Get ready for even more mid-major conference realignment

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Lots of big news to get through today! So everybody, buckle up!

First, I am excited to announce that we’ve made a hire for our Assignment Editor opening. Please join me in welcoming Joan Niesen!

Niesen is a longtime sports writer and editor. As a reporter, she worked for FOX Sports, The Denver Post, Sports Illustrated and Religion of Sports. She's also held editor roles at the Athletic and the Washington Post. These days, she writes for a variety of publications, including the Washington Post and Washingtonian, about food, travel, politics and more. She lives in St. Louis with her husband, Jesse, and her cat, Harriet.

You can reach Joan at [email protected]. If you want to pitch a freelance story idea, that is the best place to email.

Second, I am flying out to Orlando first thing Sunday morning for NACDA! I’ll be in town until Tuesday afternoon, and I’d love to chat with all of you. My Monday is looking pretty booked at the moment, but I have some unscheduled time in the mornings, Sunday afternoon, and Tuesday afternoon. Drop me a line at [email protected].

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Follow along with Teamworks and Extra Points as we explore How GMs are Building Championship Rosters. In our latest update, we caught up with a mid-major that just hired an old AD to be a GM over multiple sports. We’ve also covered How the technology that supports GM jobs actually works, a look at the Mid-Major Basketball GM role, and our first dispatch, on the skills needed to be a P4 FB GM.

Let’s talk conference realignment

Earlier this week, Utah Valley and the Big West finally made things official, with the move effective starting in the 2026-2027 season.

What took so long? After all, I’ve been writing about mutual interest between the Big West and UVU since March, and the Cal Baptist invite and acceptance was wrapped up before April.

While I’m certain I don’t have the full story here, I’m told many factors were at play. Like I’ve written before, UVU’s university president was on bereavement leave for part of the Spring, slowing down the decision-making process. UVU also had an incentive to slow things down, as multiple other leagues (like the Summit and MWC) had some level of interest in adding the Wolverines.

There were also technical details to get ironed out, like whether it was possible to limit the number of high-impact Sunday home games for UVU. It’s a state school, sure, but with such a heavily-LDS fanbase, ticket sales will be harder to generate on Sundays. Clearly, none of these challenges were insurmountable, but they took a little longer to get all the Ts crossed.

UVU’s departure has been expected for months, but now that it’s official-official, the WAC is now officially down to five schools. I’m told that again, there is no path to patch up membership with D-II institutions, and although there have been attempts to recruit other D-I institutions (more on this in a second), I’ve yet to talk to an industry source who believes it will be successful. The most likely outcome, at this point, is that the remaining five institutions find new conference homes and everybody huddles up with the lawyers to figure out how the remaining league assets are split up.

Where will the remaining schools go? Great question. The three Texas schools (ACU, UT-Arlington and Tarleton State), have, at various points over the last few months, popped up as potential candidates for the Summit League, the Southland, or the ASUN. The other Utah institutions (Utah Tech and Southern Utah), don’t appear to have as many options. I’m told the Summit League is not particularly interested in the two Utah schools without UVU, and that the Big Sky and Big West are also not immediately interested.

As for the Big West, adding UVU gives the league 11 institutions for the 2026-2027 season. A few administrators have told me to keep an eye on Sacramento State as the possible 12th schools. Sac State is in the process of attempting to reclassify to FBS football, but does not have a conference invite, and I’m told they’re not really expecting one in the immediate future. If the NCAA does approve their waiver request (which is not a 100% sure thing), then the Hornets will need a new home for their other sports. I’m told Sacramento State also looked at the WAC as a potential home, but given that league’s instability, it’s less appealing.

Should there be additional movement in the WCC, MWC or other western leagues, it’s always possible that every other conference could revaluate their membership plans. Expansion criteria tends to be written in pencil these days, not pen.

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Villanova has also joined the Patriot League

CAA Football took another massive blow on Thursday, when the long-rumored move finally happened. The Wildcats will play their first Patriot season in 2026, joining fellow ex-CAA members Richmond and William & Mary. The move gives the Patriot League 10 football-playing members, and with the caveat that you can never truly say never, I’m told they’d be quite comfortable without any additional expansion.

On the field, it’s a coup for the Patriot League. Thanks to grabbing three high-level CAA brands, and the improvement of some of their charter members, the Patriot is clearly a multi-bid football conference now, and if they aren’t a better league than the CAA, they’re awfully close.

I’ll go ahead and go public with this, since I’ve seen some fans suggesting the CAA defections were driven by the CAA’s current media deal or conference commissioner. I’ve had multiple ADs at schools who have left the CAA tell me that they had positive things to say about their CAA experience, and that they have no intention of taking any potshots on their way out the door. For what it’s worth, I believe them.

I don’t think the CAA is facing an immediate existential crisis or anything, although it is hard to pretend that losing James Madison, Delaware, Richmond, William & Mary and Villanova won’t hurt the league on the field. Of course, it will. This is not 2017 CAA football anymore.

But CAA football still has 12 teams, and perhaps more importantly, still has schools that would love to join that league. Are any of those teams as good at football as the five schools that recently left? No. Could some of them become quality FCS programs in the future? Sure, just like recent additions Stony Brook, Hampton, and Bryant can continue to improve.

The one thing that would represent a massive threat would be if the America East decided they wanted to get into the football business. I have not heard from anybody with direct knowledge that this is likely, but you can’t rule out the possibility forever, especially if the CAA takes any additional defections.

Are there realignment conversations happening anywhere else?

Besides what’s going on with the Pac-12 and MWC, (and I could not begin to tell you when or how that might be resolved, or what other leagues are ultimately impacted, because the folks who actually know are under gag orders), I’m aware of a few other possibilities over the coming weeks.

• I’ve had a few connected folks tell me that while it isn’t considered a massive priority, the SoCon would be interested in adding additional football-playing institutions. There is interest among campus leaders to move away from a round-robin schedule and improve SOS metrics to help secure multiple postseason opportunities for the league.

• I’ve also heard some frustrations among some ASUN members, particularly but not exclusively Eastern Kentucky, about how the UAC/FB side of the operation has gone, enough to potentially look at other options. I’m told that WAC officially actually reached out to the other UAC schools about just joining the WAC as full members, although that pitch isn’t expected to actually go anywhere. I don’t know if anybody will actually leave the ASUN, but I’m hearing a few schools would be willing to take phone calls.

• The athletic calendar year switches over on July 1. If moves are going to happen, folks typically would prefer to have them wrapped up before then. Expect lots of conversations over the coming days, and not just at NACDA. But I’ll do my best to learn more about what’s going on (and not just about realignment) while I’m in Florida.

A few other recent Extra Points updates you may have missed

• We’ve obtained itemized athletic department budgets for almost every single public school in D1. I used that data to look up the operational budget for every baseball and softball team that made the NCAA postseason. The biggest baseball budgets spent more than $9 million, not counting player NIL payrolls. The smallest budgets? Under a million bucks. And only spending $858,106 didn’t stop Murray State from winning a regional!

• Want to read all those budgets? Plus thousands and thousands of coach contracts, athletic apparel deals, AD contracts, vendor contracts and more? Check out Extra Points Library. 

• I chatted with folks at Abilene Christian, who are trying to build a very different kind of Sports Management program, one that is deeply focused on leadership development.

• It’s June, and we haven’t seen any big private equity deals in college sports, even though there was a lot of chat about the industry over the winter. I wrote about why that may be happening.

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Thanks for reading, everybody. I’ll see you in Florida!