Conference realignment is coming to the Big Sky, ASUN, UAC, and WAC, per reports.
Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger reports with others that the UAC and Big Sky will be most heavily affected, as they gain members. The UAC will form an alliance with the ASUN, absorbing the five football-affiliated members of the league into its group in 2026. This will populate the UAC — likely to be a rebranded WAC — with Tarleton, Abilene Christian, UT-Arlington, Eastern Kentucky, North Alabama, Austin Peay, Central Arkansas, and West Georgia. UT-Arlington does not currently field a football team, having disbanded it 40 years ago.
The seven remaining ASUN schools — Bellarmine, Lipscomb, Queens, Jacksonville, North Florida, Stetson, and Florida Gulf Coast — either do not field football or play in a non-scholarship FCS league.
Dellenger reports that the two leagues will remain separate and work together toward “a unified media package and a built-in scheduling agreement”.
The remaining schools in this announcement, Southern Utah and Utah Tech, will move to the Big Sky. This move will also be effective for the 2026 season. The Thunderbirds and Trailblazers will grow the league’s membership to 11 after Sacramento State announced its intent to depart the league and join the FBS.
The moves have not been completely finalized. Additional details on media coverage and league moves will be available at a later time.
One correction, the Big Sky will be at 11 members (13 if you count Cal Poly & UC Davis for football) in 2026-27, not 14 members.
Sac State was voted down on the FBS move and will be an FCS independent. Hopefully, Cal Poly goes with them. I think this story is a little premature to say the Big Sky will just welcome Southern Utah back after they left the league and there is no advantage to taking in Utah Tech, the schools have to vote on this first. Also, UC Davis is leaving for FBS too, are they forgetting this?
The Big Sky has already announced that SUU & UTU are joining. The only way Cal Poly goes independent in football is if the Big Sky kicks them out. While UC Davis is heading to the Mountain West, they will keep their football program in the Big Sky at the FCS level (at least for the near future, personally I think they’ll be an FBS team by the early 2030s).
Thanks Evan, I missed that on the Utah teams. Again, I’m not really thrilled with that because Southern Utah bailed and left, and Utah Tech shows nothing for me to think they belong and they’re just another Northern Colorado at best. I also feel that the “associate membership” plan is a mistake for the Big Sky and really it’s past time for these teams to move along, so maybe they could start up their own thing together. Overall, I’m just not a big fan of the mega conference in FCS, it just doesn’t have a place and when all the teams don’t play you having situations like you had when Southern Utah and North Dakota were Big Sky champions and didn’t play the top teams. It also opens up to the slim possibility of having two unbeaten co-champions, which makes no sense to me.
Montana should play Idaho and Eastern Washington every year. This is just too many teams, and what the Big Sky did before where you can play ooc games against conference members is silly too.
I did actually see that about UC Davis, but again, I wish the Big Sky would put the teams out that don’t want to participate in all of the Big Sky sports. They won’t kick Cal Poly out, but they obviously feel it is important to keep that footprint in California.
UC Davis would likely only upgrade football if the MW is raided in the next realignment cycle.
At that point, the MW will also likely look at Sacramento State too, though there is the possibility of Sac State going to court to fight the rejection of FBS independent status.
I agree with you JM. I think 12 schools should be the max, 10 is the most ideal. I remember that 2016 season well because I’m a Cal Poly alum, and that’s the last time we made the playoffs. Conference Championships don’t mean much in FCS though because of the playoffs. I don’t want us to leave the Big Sky for football because then we’d have no where else to go. I don’t know enough about Utah Tech, they’ve only been in D1 for a few years now. Your comparison to N Colorado is interesting because I think they should consider moving to the Summit League, as they have not brought much to the table in football or men’s basketball since moving up from D2 20 years ago. Travel would be a little easier in the Summit, and their football program can go to the less-competitive UAC.
I think the reason they’re inviting SUU and UTU is because they’re trying to be nice by just throwing them a lifeline, saving them from the sinking WAC. It’s the same reason the Big West brought in Cal State Bakersfield, who hasn’t done much in the 5 years they’ve been in the conference, even though they were supposed to be good at basketball.
Also, the Big Sky having more football programs than basketball programs is very awkward. They should remove football from the list of required sponsored sports so that they can look at having some non-football schools in the conference.
Utah Valley, currently in the WAC and planning on joining the Big West in 2026, would be a nice fit, to further increase the Utah presence and also make the Big West an all-California league to save on travel costs for that league’s members.
The two Alaska schools in D-II would also make nice fits for the Big Sky, which would make Alaska the final state to have full-time D-I schools.
Meanwhile, UT Arlington should hook up with the non-football schools of the ASUN. Both the football and non-football groups would look at having other members join, while if Texas State to the Pac-12 is confirmed, the next FBS dominoes should be Eastern Kentucky, Sam Houston, and Stephen F. Austin to the Sun Belt, New Mexico State to the Mountain West (which may need New Mexico passing a law requiring UNM and NMSU to be in the same conference), and Lamar, Tarleton and Western Carolina to CUSA.
The UAC could add the four remaining full members of the Gulf South Conference that sponsor football: Delta State, Valdosta State, West Alabama, and West Florida.
None of that works for the Big Sky, where are you getting your information?
Alaska is a longer trip from Montana than California, how is that a good fit? Alaska doesn’t need D-I schools. You talk about saving money for the California schools, there’s this little place called Canada between Alaska and the main 48 and it’s not like running across Rhode Island.
Glad you’re not part of the realignment team.
New Mexico State is not going to the Mountain West unless more MW schools leave. The MW took UTEP and NIU (fb only), they’re not taking NMSU.
The UAC will become an all-sports conference with the 3 remaining WAC schools (ACU, Tarleton, UT Arlington), and the 5 A-Sun schools in the UAC (C-Ark, A Peay, EKU, N Alabama, W Georgia). The remaining 7 A-Sun schools will stick together as the A-Sun, and likely invite at least 1 more school.
If the Pac-8 takes Texas State, the Sun Belt will replenish with either Louisiana Tech or W Kentucky, which means C-USA might dip into FCS. Tarleton would probably be first on that list, but what do I know? If that happens, I see Valdosta State as a potential D2->FCS call up if it gets to that point.
I am happy that Conferences & Networks are not part of FBS Schedules so they will not hear Z-Man keep dictating.
UAC is already an alliance between WAC and ASUN and that is who it was formed so you can’t form an alliance that has already been formed and been around since 2023. This sounds more like the ASUN schools want all their sports in the same league possibly than anything else.
UT-Arlington have also started to review about bringing their football program back as well so if they decide to do it that could be interesting for them.
And Missouri Valley Conference and Summit League have been having some discussions about an interesting alliance as well which could spill into football in a way.
Yeah that part wasn’t worded the best. Essentially the move is the 5 ASUN schools with football will be joining the WAC, and the WAC will then be rebranded as the UAC, making the UAC an all sports conference/the successor of the WAC
UT Arlington is probably many, many years away from bringing football back after a 40+ year absence. UT Arlington is literally sandwiched between two Power Four teams in TCU (Fort Worth) and SMU (Dallas), not to mention FBS (well, technically) North Texas in Denton, and FCS programs at East Texas A&M (formerly Texas A&M Commerce) and Tarleton State in Stephenville within two hours of Arlington…
And that’s not even mentioning the powerhouse schools in the state: Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech…
UT Arlington might as well join the Southland instead of sending their teams all over the southeast while literally flying over the entire SLC’s footprint.
For that matter, the better choice would have been for Abilene Christian and Tarleton to join the Southland. Somehow, I don’t think fans will be as pumped up when Austin Peay travels to Abilene instead of, IDK, Incarnate Word or Stephen F Austin.
Oh also with all these changes happening in 2026 a lot of schedule updates will be coming down the line with FBS and FCS
I’ll be curious to see what happens with Sac State’s schedule in 2026 and 2027. Their Big Sky schedules are already set. In 2018 and 2019, after North Dakota left the Big Sky, they still played Big Sky schedules those years, but were classified as an “independent”, despite those games counting as Big Sky games for their opponents.
My guess, since the FCS is moving to 12 games in 2026, is that most Big Sky opponents will keep those games, but they won’t count as conference games, as Utah Tech and Southern Utah will need conference games now.
@Evan, you’re right that will be interesting to see how the schedule sets up. I would imagine that they keep the 8 conference games first of all. If I were to venture a guess, I would say that the conference will have to realign the schedule in order to weave the Utah’s in. Eastern, Idaho, NAU, UNC, Portland St, UC Davis and Weber already have 11 games scheduled for 2026.
I would imagine that the ‘rivalries’ will shift too, and Weber, for example, will keep Idaho State and take on So Utah again as their two steady dates. Then you have Cal Poly and UC Davis that need a new second team they will play every year. Idaho, NAU, UNC and UC Davis out of the group with 11 set games have Sac State on the schedule.
I would say that Sac State would like to keep as many of those games that are on the schedule already so they aren’t scrambling to play Lincoln (CA) and VA Lynchburg because it will be lonely for an Independent in the west. The Big Sky allowed North Dakota to maintain the games you mentioned because they were heading to the MVFC, as I remember it, but had to spend those two seasons as an Independent for some reason.
I would also think that the answer will come prior to the start of the 2025 season.
The Big South-Ohio Valley football league has seven members…
The UAC will have seven members…
Scheduling alliance, anyone?
As for Sad Sac State, I predict a lot of “body bag” games for the next several years. The president of the California State University (comma) Sacramento bit off a lot more than he could chew when proclaiming that Sad Sac State was ready for FBS.
Ferris State or Colorado Mines – both D2 powers – could probably beat Sad Sac State in the coming years.
The OVC-Big South alliance actually has 9 members (7 from OVC, 2 from Big South).
Utah Tech is going to be eaten alive by Idaho, Montana, Montana State, and UC Davis on the grid iron. Hell, even Portland State, Eastern Washington, and Cal Poly if they have a breakout season.
I am not surprised with all of the moving conferences, I am surprised that the photo at the top of the article is of a Canadian Football League ball and not a NCAA ball. That’s the CFL logo with French initials LCF for Liga Canadienne de Football.