The Desert Conference was a junior college athletic conference with member schools located in Southern California that operated from 1961 to 1981. It was formed in 1961 with four charter members: Barstow Community College , Imperial Valley College , Palo Verde College , and Victor Valley College . The College of the Desert joined the conference in 1962.
7-581: The Desert Conference was abolished by California's Commission on Athletics (COA) in 1981. In a releaguing process, the members of the conference moved to the newly-formed Foothill Conference . This article related to sports in California is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article on a California institution of higher education is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Realignment (sports) In North American sports, realignment or releaguing refers to
14-719: A league introduces new teams in new markets, placing them in the division best suited to their geography may result in more teams in that division, so realignment is necessary. The 1969 baseball realignment coincided with the addition of four teams, whereas its 1994 realignment creating extra divisions in both the American League and the National League came a year after the league added the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins . The National Football League realigned to its current eight-division format after
21-461: A major change in the competitive structure of one or more existing leagues. The mechanics differ somewhat between amateur and professional sports. In professional sports, this occurs when a league decides to change which teams are in which divisions , usually by creating new divisions. In all of the four major North American sports leagues , all of the teams are grouped into one of two conferences (or leagues in baseball) while each conference/league
28-636: A series of team relocations had created geographically skewed divisions. Sometimes a sport will favor old division rivalries over geographical consistency. The rivalries the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL maintain with the teams of the eastern seaboard, especially the Washington Commanders , meant they were kept in an eastern division after realignment, even though they are geographically dissimilar to their division rivals. In college sports ,
35-834: A team may relocate to a new city, and as a result the division may become geographically skewed. For instance, when the Atlanta Thrashers of the NHL became the Winnipeg Jets in 2011, they would have been a team from a northwestern city playing in the Southeast Division, but the NHL chose not to realign at this time, leading to lengthy road trips for the Jets and the other teams in their division. Also, divisions need to be roughly equal in size to ensure that each team has an equal chance of becoming division champion. When
42-512: Is further subdivided into divisions. Teams in the same division play each other more regularly than teams in the same conference, and much more often than teams in the other conference. Teams from the same division can form intense rivalries. The top team from a division is always guaranteed a playoff spot and guaranteed a higher seeding in the playoffs. Divisions are usually based on geography, both to minimise travel costs and to encourage regional rivalries. Divisions are not always static. Sometimes
49-455: The term "realignment" is used to refer to a situation in which large numbers of schools switch their conference affiliation in a short period of time. Especially in the top level of college sports, NCAA Division I , several schools change their affiliations in one or more sports every year. However, the term is usually reserved for situations which affect large numbers of conferences—most notably in 1996 , 2005 , 2010–2014 , and most recently
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