This is part of an ongoing series covering various college realignment news for all three NCAA Divisions as well as the NAIA. The roundup below will cover news and reports since January 31, 2025, and provide updates on previously discussed topics. As a reminder, all official moves starting with the 2024-25 academic year or later can be found here and all changes – full membership or individual sport changes – starting in 2025-26 can be found here. Please note that individual sports changes occurring in 2025-26 or later will be listed in the standalone article only.
We’ll break out the reports for each Division in the following order: Division 1, Division 2, Division 3, and NAIA. Clicking the links will bring you to that specific section. If a division is not highlighted, there has been no news in the preceding two weeks. We’ve also summarized the news items in a table below if you are more interested in a summary or specific news item rather than having to scroll to find it.
New Group to Oversee Compensation Enforcement?
A group of Power 4 affiliated personnel and administrators are in the beginning stages of creating a new structure that will oversee the compensation enforcement for NCAA Division 1 after the NCAA v House settlement becomes finalized. The group will work to maintain a cap management system, monitor NIL deals, and investigate any infractions that occur under the new House rules. This is the first step to wrestle power away from the NCAA and into the Power 4 conferences. Time will tell if the new group will be more proactive to avoid costly lawsuits than the NCAA has been over the past decade.
Possible Movement Out West
Matt Brown of Extra Points shed some light on some possible realignment happenings out west in a recent article. The Big West is looking at possibly adding Utah Valley University and Cal Baptist as future members with an estimated announcement date at some point in April. With realignment, that timeline could change quickly. It was also mentioned that Northern Illinois is a near lock to end up in the Horizon League but the wheels of NIU’s academia turn slowly when it comes to realignment matters apparently…
Multidivisional Schools Can Opt-In to the House Settlement
Mike MacMahon of College Hockey Insider reported that non-Division 1 schools that have a sports team playing in D1 can opt-in to the NCAA v. House settlement. In theory, a school like Dallas Baptist could opt-in to the settlement and share revenue up to the max of $20.5 million for its baseball team, which plays in Conference USA. It should be noted that full Division 1 members could do the same thing: agree to share the max $20.5 million and only allocate it to one sport. In practice, it’s unlikely that these schools will offer much revenue-sharing or even opt-in, let alone share the entire $20.5 million due to the low revenue generated by these sports compared to football. Nevertheless, the possibility of some programs leveraging this aspect to gain a competitive advantage can’t be ruled out.
Title IX Ruling Reversed
The Title IX guidance for NIL payments announced in late January that NIL payments should be split equally among men and women has been rescinded.
NCAA Division 1 Sports Changes
The NCAA is recommending that Women’s Flag Football join the NCAA’s Emerging Sports for Women program which would allow the sport to become an NCAA-sponsored sport. The NCAA did not provide a definitive timeline. The ultimate goal would be to see all three NCAA divisions sponsor the sport with one of the key criteria of at least 40 schools sponsoring the sport in each division. According to our list, 38 NCAA schools will add women’s flag football over the next two academic years and that number will continue to rise.
The ACC has a new baseball tournament format for the 2025 season. All 16 baseball-playing members will compete in a single-elimination championship that will start on Tuesday, May 20 and end on Sunday, May 25, 2025. The top four seeds will receive a bye into the quarterfinals while seeds 5 through 8 will have a bye into the second round. The bottom eight seeds – 9 through 16 – will compete in the first round. The previous format involved a round-robin group play to determine the semifinalists. The Durham Bulls Athletic Park in Durham, North Carolina, will be the site of this year’s tournament.
In April 2024, the Michigan Wolverines started to look into adding a varsity women’s hockey team. Nearly 10 months later, a bit more information regarding the costs of adding the team has been revealed. The team would cost another $4.5 million annually to sustain while upfront costs to renovate existing or build new infrastructure will run into the tens of millions and as high as $330 million. Those are big expenditures as the House v NCAA is set to force athletic departments all around the country to increase budgets to provide revenue-sharing to student-athletes.
Two Ohio Valley Conference members – Lindenwood and Southern Indiana – announced they intend to pursue the expedited NCAA Division I reclassification process. Under the new rules, the reclassification process is shortened by one year, which would allow both schools to become full Division 1 members beginning with the 2025-26 academic year. Without the expedited process (or if either school fails to meet the requirements), the first year of full D1 membership would be 2026-27.
NCAA Division 2 Sports Changes
The NCAA is recommending that Women’s Flag Football join the NCAA’s Emerging Sports for Women program which would allow the sport to become an NCAA-sponsored sport. The NCAA did not provide a definitive timeline. The ultimate goal would be to see all three NCAA divisions sponsor the sport with one of the key criteria of at least 40 schools sponsoring the sport in each division. According to our list, 38 NCAA schools will add women’s flag football over the next two academic years and that number will continue to rise.
The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) will add one member in the future, according to Commissioner Steve Murray. Murray did not say which school but stated two schools will apply for one spot and “that could still be a couple more years away.” Both schools are located in Pennsylvania and the conference also had conversations with two schools from West Virginia, neither of whom were interested in starting the membership process. Whichever team joins the PSAC will replace Mercyhurst, who left the conference at the start of the 2024-25 academic year to become a member of the Northeast Conference in NCAA Division 1.
Ferrum College (Ferrum, Virginia) was accepted into the NCAA Division 2’s expedited membership process. The Panthers will have a two-year reclassification process from D3 to D2 that begins with the 2025-26 academic year. If Ferrum meets all the requirements, the college will become a full D2 member beginning with the 2027-28 academic year. Ferrum is leaving the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) in NCAA Division 3 to join the Conference Carolinas in NCAA Division 2 starting with the 2025-26 academic year.
NCAA Division 3 Sports Changes
The NCAA is recommending that Women’s Flag Football join the NCAA’s Emerging Sports for Women program which would allow the sport to become an NCAA-sponsored sport. The NCAA did not provide a definitive timeline. The ultimate goal would be to see all three NCAA divisions sponsor the sport with one of the key criteria of at least 40 schools sponsoring the sport in each division. According to our list, 38 NCAA schools will add women’s flag football over the next two academic years and that number will continue to rise.
Texas Football’s Cory Hogue reports that the American Southwest Conference will use a double-round-robin format for the 2025 football season. The ASC saw its football membership shrink to four teams by the start of the 2024 season, which led the conference to use the double-round-robin last season. According to Hogue, there was some hope that the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) might schedule some ASC teams as non-conference opponents but the current iteration of the D3 NPI system that awards at-large bids to the Playoffs encourages teams to schedule inferior teams. As a result, the four ASC members – East Texas Baptist, Hardin-Simmons, Howard Payne, and Mary Hardin-Baylor – may not be able to build a 10-game schedule entirely out of D3 opponents. Whether the ASC finally starts to rebuild its membership in 2025 to avoid this issue remains to be seen.
NAIA Sports Changes
North American University (Stafford, Texas) is discontinuing its football program after four seasons to focus on the university’s other sports programs. NAU’s football team competed in the Sooner Athletic Conference for the 2023 and 2024 seasons, which will have 9 football members in 2025. NAU’s primary conference affiliation is the Red River Athletic Conference (RRAC), which doesn’t sponsor football. NAU also competes in the United States Collegiate Atheltic Association (USCAA). NAU sponsors men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s track & field, and women’s cross country.
Shawnee State University (Portsmouth, Ohio) might move to the NCAA Division 2 in the future. The Bears are a member of the NAIA’s River States Conference and were benchmarked by Collegiate Consulting to join NCAA Division 2’s Great Lakes Valley Conference or Mountain East Conference in a feasibility study. That does not rule out the possibility of Shawnee State ultimately ending up in a different D2 conference or remaining in the NAIA.
Photo courtesy of Utah Valley athletics