"The Big East is one of the best basketball conferences, if not the best conference in the country, so if there's going to be a realignment, teams should be joining it, not leaving it," said Wallace, whose N.B.A. career included two stints with the Knicks.
The concluding of such running basketball rivalries has become all too common as conference realignment separates teams that had been bonded by animosities that seemed sure to last forever.
Bettman said that the league would have to revisit realignment "if the team is forced to relocate," and that he was worried that Jobing.com Arena, the Coyotes' home, might be boarded up if the team left.
Others in baseball count the expansion of the playoffs and the realignment of the teams a major achievement.
"Each owner," Rozelle often said of that realignment meeting, "wanted his team to be in a division with at least one warm-weather site or a domed stadium, with teams with large season-ticket sales and with teams that are pigeons".
It also provided for a realignment of all 26 teams for the 1970 season.
The latest realignment would place 15 teams in each league and 5 in each division, ensuring that interleague games would take place every day of the season.
With the prospect of conference realignment looming, a 96-team N.C.A.A. men's basketball tournament appearing more likely and the N.C.A.A. on the cusp of hiring a new president, college sports are getting an overhaul.
The major decision yesterday was unanimous approval of a new scheduling formula when the Houston Texans join the league in 2002, which will lead to realignment with eight four-team divisions.
"Has there ever been a non-realignment reason for a team to be promoted more than one division in a season, and what is the largest number of divisions a team has been promoted upwards in one season?" "This weekend, Bath City were frustrated at home in a 2-2 drawithth Bishop's Stortford," writes Edd H. "The match was refereed by a Mr Sam Allison, who happened to be a former City player.
