U of South Carolina
U of North Carolina
U of Tennesse
U of Kentucky
U of Arkansas
U of Okalahoma
U of Texas
LSU
U of Mississippi
U of Alabama
U of Georgia
U of Florida



Would that be a power conference or what?

No Auburn, huh. Some conference.

Not sure where to put this, but New SEC may be as good as any. The SEC originally had Sewanee, Georgia Tech, and Tulane as members. Here is a story about their membership, departures, and where they are today:
The Birmingham News; Mike Perrin & Jon Solomon, 2/24/08

http://blog.al.com/bn/2008/02/southeastern_conference_charte.html

Thanks for the article SEC. Always intersting to play the 'what if' game for conference alignments in the college FB offseason. For example, with GT in the SEC, does that make the ACC turn north to expand in the 70s and 80s? The ACC would essentially have been locked in to the states of MD-VA-NC-SC and wouldn't have been able to expand south in a 'contiguous' way.

GT entered the ACC in 1979 (not sure when they were officially invited). The mid to late 70s is also the time is when the ECAC blew up for NCAA tourney purposes and the formation of smaller conferences for basketball were starting in the NE. For example, the Eastern 8 started in '75-76(?) and of course the BE started in 1979.

Remember that Penn State, WVu, and even SU had history with Maryland at that time. PSU had an annual series with them since the 60s while SU-MD and WVu-MD were almost annual from the same time period. PSU also had an annual series from the late 60s - early 80s with NC St.

Adding PSU and to a lesser extent WVu would have essentially forced the rest of the Eastern Indys (Pitt, SU, and BC) to eventually align with the ACC. PSU would have been the key although who knows if JoePa would ahve dropped his revenue sharing demands. ;D

What If ACC late 1970s:
UMd
UVa
UNC
NC St
Duke
WF
Clemson
PSU
WVu (?)

Late 1980s/Early 1990s - SEC takes one between FSU, Miami, Arkansas, South Carolina - I think FSU really pushes to join SEC because the SEC only needs one team to get to 12 in this scenerio and the ACC being 'locked' into the mid atlantic and with PSU on board would try to keep a northern feel to the conference. That would leave Miami and ND as the lone big Indys out here. BC, Pitt, SU, South Carolina, Miami and maybe WVu are available to the ACC for expansion.