

Conference Realignment for D1, D2, D3, NAIA, and USCAA 2018 and Beyond. Notre Dame de Namur University dropped sports Holy Names dropping sports fall 2023 PSAC: RMAC: SAC: SIAC: D3: AMCC. The leagues other move, announced in September, was the addition of Austin Peay.
#LIBERTY UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT MANUAL#
This would change when the domino effect of realignment kicked into overdrive. The NCAA Manual states an FBS conference must be comprised of at least eight members that all sponsor a minimum of six mens and eight womens sports. Liberty joins 2023 Jacksonville State joins 2023 Sam Houston State joins 2023 Independents. Jacksonville State and Liberty will each end short stints with the ASUN when they move to Conference USA in 2023. At the start of the 2021-22 academic year, its membership numbered 14 programs. WKU has called Conference USA home since 2014. It'll have eight football programs once the dust settles, and Aresco is open to adding more. 2021’s realignment saga touched every corner of the college sports world, including up on the Hill.
#LIBERTY UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE REALIGNMENT FREE#
It's time for the AAC to start figuring out where it goes from here. After Charlotte bolted for the new American, Conference USA landed one of the most sought-after realignment free agents, SMU, a former Conference USA member and natural. Our athletic program’s best days are ahead of us. It’s going to continue to rise regardless of conference structure. Liberty’s athletic brand is the strongest it has ever been. Our conference was targeted for exceeding expectations in a system that wasn't designed to accommodate our success." Be encouraged, is McCaw’s message to Liberty fans amid the ongoing realignment discussions. "The irony that three of our schools are being asked to take the place of the two marquee schools which are leaving the Big 12 is not lost on us.

A 14-team conference is too big and any bigger would. "Today's news confirms what we have said all along regarding our status as a power conference," Aresco said in the statement. Brown theorized that future realignment will be about getting smaller, that conferences will need to cultivate an identity. The news out of the Big 12 begs the question - what is going to happen to the American Athletic Conference? Three of the four teams headed to the the Power Five currently play in the AAC, which bills itself as a "Power Six" conference.ĪAC commissioner Mike Aresco quickly addressed the defections of three of the top programs in his conference in a statement released Friday morning. The four teams will replace Texas and Oklahoma, who announced in July that they are leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. The next domino in realignment fell on Friday when the Big 12 officially invited Cincinnati, Houston, UCF and BYU to the conference.
