What I'm hearing about Utah Valley, Sacramento State, and other mid-major realignment business

Good morning, and thanks for your continued support of Extra Points.

Before we dig into the story here, a belated congrats to fans of the University of Florida for their men’s basketball national championship! Now that all the nets have been cut down, we can finalize the results of the Extra Points Bracket Challenge, brought to you by Short Courts. 

Congrats to our winner, MikeKozo22!

We’ll be reaching out to these folks in the coming days as well, so everybody can get their fabulous prizes. Winners, feel free to reach out to me directly at Matt @ ExtraPointsMB dot com. Thanks for playing, everybody!

I want to take a brief moment to step away from House hearing analysis or federal government freakouts. There will be plenty more time for that in the coming days. Instead, I want to counterprogram by addressing a few conference realignment storylines that readers have asked me about over the last week or so.

So, uh, why hasn’t Utah Valley University accepted their invite to the Big West? Should Big West fans be worried?

So way back in late February, I reported, along with Brett McMurphy, that the Big West was targeting Cal Baptist and Utah Valley as potential expansion candidates. League presidents voted in favor of inviting both programs, and Cal Baptist has officially accepted.

Folks in both the Big West and Utah Valley orbits told me at the time not to expect UVU to formally make any realignment decisions immediately. The Wolverines were a strong candidate for an NCAA Tournament bid, and didn’t want WAC officials to potentially prohibit them from participating in conference postseason events, or for realignment chatter to serve as a distraction.

Grand Canyon ended up winning the WAC Tournament, (UVU went to the NIT), but still no announcements. Now, it’s April 9, and all college basketball has ended. Why hasn’t UVU decided if they’ll accept the invitation or not?

I am hearing there are two major reasons for this. One has absolutely nothing to do with college sports.

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