There's only one Canadian school in the NCAA, and it's leaving. Here's why.

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

Real quick, I have some fun news I’d like to share.

We’ve added many new institutional clients to Extra Points Library over the past few weeks. Today, I’m excited to announce North Alabama has signed up for the service.

If you want an affordable solution to get access to thousands of college sports budgets, coach and vendor contracts, financial information and more, check out Extra Points Library today.

Now, I realize the thing everybody wants to talk about right now is the Power 4 coaching carousel. And I get it … I’ve got a bunch of BIG COOKIE tweets in the ol’ drafts folder myself. But we’re all about zigging where other people are zagging, so I want to revisit a story that may have flown under the radar while many of you were focusing on Thanksgiving, the end of the FBS regular season and coaching rumors.

There is just one NCAA institution outside the United States. Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, British Columbia, competes in Division II as a member of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.

Back in September, the school commissioned an independent report from McLaren Global Sports Solutions to examine the implications of potentially leaving the NCAA and pursuing membership in U SPORTS, Canada’s national governing body for university sports. The consultants conducted interviews with SFU athletes, coaches, faculty and staffers, provided financial benchmarking context to both US and Canadian athletic options and crunched the numbers.

Based on that report, SFU announced on Nov. 26 that it intends to pursue membership in U SPORTS. If its application is accepted, SFU will continue to compete in the GNAC for the 2026-2027 academic year and then end U.S. athletic competition in 2027. In a statement released last week, GNAC commissioner Bridget Johnson Tette wrote, “SFU has been an important part of our conference, and although their departure is bittersweet, we wish them success in Canada's U SPORTS.”

Based on the information released by SFU, and from what I could glean from the full independent report, this decision isn’t just about travel costs. It’s about a challenging financial situation for the university as a whole, political challenges that come from close association with the United States and a different vision for what college athletics should be.

But before I get into what I learned — and what it could mean for SFU athletes and college sports at large — let’s back up for a second.

SFU competed as a member of the NAIA from 1965 to 2001, partly as a way to differentiate itself from other institutions in Canada. As more and more NAIA institutions transitioned to various NCAA classifications, SFU’s athletic options became more limited (and expensive). The school briefly competed in U SPORTS in 2002, but when D-II changed its bylaws in 2008 to allow international institutions, SFU jumped at the chance to rejoin American competition.

Every NCAA division can set its own rules about what types of institutions are allowed to join. The Division I bylaws do not permit international institutions, which is why SFU men’s hockey was never allowed to participate. But D-II rules do allow it.

Per the McLaren report:

Clearly, an awful lot has changed since 2008.