drop down to the Division III Presidents' Conference, and then to the Division II GLIC. Wayne State football blossoms to the point that Warrior Stadium grows to seat 55,000 people.

In 1967-8, fresh from a antional championship, Michigan State and Wayne State leave the Mid-American conference along with Wayne State, Ohio and Miami University, and invite Indiana State and Illinois State to form the Midwestern Conference. Six members are enough for the conference to be recognised by the NCAA, but the conference is looking to go to eight or better yet ten members. When they expand in 1971, where do they look? Do they look:

A. east of their footprint? Penn State, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Villanova and Temple, among others, are dying for a conference to take them in. Michigan State and Miami are genuine football powerhouses and the Wayne State of this timeline is no slouch either. Michigan State and Indiana State are also basketball powers too. Penn State in the Midwestern Conference means a premature beginning of the battle for the Land Grant Trophy.

B. within the Footprint? Illinois-Chicago is looking or any excuse to keep their football program(it folded in 1973), IUPUI is looking for any excuse to start one, and Cincinatti is looking for any excuse to get out of the far flung Missouri Valley Conference before it stops playing football (especially as it has such close members as Houston, Texas Tech, and Colorado State).

C. North and West of their footprint? Wisconsin-Millwaukee and Wisconsin-Green Bay are looking for excuses to keep football, Minnessota- Duluth has its own medical and law schools and is the state sea grant college, Minnesota-Crookston is the real home to Minnesota's land grant programs, and across the Mississippi, Northern Iowa and Nebraska-Omaha are just itching to move up, not to mention the Dakota flagships...

2. Louisville leaves the SEC in 1965 along with Tulane and Georgia Tech andmanages to take Vanderbilt with it. They decide to form a conference (Call it the Metro Southern), but they need at least four more schools. Which of these schools do they take in?

New Orleans?

Louisiana Tech?

Southern Miss?

South Alabama?

Florida State?

Miami?

South Carolina?

East Caroilina?

Virginia Tech?

[Daffy Duck Voice]Any takers? Anyone? Anyone at all?[/Daffy Duck Voice]

I don't know enough about the midwest or south to make a comment about your scenerio.

The only thing I do know is that Pitt applied for admission in the Big10 around the time MSU applied. Pitt was voted down and MSU was voted in.

All that aside I think you still run into teh same problems the BE had when trying to form a conference in the 1960s or 1970s. There wasn't anyone there who had a vision to do so. Also, would those 'eastern' schools want to be in a midwestern conference?

Also, if the Metro South was formed in the mid-60s, South Carolina certainly would be part of it as they didn't leave the ACC until the spring of '71. I don't know more about the other schools to say whether they would join or not.

One thing about this Midwestern Conference I've noticed:

Michigan State, Wayne State, Ohio, and Miami play Division 1 hockey. So do Pitt, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Minnesota-Duluth, and Nebraska-Omaha, and Illinois-Chicago and Cincinnati did as well during this time (60s-70s). Adding any two of those schools means that the Midwestern Conference can become the first NCAA Division I conference able to sponsor Division I hockey during the '70s. Unfortunately, the Big Ten will have only five hockey schools (Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, and Minnesota). Will the Big Ten Commissioners put pressure on Kentucky and Illinois to bring their Division II hockey programs to Division I? Will they consider holding their nose and inviting North Dakota in as a hockey associate? Will they simply pointedly ignore the Midwestern Conference in hopes that they eventually break up?

And what happens if College Hockey has two all sports conferences? Does the Ivy League start sponsoring hockey as a conference? The Eastern Eight/Atlantic Ten? The Patriot League? The Big Sky?

Bump.

Bump Again.

Ok, I realize this is kind of late, but here's some thoughts:

1) IUPUI would be nowhere near the discussion in the Midwestern Conference. They didn't even begin playing basketball until 1973, not to mention: A) they wouldn't have had the student body needed for support (especially for football), B) the campus was nowhere near the size that it is now, and C) I don't think that in either reality or this alternate scenario this would change in either case.

2) I would say the Midwestern League would take Cincinnati right away, for hockey and football purposes, with it being within the footprint as well as a geographic rival with Miami U. Then if they were serious about hosting hockey as well as football, I'd say look at Minnesota-Duluth, and THEN add 2 more schools to fill in the gaps towards the west.

3) The Metro South would probably take: Florida State, Miami, South Carolina, and VATech.

4) (This is another one of those would remain the same no matter what scenario) I seriously doubt Kentucky would ever be able to support a DI hockey team. There just isn't a real fan base in Kentucky for puck (we've had an AHL and ECHL team in Lexington, an AHL and 2 ECHL teams here in The Ville, and none lasted more in a couple of years). Kentucky fans aren't that supportive outside of men's hoops and football, so I doubt that even if in the Big 10 there'd be a chance of UK having puck.

OK. Maybe if the Big Ten were to expand to 12 during the Great Shuffle of '90, after acquiring a Division 2 program in 1978 and moving through the Mid Continent, Gateway, and MAC, except I don't know which Midwestern Conference school would be in a position to join the Big Ten. (There would be extremely bad blood between Michigan and Michigan State, Wayne State wouldn't leave without Michigan State, Bad Blood Between Ohio or Miami and Ohio State, Cincinatti and Indiana State don't have the academics, {then again, neither does Ohio State at the undergraduate level} No Way in Heck Ohio or Michigan would ever get three state schools even if they would never stand together as a bloc, Very bad blood between Illinois and Illinois State. and that goes double for everyone else in the MWC)




Okay. I Nominate Illinois-Chicago and Wisconsin-Milwaukee.




Let's throw in East Carolina and Southern Miss to make it an even ten.




Well, UK hockey is the school's third best attended sport, despite the fact that it has no scholarships, a school contribution of only $500 to it's annual budget, and has to play all its games after midnight. It is better attended than gymnastics, volleyball, track and field, water polo, and even baseball. It has sold out for the first practice of the season against Midnight Madness, football homecoming games, and even in games against early home rounds of the Preseason NIT. Not only that, but its best players have frequently come from Owensboro.

Rupp Arena is probably a bad idea, but try imagining the turnout if instead of the 6 mile away Lexington Ice Center, they had Memorial Colliseum to play in? Already many sportswriters have compared the game atmospheres favorably to (unnamed) Division 1 schools.

1) My opinion is that they'd have to bite the bullet and take either MSU or Miami (though to be fair around this time UC's academics was roughly on par with Miami in reality).

2) UIC and UW(is it GB or M?) would be great candidates IF they were committed to keeping hockey. If there was any flinch by either, Nebraska-Omaha would be the next candidate since we're moving in that direction.

3) Sure, ECU and USM would make for a good fit in the Metro South.

4) Ok, I'm getting thrown off on whether Kentucky actually ever had a DII hockey team (NCAA wise, ACHA is purely club teams and need MAJOR $$$ to make NCAA level). That and there was no DII championship until the 1970's. So you've got me totally lost on that tangent. Though I don't see any alternate scenario where Owensboro can supply great players (and trust me, I've played college hockey), they'd have to cherrypick them from the bigger cities (if Indiana didn't have hockey then Indianapolis would be ideal, or steal them from Ohio under OSU's and Cincy's nose). I'd say Northwestern and either IU or Illinois would be the first teams to look for for B10 hockey, it'd be doubtful if UK would ever field a team without their main conference rival (IU) not having one. So I'm not really sure what to make of the last one.

One more I don't believe womens' sports were actually sponsored until the late '70's... but hey, if this alternate reality is more gender-equal, I'm all for it!!!

The Big Test for the Midwestern Conference and the Metro Southern is the Great Shuffle of '90, in which in Real Life Penn State moved to the Big Ten, South Carolina and Arkansas moved to the SEC, Florida State moved to the ACC, and Miami moved to the Big East for all sports, Virginia Tech and Temple for Football and Notre Dame for everything but football. This set into motion cascade of effects that caused the implosion of the Southwest Conference, the split of the basketball Metro Conference into it and the Great Midwest and then it's remerger (with several former Sowthwest Conference and Sun Belt Conference members) to form the football playing Conference USA, and the delay of the start of Football at the Sunbelt Conference until the departure of South Florida, Central Florida, and Louisiana Tech.



If the same timeline changes happen in this timeline, these could have disasterous effects on their respective conferences, effectively gutting them of major credibility academically, athletically, or demographiclally. However, there are factors that make the exact turnover in the shuffle unlikely. Let's take a look at each individual school:



1: South Carolina: In this reality, they were dying for a football conference to take them in. They touted the fact that they combined Notre Dame's attendance tradition with Temple's athletic achievement tradition. In addition, they are a state flagship, something that makes the SEC take notice. In this history, though, they are members of the Metro South conference and have built a longstanding rivalry with Georgia Tech, who doesn't want to return to the SEC.



2: Georgia Tech: They are still in the Metro South. While they play good basketball, and are an academic fit with the ACC, their rivalry with South Carolina would suffer as the Gamethingys can't return to the ACC due to academics and lingering bad blood (Particularly with North Carolina State).



3: Florida State: Florida State is at this time an infamous party school (except for the Taxol Refinement Process Discovery) that has about much of a chance of getting into the ACC on academic merits as Central Florida or Florida Atlantic (and even less chance than South Florida). In this timeline they only got in because the ACC was desperate for more football schools than just Clemson and Georgia Tech. (Maryland and Virginia's rises weren't until later in the '90s). In this history they don't have Georgia Tech (yet) which makes them less attrective for Florida State. The SEC, though is at eight members at the moment, and might spare them a spot, and it looks like Florida State won't have major rivalries except possibly Miami.



4: Miami(Florida): The SEC won't want them because of their high academics and being a private school (they've already been burned by Tulane and Vandy), the ACC won't want them because they are a football school and too far out of the footprint (unless they can snag Georgia Tech or possibly Southern Polytechnic State University), and the Big East doesn't exist in a recognizable form in this timeline. They may be stuck in the Metro South, especially as the example of Notre Dame doesn't exist in this timeline.



5: Virginia Tech: The ACC will still not see them as ready for prime time. The Big East Football Analog has West Virginia as an analog, but is otherwise too rooted in the Northeast (It includes the likes of SUNYs Stony Brook and Buffalo, Boston University, UMass, Maine, and Southern Maine.



However, The SEC would probably love Va-Tech. Blacksburg is a closer drive to Knoxville than Athens, (At least as the crow flies) and has enough in common with Tennessee (Both are land grant colleges up in the hills with military school roots) to make a natural heated rivalry. (Or at least a more natural rivalry than LSU-Arkansas) The states are even connected by the Kingsport/Johnson City strand, meaning that Virginia won’t be too far out of the SEC footprint. The question is, would the folks at Blacksburg want to join the SEC, or are they too set on the ACC?



6: Penn State: In this timeline, Penn State anchors an all sports conference that includes West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, SUNYs Buffalo and Stony Brook, UMass, UConn, Boston College, Boston University, Maine, and Southern Maine, called the Big North that was founded in the mid ‘70s. The worst of the post-Dan Marino slump is over at Pitt and West Virginia is about to win its second national championship. It wouldn’t be quite as hard to lure away State College from the Big North to the Big Ten as a Tobacco Road school to the SEC, but it wouldn’t be easy, either, especially given that Joe Paterno is from New York City and would not want to be cut away from playing Rutgers and Stony Brook.



7: Michigan State: One hand, Michigan State’s claim to State Flagship status will more credible than Ohio’s, Miami(Ohio)’s, or Illinois State’s. It is after all a Land Grant college with both law and medical schools (and even a vet school) and will have the largest student body in the Midwestern Conference (Though Wayne State, Illinois-Chicago and Cincinnati will be breathing down MSU’s neck). It will have NCAA National Championships in Football and Basketball (The Indiana State-Michigan State rivalry in the late 70’s will be much more bitter, since Larry Bird will play all four years in Terre Haute, rather than spend his freshman year at IU) as well as swimming and diving, wrestling, and track and field.



On the other, it will vie with Indiana State and Cincinnati for the title of worst undergraduate academics. (Even Illinois State, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Minnesota-Duluth, and Wayne State were more selective than Michigan State). Then there is the fact that MSU alumni might not want the school to join the Big Ten, much the same way that Notre Dame alumni in our reality don’t want that school to join the Big Ten. A timeline in which Michigan was successful in keeping MSU out of the Big Ten means that Michigan is that much more snobbish. This isn’t the stuff rivalries are made of, but rather genuine bad blood. (Like Idaho-Boise State, Maine-Southern Maine, Ole Miss-Southern Miss or ECU-UNC Chapel Hill.)



8: Miami(Oh): Despite the hated Jim Rhodes era, Miami will be more academically selective than Michigan or Northwestern. And membership in the Midwestern Conference and access to better non conference opponents will mean the school won’t be the “Cradle of Coaches;” they’ll stay and win National Championships in football, hockey, baseball, and track and field. On the other hand, the only graduate and professional programs of note are Business, Engineering and Education. There is no law school (though Miami Pre-Law majors have higher acceptance rates at law school than Ohio State’s, and better first time pass rates on stat bar exams) no medical school (though ditto), and no social work school. Even Notre Dame has a law school. Inviting Miami University would be like the SEC inviting Louisiana College, Stetson, or Union University of Tennessee, the ACC inviting Furman, VMI or the Citadel, or the Pac Ten inviting Chaminade or Evergreen State.



The Metro Southern Conference can’t afford our timeline’s Great Shuffle. That would destroy the conference. Cincinnati is in the Midwestern conference and has never built up a rivalry with Louisville. Memphis is in the Sun Belt (Gulf South for Football) and has never built up a rivalry with Louisville or Vandy. South Florida, UAB, Georgia State, UNC Charlotte and Virginia Commonwealth don’t play football, and there’s no guarantee the former Southwest Conference schools that went into Conference USA won’t go into the WAC, the Big West, or even (in the cases of Houston and TCU) the SEC!



The Midwestern Conference on paper has less to lose. If MSU or Miami is lost and/or the conference wants to expand to twelve, there are plenty of schools left (with IUPUI, Oakland {Football at the Pontiac Silverdome} Dayton, Toledo, Marshall, and Northern Iowa waiting in the wings {However Nebraska-Omaha and the Dakota schools are out for the time being, it would take much more effort to move up in the ‘90s than the late ‘60s and ‘70s.}. However, the loss of a charter member like Michigan State or Miami to the Big Ten would be a blow to the very premise of the onference: that its membership is collectively the academic and athletic peers of the Big Ten. If this happened, the conference would overnight go from being compared with the Big North and that era’s Big West to being compared with the MAC, Sun Belt, and even the Missouri Valley/Gateway and Mid Continent conferences!

TarkioKid, any input?

Well, for one thing you're sticking WAY too many mid-major D-I's and smaller-division schools into the mix. The SUNY schools and the regional schools (IUPUI, Oakland, Wayne State, etc.) wouldn't be any farther than they are now unless you're including a lot of factors besides sports. Commuter colleges tend to draw poorly, and without those schools becoming a major academic institution due to factors outside of athletics their scenarios won't change much from now... maybe they might be a little better off affiliation-wise, but they're not going to be sponsoring I-A football by any means. Meanwhile, schools like Southern Poly, Southern Maine, etc. are WAY too small of schools to support D-I athletics without some MAJOR outside influence, like Portland ME replacing Boston as the Northeast's metropolis influence.

I would also say that in assuming that MSU and FSU would be lacking in academics, you're kind of putting the cart before the horse. The schools didn't build their academics by having superior sports, they had the academics in place, then used sports as advertisement. Any school that tries to do otherwise is bound to fail in almost any timeline. Also, privates like Miami U couldn't be flagship schools by nature.

As far as what's left, I do think the Midwestern Conference will survive, albeit on a less successful level (like when the A-10 cherry-picked the Horizon in '96). I do see the Metro South surviving, having that much tradition behind it with those schools I see all of the non-Big-12 Southwest schools joining in the Metro South, since there's a solid academic reputation for Rice, TCU, and SMU to join with, and Houston has a history similar to UofL, being a once private college turned state commuter school, however i think UH sees UofL's success and puts more academic standing in, meaning by the shuffle they're both solid schools. There's also a good chance they pick the Sun Belt for Memphis and a couple of others... now that I think about it, it looks like the Metro South would be this time line's Big East. Left for dead, yet rebuilt into something stronger than it was before.

Each of the four major SUNY Centers (except for Stony Brook) were long established teachers colleges founded in the Nineteenth Century. Each of the four SUNY Centers even back in the '80s had nine figure endowments and ten figure research budgets (except, oddly enough, Binghampton, whose endowment stands at a mere ca. $8,000,000). Each of the four SUNY Centers (even Buffalo) has a very residential campus culture. None of them are any more commuter schools than Ohio
State, Washington, or UCLA.

I never mentioned Southern Polytechnic State University in this thread.

[edit] Oops! Yes I did. Well, the school has the academics for the ACC, but I admit little else. Sorry![/edit]

Wayne State drew reasonably well in sports until the late 1940s when Michigan State entered the Big Ten and the Tartars lost their biggest rival. This prevented them from upgrading their facillities, which kept them from being able to schedule big name opponents, which kept them from hiring or keeping good coaches,
which kept them from updating their facillities, which caused a further downward spiral in athletics...

This despite the fact that Wayne State's regents are elected statewide, like Michigan's and Michigan States.

Southern Maine has more students than Maine, and just as much of a residential student culture (or at least on campus student body.) It is home to the state's oldest and largest public medical and law schools, spends roughly three times Maine does in research, has a larger endowment, and even is more academically sellective. Its situation in OTL is as if Michigan State was in the Big Ten but Michigan was in the Division III Michigan Intercolegiate Atheltic Association.




I am basing this on average high school senior GPA at admittance, standardised test scores, and graduation rates at Florida State and Michigan State. I'll be the first to admit this method has its flaws (like an inability to measure "grade inflation" if such a variable has any meaning) but nevertheless it these yardsticks are frequently used. They seem to confirm anecdotal evidence: In 1993, I applied to several colleges: Michigan State, Minnesota, Illinois, and Ohio State accepted me while Kentucky, Illinois State, Miami (Ohio) and Ohio did not. (I was going to go to Illinois until other circumstances forced me to go to Western Kentucky instead.)

The correlation between undergraduate education and graduate programs and research can often be very loose.

Oh, and yes, Miami University of Ohio is a public school.




So which of the Metro Southern schools will move to SEC and ACC?

(Note that in this TL, The Southwest Conference implodes this way: Arkansas and Texas Tech to Big Eight (renamed Heartland Conference), Texas to the Pac Ten with Colorado (which in this TL is in the WAC) UTEP and Baylor to the WAC, and at least Texas A&M to the SEC. That leaves Houston, TCU, SMU, and Rice.) The SEC is at eight at this point in this TL, and I was toying with sending Houston to the SEC too. How hard would it be for the SEC to leap from 8 to 12?

A few interesting quirks of this timeline:

Big Winner (Football)
Miami University of Ohio:

As said before, Miami isn't just the "cradle of coaches" in this Timeline, they stay and win national championships.

Big Winner (Basketball)
Kentucky State:

In this timeline, instead of applying to Winston-Salem State in Basketball crowded North Carolina, Clarence "Big House" Gaines comes home to his alma mater, where over a 50 year career he lifts Kentucky State from NAIA to NCAA Division I, winning 1027 games and 12 national championships at literally all levels of play. (and the year after his retirement, Kentucky State jumps up to Division IA when the Sun Belt Conference adds football. {Kentucky State and Tennessee State become the first and second HBCUs in Division 1A})

Big Loser (Football)
Alabama

Paul "Bear" Bryant spends five more years at Kentucky, and parts on friendlier terms than in OTL. Instead of moving to Texas A&M, though (due to different circumstances) he goes to Notre Dame, and the Bad Times of the Late Fifties there never happen. (Ara Parsegian stays at Indiana, pre-empting Branch McCracken) His coaching experience means that in the eyes of his Alma Mater, he is, ahem, "irreversably contaminated," and they don't want him back until the '70s, by which time it is too late, and in his mind, they can kiss his, ahem, donkey, and inhale his, ahem, rooster.

Without "The Bear" in Tuscaloosa and his winning ways, and a substantially altered coaching tree, Alabama's '20s and '30s football glory days are about as relevant today as those of Ole Miss, Holy Cross, or the Ivy League.

Big Looser (Basketball)
UCLA

John Wooden's sense of pride forces him to stay at Minnesota, since leaving the conference of Adolph Rupp can only happen with one's tail between one's leg. The L.A. metro area still produces the likes of Oscar Robinson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but they don't all go to any one school. There is never anything like OTL's UCLA 12 year Wooden dynasty, even at Kentucky, Duke, Indiana, or Kansas.

Due to the subsequently altered coaching tree, Denny Crum ends up at Fresno State, but since Louisville is more of a football school earlier, he isn't missed as much.