What I'm hearing about D-II reclassifications, ASUN expansion and more

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

Quick note:

I am going to be in Raleigh this weekend for the 2nd Annual Sports Podcast Festival, with pals like Split Zone Duo, Ovies and Giglio and more. On Friday at 8 p.m. ET, at Bond Brothers Eastside in Cary, NC, I’ll do a live segment with other sports podcast friends. There’s also the main event on Saturday night, where I’ll be speaking.  There are still tickets out there, so if you grab one here, you can use promo code SPF25 to get a second ticket for half off. Tickets include shirts from Homefield Apparel. See you there!

Normally, late August is not the most active time on the calendar for conference realignment. After all, the start of the academic calendar isn’t just jam-packed for athletic directors, but also for university presidents, who need to meet and sign off on this sort of thing.

Of course, just because it isn’t the most common time of year to drop a conference realignment press release doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Just last week, Tennessee Tech announced it’s leaving the OVC to join the SoCon, effective in 2026.

We’ll get to that move later in this newsletter, but the SoCon and the OVC aren’t the only leagues having conversations.

Earlier in August, I caught up with ASUN Commissioner Jeff Bacon to chat about what the ASUN/UAC partnership looks like now that the dust has settled a bit. There are big conversations still to happen about conference bylaws, about deciding what decisions should be made locally versus at partnership level, and about what conference governance should look like.

But beyond all of that, there’s also membership. Both the UAC and ASUN are looking to add new members. The UAC only has eight members at the moment (with at least one, Tarleton State, telegraphing its desire to reclassify to FBS as soon as possible), and the ASUN only has seven.

I believe CollegeAD had this first, noting that three Division II institutions have been in talks with ASUN officials, even going so far as to sign letters of interest. Those three institutions, according to their report as well as my own sourcing, are West Florida, Lincoln Memorial and Nova Southeastern.

The phrase “letter of interest” doesn’t appear very often when discussing conference realignment. I’ve confirmed with the NCAA that Division I membership voted to approve a moratorium on D-I reclassifications until at least February 2027, unless a reclassifying school “received a written invitation or letter of interest from a conference or submitted a written letter of interest to join a conference before August 5, 2025”

Multiple industry sources have stressed to me that a letter of interest is not an official conference invitation. Those three institutions have not been formally invited to the ASUN as of this morning. As best as I understand it, the paperwork filed simply demonstrates that the three schools were already in the process of discussing a conference invite before the moratorium was passed.

I’ve asked around with a few other conference commissioners, as well as folks in Indianapolis, and I’m unaware of any other D-II schools that filed similar paperwork before Aug. 5. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen! Just that I haven’t heard anything from anybody I trust.

So why those three schools? What’s the UAC’s plan? What does it mean for other FCS leagues, and their realignment strategies?

Here’s what I’m hearing so far.

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.