It was 40 years ago this week that college basketball changed into what it is today. On March 26, 1979, Michigan State beat Indiana State in a game that still symbolizes the dividing line between college basketball as we knew it then and how we know it today.

Sure, the UCLA-Houston game in the Astrodome in 1968 may have brought the game to the masses, but it really was just more of the same for the next decade.

Need proof of how much things have changed since that night in Salt Lake City, Utah?

** Start with that last sentence and the words “Salt Lake City, Utah.” Think they’ll be playing any more Final Fours in SLC any time soon? And by the way, they played it in the Huntsman Center, an on-campus arena (University of Utah) that seats about 15,000.

** ESPN didn’t exist, which means that Dick Vitale was just another bald basketball coach at the time.

** We were still years away from the 3-point line and a shot clock.

** The field had only 40 teams and only the top four in each region were seeded.

** The shorts. You know it, I know it and the American people know it.

** It’s still the largest television audience to ever watch a basketball game — college or pro — in this country. It got a 24.1 rating, Last year’s Villanova-Michigan game got a 9.2.

** Penn was one of the teams in the Final Four that year. Not Penn State. Penn … the one in the Ivy League.

** Larry Bird was in his fifth year of college basketball. Believe it or not, he had been drafted the year before by the Boston Celtics, but came back as the team kept his rights for another year. Magic Johnson was a sophomore, meaning that he stayed in college twice as long as the average future pro these days.

Larry Bird and Magic Johnson may not have saved the NBA as much as it often gets made out to be. But what they did one night in Utah was, in fact, a we-are-never-going-back moment for college basketball.