Where College Realignment Stands Heading into 2025

The wheels of realignment have been in overdrive in the past five years amidst a foundational change in college athletics so it feels appropriate to provide a look at the membership changes across the NCAA and NAIA as we start 2025. This is intended to be a short summary for specific conferences and not a deep dive because the pending House settlement and other legal challenges would render most of the analysis moot. We won’t look at individual sports membership shortfalls other than football but there will be a section on the sports added in 2025-26 or later towards the bottom of the article. Let’s start with NCAA Division 1.

NCAA Division 1

The biggest outstanding issues for D1 involve the western half of the United States but that can change quickly. The Pac-12 is currently at 8 full members but only seven schools sponsor football. To meet FBS requirements, the Pac-12 needs another football-playing school by the start of the 2026-27 academic year. Below is a table showing Pac-12 membership as it stands for the 2026-27 season.

Mountain West

The Mountain West has hit its FBS minimum requirement of 8 football-playing schools but there is still the outstanding issue of Northern Illinois. All indications are that NIU will accept the MW’s invitation as a football-only affiliate, which would put the conference at 9 football members and 10 full members. Grand Canyon does not sponsor football while UC Davis will keep its football team in the Big Sky Conference (for now). Where the rest of NIU’s sports end up remains to be seen but there are plenty of possibilities including but not limited to the Horizon League, Missouri Valley Conference, Ohio Valley Conference, and Summit League. Beyond NIU, it appears the Mountain West will not pursue any additional realignment moves. Assuming that’s true, there’s one less active player in the realignment shuffle, but conferences always evaluate the landscape for potential moves.

The Rest of D1 with a focus on the Western US

This could have been titled “non-Power 4 conferences in the West” because there’s the potential for many realignment moves west of the Mississippi River. We’re not going to game out all the scenarios because the domino effects are too long for a simple article but it relies upon the Pac-12 and Mountain West to finish their moves. Once that happens, the rest of the pieces will begin to move although it’s difficult to say with any certainty how it shakes out. The conference with the most worry has to be the WAC, which is slated to have only 7 full members for the 2026-27 academic year and could be ripe for more departures as other conferences look to solidify their membership numbers.

What role, if any, will other D1 conferences like C-USA, the MAC (if they want to go beyond 12), the Southland, and the Sun Belt play? There truly are so many interconnected possibilities that it’s hard to know how far down the next realignment shuffle will go. Does the realignment shuffle reach D2 once the House settlement is finalized and the realignment moves begin to unfold? Could there be a reality in a few years where D1 schools leave for D2 after assessing the true cost of the House settlement (plus whatever other changes happen)?

MEAC

The MEAC gets a special mention here because they’ve treaded the realignment waters with 8 full members but only 6 schools sponsor football. The MEAC saw an exodus around the turn of the decade with Bethune-Cookman, Florida A&M, Hampton, North Carolina A&T, and Savannah State all leaving in a three-year span. There have been perpetual rumors of D2 teams moving up to join the MEAC but none have come to fruition. There’s nothing to suggest any movement on the MEAC front but this is realignment where things can, and often do, unexpectedly change.

United Athletic Conference

The UAC is a football-only conference comprised of member schools from the ASUN and Western Athletic Conferences. Given the WAC’s precarious situation, there could be additional impact on the UAC if primary conferences want football to join as well. Then again, maybe it will be more like the case of UC Davis with schools joining and football joining a few years later. Or maybe the UAC will see no impact since it’s a football-only conference.

NCAA Division 2 – Gulf South Conference

The Gulf South Conference is set to take a huge membership hit in football. The 2024 season saw 8 teams compete but four are leaving in 2025. Chowan, Erskine, and North Greenville are joining the Conference Carolinas while Mississippi College has dropped football. That leaves only Delta State, Valdosta State, West Alabama, and West Florida for 2025. Could the GSC opt to play a home-and-away double round-robin for the 2025 season? Or do they have a potential plan to bring in some football-only members? It could be a rough year for Delta State in the GSC considering that Valdosta State, West Alabama, and West Florida were top 25 teams in 2024.

NCAA Division 3 – American Southwest Conference

While the D2 Gulf South hasn’t hit 4 members yet, the Division 3 American Southwest Conference did in 2024. East Texas Baptist, Hardin-Simmons, Howard Payne, and Mary Hardin-Baylor played a double-round robin schedule in 2024. The last two non-football members (LeTourneau and Texas at Dallas) depart in 2025. The ASC hasn’t responded to the departures since the last time we talked about them in December 2023 and the current realignment era isn’t leaving them with many options.

NAIA – California Pacific Conference

The NAIA’s California Pacific Conference (Cal Pac) is like the previous two entries: lots of departures in the past few years. Effective with the 2024-25 academic year, Antelope Valley (closed), Benedictine-Mesa (GSAC), Embry-Riddle-Prescott (GSAC), Park-Gilbert (GSAC), and Saint Katherine (closed) left the Cal Pac. In 2025, Cal Maritime (integration with Cal Poly), La Sierra (GSAC), Soka (GSAC), and UC Merced (D2 CCAA) will depart. Who is left in the Cal Pac then? Pacific Union, Providence Christian, Simpson, and Westcliff.

The Cal Pac leadership has stated it wants to be “aggressive” with its expansion and recently announced a series of moves to help stabilize the conference including the addition of Stanton University in 2025-26 as a full member. The conference also hinted at future announcements with as many as four possible additions over the next two years. We’ll see how many of those four become NAIA members or if Cal Pac will convince other current NAIA programs to join the conference.

Individual Sport Trends

If you read this website regularly or look at the individual sport realignment changes, some of the information below won’t be a surprise. In November 2024, an article was posted about women’s flag football and wrestling being the two most added sports. The prediction beyond November 2024 was that those two sports would remain the top two additions for a variety of reasons and that hasn’t changed. In fact, women’s flag football has nearly doubled in additions in the last 60 days from 22 to 40, which is pretty impressive and also doesn’t include additions for the current 2024-25 academic year. The table below shows the most added sports for men and women as of December 31, 2024.

For the total number of realignment changes, NCAA Division 3 leads the way with 163 changes (conference change, sport added, or sport discontinued) due to having the most member institutions. NCAA Divison 1 (81 changes), NCAA D2 (76 changes), and NAIA (74 changes) are in a close battle for second. In terms of full membership changes (a school moving most or all sports from a single conference to a new conference), the NAIA will have 15 in the future, D1 will have 14, D3 will have 12, and D2 will have 6. The biggest impact on future moves may not have even happened yet with the House settlement still needing to be finalized, not to mention all the other legal challenges the NCAA is and will continue to face. Those challenges, along with the ensuing remedies, will shape realignment in the future but the when and extent remains uncertain. All numbers are through December 31, 2024.

In terms of gender breakdown, there have been twice as many women’s teams added (141) as men’s teams (71). Again, not a surprise as more women are attending college so it makes sense for colleges and universities to create more athletic opportunities that may or may not combat the impending enrollment cliff. That last part is of particular interest to NCAA Division 3 schools because they do not provide athletic scholarships and are most likely to be adversely impacted by significant enrollment changes. There have been 20 sports discontinued across the NCAA (none in the NAIA yet) effective with the 2025-26 academic year with 11 affecting men’s teams and 9 affecting women’s teams. Below is a breakdown showing the realignment changes by affiliation and gender.

Big Picture Changes and Summary

As noted in the quick summaries above, there are a handful of conferences that need to sort out their membership to main eligibility or just to prevent disbanding. With realignment, the changes can occur quickly and impact several “stable” conferences that weren’t discussed above. Just because a conference isn’t listed above, it doesn’t mean it has little to worry about. Remember how quickly the Pac-12 became the 2PAC?

Then there are the ongoing legal issues involving the NCAA with the House settlement at the forefront, which is scheduled to be finalized in April 2025 and to be implemented with the 2025-26 academic year. It is impossible to see how every single realignment change unfolds in the next 12 months, let alone the next 3 to 5 years and beyond. The NCAA’s continued legal struggles only complicate everything further, which could lead to even more drastic changes we haven’t even contemplated. Add in possible changes at the Federal level and anyone saying anything with absolute certainty needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt.

That’s not all: college football in particular is moving ever closer to becoming semi-pro with the NIL, athlete eligibility, the question of whether athletes are employees (along with the related unionization/collective-bargaining issues), and the transfer portal (aka free agency). While the focus has been largely on football, how those are addressed by the NCAA will have spillover implications for the rest of the NCAA sports. Private equity has been a topic among college athletics, the expansion of the NCAA Basketball tournament, and the talk of a breakaway among the top teams are additional factors that could impact realignment. Lastly, but certainly not least, how Title IX is adjudicated in the courtroom (because that’s where it is going to end up like everything else NCAA-related) will be a significant factor in realignment as well. Nearly all of these topics or issues are intertwined with one change impacting other issues, creating a vicious cycle.

Hopefully, the next 12 months will start to provide some clarity to college athletics.

Photo Courtesy of Northern Illinois University Athletics