Maybe the wildest semi-legitimate conference realignment rumor ever didn't come when Texas, Oklahoma and half the Big 12 nearly joined the Pac-10 a decade or so ago. It was much earlier than that.
For most of 1959 and 1960, it looked as if about half of the Pacific Coast Conference (Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC and Washington) would join up with eastern independents (Notre Dame, Penn State, Syracuse and maybe West Virginia or Pitt), the three service academies and maybe even Oklahoma to form what was colloquially called the Airplane Conference. The PCC was falling apart, air travel was getting easier and cheaper, and some of the biggest, most well-followed (and integrated) programs in the sport were really enjoying the idea of competing with one another annually.