Some three decades later, the whole notion of what a conference is and what it does has changed dramatically.

UH is feeling the depth of the change first-hand as the dominoes fall all around it, reshaping the landscape of college athletics. Before the last one topples, UH could find its teams in a vastly remodeled league or a new one altogether.

Already six of the 11 Division I-A football-playing conferences, including the WAC, have been impacted by the impending realignment of 15 schools in the past three months, and more could be on the move in the days and months after the Big East makes official its expansion plans Tuesday.

For just as the Atlantic Coast Conference's raiding of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College has forced the Big East to look elsewhere to fill out its lineup, what the Big East does will influence which teams Conference USA loses and takes on and, in eventual progression, a possible reshuffling of the Mountain West, WAC, Mid-American, Sun Belt and others.

"What you're seeing is conferences moving to establish new geographic footprints," said Chuck Neinas, a former commissioner of the Big Eight and ex-president of the College Football Association, who operates a sports consulting firm.

Terms such as "footprint" (area of television markets a conference claims), "inventory" (games) and "brand" (cachet of a conference) illustrate how conferences have evolved from serviced-based umbrella organizations to financial movers and shakers.

Indeed, WAC commissioner Karl Benson says conferences have become, "revenue engines" for the schools they represent. "Conferences have gone, in the last 15 to 20 years, from being service providers who assigned the officials who worked games, set up tournaments and sent out (press) releases to significant businesses."

Heretofore the most accomplished of them, the Southeastern Conference, oversees and divides up nearly $100 million annually among its 12 members from money taken in by TV contracts, football and basketball championships and bowl games. The WAC and MWC each divide up less than $5 million per year to members.

When UH joined the WAC in 1979, all TV contracts were administered by the NCAA, whose deal with the networks limited appearances and spread around the revenue.

But in a landmark 1984 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA contract violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, a development that would reshape how business was handled for the 117 major colleges.

The CFA emerged to represent most of the schools until the beginning of the 1990s when Notre Dame broke off on its own to sign with NBC and the SEC sold its rights to CBS. The deregulation of football and the proliferation of networks allowed each conference to negotiate its own deal.

But as the early generations of deals have expired, conferences have sought to position themselves for newer ones and some have followed the SEC's lead in expanding to 12 teams so as to take advantage of a loophole in rules that permits conferences to hold a lucrative league championship.

With its own TV contracts coming up for renegotiation, the nine- school ACC, best known as a basketball conference, sought to enlarge its "footprint" and its improve its financial position from one that has been third behind the SEC and Big Ten.

So, with the expectation of enhanced revenues, it lured football powers Miami and Virginia Tech from the Big East and then added another Big East school, Boston College.

"What the ACC has done now is a three-fold strike," Neinas said. "They've tried to enhance their attractiveness to TV by gaining a larger footprint; they've gone to 12 to give themselves the revenue of a championship game and, third, they've buttressed their position for the Bowl Championship Series."

With one team in the BCS, a conference divides up $13 million. With two, it has nearly $20 million to spread around.

The reverberations from the ACC's move on the Big East have forced other schools to reexamine their ties and many conferences to explore expansion. In the process, WAC members Rice, Southern Methodist and Tulsa have said they will cast their lot with Conference USA for the 2005-'06 seasons and the WAC has responded by accepting Utah State and New Mexico State from the Sun Belt Conference.

Meanwhile, the MWC, which broke away from the 16-team WAC after 1998, taking eight schools, this week ponders whether it will jump into the game of musical conferences as well.

All of which only serves to underline for UH how much the role of conferences and its precarious position in one has changed over the years.

• Tomorrow: Conference realignments have teams, such as the University of Hawai'i, rethinking their affiliation. What does UH have to offer a conference such as the Mountain West?