Quote from: Pat Coleman on October 24, 2009, 11:21:11 PM
Consisted of a lot more than those schools, though, in other sports and in other decades. Catholic, American, University of Baltimore ... others I can't remember offhand.

In the 1960's Bridgewater was a member of the Mason-Dixon Conference.  The Conference had both a Northern and Southern Division and was around for a lot of years.  Most football playing schools were in the Southern Division:  Bridgewater, Hampden-Sydney, Shepherd, Randolph-Macon, and Gallaudet, as I recall.Shepherd actually was a member of two different conferences in those days. Lynchburg and Roanoke also were in the Southern Division, but did not have football teams.  In the Northern Division, again going on memory, the football schools were Western Maryland, now McDaniel, Catholic and John Hopkins, plus a number of schools that did not play football, including Loyola, Mount Saint Mary's, UMBC and American University.  All-Conference teams were selected from the Conference as a whole, not separate Northern and Southern Division selections, and Southern Division and Northern Division schools played each other, but not every Northern Division school played every Southern Division school.  Emory & Henry, W&L and Guilford were not in the Mason-Dixon Conference, although Bridgewater played W & L on a yearly basis and Guilford from time to time.  There was no Division I, II or III at the time, I believe even small schools were permitted to grant athletic scholarships, and Mason-Dixon teams played a lot of schools that today are Division II teams,  particularly from West Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.  I think it was in 1969 that Randolph-Macon, as Mason-Dixon Champions, played Bridgeport, then a school of 9,000-10,000 students, in the televised Knute Rockne Bowl in Atlantic City and won 47-28.