THE RESHAPING OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS MAY BE HERE

To the rules that govern the motions of terrestrial bodies must be added a new concept: conferential drift, the tendency of a large college sports league to try to engulf smaller ones when motivated by the pursuit of revenue. And when the NCAA's major football conferences begin acting in earnest upon what has been stirring for months, they promise to gobble up everything in their paths with a race toward Manifest Destiny that could reshape the face of intercollegiate athletics.

This summer may see the groundwork laid for rampant additions, defections and mergers that could test the structural boundaries of Division I-A, as the nation's elite schools and conferences scurry to establish regional strangleholds in anticipation of megabucks television contracts. The eventual result could be the disintegration of several existing conferences, the affiliation of most independents and, by the mid-1990s, the emergence of three or four "superconferences" with two divisions and 12 to 16 schools apiece - a transformation many see as the first step toward creating a college football playoff system."Where it all leads, I don't think anyone is sure right now," said Navy Athletic Director Jack Lengyel, who just completed his term as president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. "But it does seem clear to me that there will be some sort of realignment in the very near future. . . . The kind of money you're talking about makes that inevitable."

The possibilities are intriguing. What finally could emerge are an Atlantic Coast Conference stretching from the Northeast to Florida; a Big Ten, which recently added Penn State, that might have further holdings in the Northeast or from the current Big Eight (Nebraska, most prominently); a Southeastern Conference sprawling westward into Texas and including South Carolina and one or two more Florida teams among its Atlantic entries; and a revised Pacific-10 picking up what it can in the West (Colorado, Brigham Young and Air Force, among others).

Oklahoma has entertained notions about jumping from the Big Eight to the Southwest Conference - a move that could become moot if, as some close to this process insist, the Big Eight and SWC eventually are left with no choice but to combine. An on-again, off-again Eastern Seaboard Conference for football composed of independents and Big East schools needing a football-only league may yet arise.

By the middle of the decade, most observers agree, there will be considerable movement involving college football's six major conferences and the 20 or so significant independents. Of those presently unaffiliated, only Notre Dame - essentially a conference unto itself, owing to its personal network TV contract - appears likely to remain that way.