Here's a summary of all of the D1 FBS conference realignment moves that have occurred in the last 3 months (including the WAC realignment moves). Note that I'm only including the moves that have been announced in the last 3 months, not moves such as those that will be occurring in July 2013 but were announced back in May 2012 for example. Also, assume that I am talking about all the sports (at least all primary sports; hockey for example is an example of a non-primary sport) for the respective schools unless I make a note of it (there are also schools on here that don't sponsor football as a sport):

In September, Notre Dame announced that every sport except football (which will stay independent) will be moving to the ACC. This will either happen in July 2013 or July 2014 (even though the exit date has not been finalized yet, it looks like the move may occur in July 2013). Furthermore, as part of the realignment deal, Notre Dame has agreed to play at least 5 ACC teams in football once they change over to the new conference.

In October, the following conference realignment moves were announced:

Cal State University - Bakersfield and Utah Valley University announced that they are joining the WAC on July 2013. Currently, CSUB is a D1 independent and UVU is in the Great West Conference.

Idaho (in their non-football sports) will be moving back to the Big Sky Conference on July 2014. Starting July 2013, Idaho will be a D1 FBS independent in football (unless it finds a conference to place football into).

In November, the following conference realignment moves were announced:

The University of Maryland and Rutgers University announced that they are joining the Big 10 on July 2014. Currently, Maryland is in the ACC and Rutgers is in the Big East. Note that even though they announced their move for July 2014, Rutgers still needs to negotiate the exit date with the Big East.

Louisville announced that they are joining the ACC on July 2014. That exit date needs to be negotiated with the Big East as well.

East Carolina University and Tulane University announced that they are joining the Big East on July 2014, ECU in football only and Tulane in all sports. ECU still needs to find a new conference for its non-football sports still for July 2014.

Middle Tennessee State University and Florida Atlantic University announced that they are joining Conference USA on July 2014 (though MTSU left it somewhat vague and stated the entry date as "no later than July 1, 2014"). Both MTSU and FAU are currently in the Sun Belt Conference.

The University of Denver announced that they will be joining the Summit League Conference on July 2013. It is currently in the WAC.

Grand Canyon University (a for-profit university) announced that they are joining the WAC on July 2013. They are currently a D2 conference called the Pacific West Conference thus will be transitioning to D1 when it moves to the WAC.

These are all the conference realignment moves that have officially been announced so far. If I missed something, please let me know and I will update this post.

There has also been reports that UT-Pan American will also be joining the WAC and are expected to join on July 2013, which has also been stated by Brett McMurphy from ESPN, the conference realignment guru lol. They are currently in the Great West Conference. This move is not official yet (hence no official announcement); they still need to go through thhe UT Board of Regents for approval of the move: http://www.themonitor.com/sports/utpa_br...0f31a.html

So in conclusion, just when we thought that conference realignment was at a standstill, it really wasn't AND it got a bit more intensified this month. There's still the other conference realignment moves that had been previously announced several months ago that we also have to keep in mind so hopefully this post has you caught up with the recently-announced moves. Hence, if all of these conference realignment moves hold, get ready to see an altered college athletics landscape in the next 2-3 years!

P.S. So now the question begs: why are all these schools moving to different conferences? Well, one of the main reasons is illustrated in the following picture, courtesy from insiderunnersports.com:

[attachment=4265]

UPDATE: Looks like Chicago State University is joining the WAC next fall. They are currently in the Great West Conference (which is the conference that UVU is in as well): http://www.wacsports.com/ViewArticle.dbm...=205820763

Also, as some of you may have read, the UT Board of Regents announced a plan to merge UT Pan American, UT Brownsville, and the Regional Academic Health Center in Harlingen (and build another medical unit on top of that) into one university with a medical school as part of it (by various media reports out there, this one new university is currently unofficially called UT of the Americas, or UT de las Americas). Note however that this merger still needs to go through the Texas Legislature for approval (which will probably be brought up in next year's legislature session).

http://www.utsystem.edu/news/2012/12/06/...outh-texas
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/educati...096965.php

I bring this up because now that UTPA and UTB will be merging, what will that mean for athletics at this newly-merged university? UTPA is a D1 school and UTB is an NAIA school so I wonder how that is going to work. Throw on top of that the WAC invite that UTPA received, one has to wonder what will be going on with that. The UT BOR still has not discussed the WAC invite that UTPA got (hence the reason for no official announcement of joining the WAC so far) but one has to figure that this merging needed to be discussed by the Board of Regents (and other applicable parties) first before a conference realignment move is discussed.

It's official: UTPA will go in front of the UT Board of Regents next Tuesday, December 18 and ask the for approval to accept the invitation to join the WAC starting July 1, 2013 (pg. 4):

http://www.utsystem.edu/sites/utsfiles/o...dabook.pdf

And it's official; the non-FBS schools are leaving the Big East:

http://www.bigeast.org/News/tabid/435/Ar...resco.aspx

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story/...-framework

Will the WAC still be FBS? Will UTPA be the 13th Texas FBS team? Or is the WAC just FCS moving forward?

(12-15-2012 08:22 PM)slow-runner Wrote:  Will the WAC still be FBS? Will UTPA be the 13th Texas FBS team? Or is the WAC just FCS moving forward?

The WAC will be a non-football conference going forward. Members will be Seattle, Cal State Bakersfield, Utah Valley, Grand Canyon, New Mexico State (until a football league accepts them), UT Pan American (apparently getting a new campus and name), and Chicago State. The WAC needs to be upgrading more D2 schools, in my opinion, but they will probably sit at 7, hope they don't lose anybody else, and pray that some current D1 schools magically fall into their laps. Idaho will still be there in 2013-14, hanging around for one final season, so maybe a D2 upgrade replaces them in 2014-15.