Stumbled across this tonight, something I didn't remember. There was a proposal to separate Division I football members in 1975. Its basically consistent with the membership of the CFA and the "equity/non-equity" conferences of the mid 90s NCAA governance revisions (Big West and MAC were not equity conferences).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Divis...ubdivision

The original FBS proposal in 1975:
Atlantic Coast Conference-7
Big Eight Conference-8
Big Ten Conference-10
Pac-8 Conference-8
SEC-10
Southwest Conference-9
Western Athletic Conference-8
Independents-13 (Air Force, Tulane, Memphis, Notre Dame, FSU, South Carolina, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Penn St., Pitt, BC, Syracuse, West Virginia)

Article also has interesting 1927, 1956 and 1976 maps of the teams, as well as 1982, 1991, 2010 and 2023.

So AFA, but no Army or Navy?

(09-24-2024 10:30 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  So AFA, but no Army or Navy?

Looks like it. That's wild.

Of those 73 schools, 65 are currently considered P5 (including WSU and OSU). The 8 that are currently in the G5 are:

Rice
Colorado State
New Mexico
Wyoming
UTEP
Air Force
Tulane
Memphis

Of the 70 schools currently in the P5, the only schools not on that list in 1975 were:

Louisville
Miami
Rutgers
Cincinnati
UCF

The first four of those were all independents in 1975, and UCF didn't start playing football until 1996.

Other than shuffling teams among conferences, it's remarkable to me how little has changed in the power structure of college football in the last 50 years.

(09-24-2024 10:30 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  So AFA, but no Army or Navy?

Of all the D-I independents at the start of the 1976 season, AFA was the only one in the Mountain or Pacific time zones. I wonder if that was a factor. There were 8 PAC teams and 8 WAC teams, so that means there were only 17 schools in the west out of 73 (23% of the total proposed for this top division).