College Sports Realignment Roundup for April 15, 2025

MVFC and Summit League Partnership?

It was reported over the weekend that the Missouri Valley Football Conference and the Summit League are close to establishing a formal relationship that will allow the Summit League to have more influence in realignment matters. Specifically, the report from Hero Sports states that the Summit League will allow any member that sponsors football to automatically join the MVFC.

Before we unpack the report, we need to establish the overlap between three conferences: the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC), the Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC), and the Summit League. While the MVC wasn’t mentioned in the article, it cannot be ignored, considering 6 of the 11 MVFC schools are full members of the MVC.

• The Missouri Valley Conference is a multi-sport conference that does not sponsor football. Some full member MVC schools compete in the MVFC.

• The Missouri Valley Football Conference is a football-only conference that operates in the NCAA Division 1 Football Championship Subdivision. Despite the remarkably similar name to the MVC, they are administratively different. The MVFC members have full membership in the Horizon League, Missouri Valley, and Summit League.

• The Summit League is a multi-sport conference that also does not sponsor football. Like the MVC, some full members compete in the MVFC for football.

There’s a lot going on here, so I’ve included a map and table showing each full member in any of the three conferences (MVC, MVFC, and Summit). This list includes non-football-playing members. As a reminder, the map is interactive and you can click any of the labels in the legend to add or remove points from the map. Missouri State is not included in the list below as they are joining Conference USA beginning in 2025-26.

This is a confusing wonderful example of how realignment can get messy. There are numerous angles at play here with full members from three different conferences, schools without football, schools with scholarship football, and schools without scholarship football (the Pioneer Football League). The similar naming of two conferences with different administrations, along with the shared football history during the 1980s, only adds to the complexity.

Oh, and that’s the current membership. Utah Valley (non-football) could be a future Summit member and might bring the likes of scholarship football from Southern Utah and Utah Tech with them. All three are currently members of the WAC and the latter two play football in the United Athletic Conference. I haven’t even touched on the geographic issues that might arise from a series of moves like this. Or the possibility of the Texas Trio as an alternative (Abilene Christian, Tarleton State, and UT Arlington).

What I outlined above is part of the reason why the Summit League wants to have a say in what happens with any realignment moves. There’s also the fact that the most recent MVFC addition in Murray State has been… bad in its two seasons. The Racers are 3-20 overall and 1-15 since joining the MVFC beginning with the 2023 season. Only four MVFC games have been decided by 8 points or fewer, which includes the lone victory over Indiana State during 2023 season.

What Does This Mean for Football?

The report had a lot of information but not too many specifics without a copy of the actual memorandum,. For example, there is talk of a membership cap number but the exact maximum wasn’t provided. Will it be 12? 14? A different number?

There’s also the St. Thomas (MN) issue. The Tommies are the only current member of the Summit League that doesn’t play in the MVFC because they play in the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League. St. Thomas could be eligible for full NCAA Division 1 membership as early as 2025-26 under the new reclassification rules. I have to believe that if St. Thomas was willing to offer football scholarships, the school would receive an invite from the MVFC.

Which teams the Summit/MVFC end up adding will depend on the WAC’s future. Currently, that future is very bleak but things change very quickly when it comes to realignment. The Summit is positioning itself to have more say in the football side, perhaps as a way to lessen the influence of the Missouri Valley Conference, which has focused more on basketball. Could this be a prelude to the Summit League sponsoring football down the road? We’ll see.

NCAA Division 1 Soccer Championships Merge into Single Weekend

The NCAA Division 1 Sports Oversight Committee has moved the women’s soccer semifinals and national championship to the same weekend as the men’s championship, beginning with the 2026 season. The women’s tournament ends the week before the men’s championship.

The current format has the women’s and men’s semifinals played on Friday and the National Championship played on Monday. The men’s and women’s 2026 and 2027 soccer championships will culminate in Cary, North Carolina. Whether the NCAA moves a pair of semifinals to Thursday or Saturday and the National Championship to Sunday or Tuesday for field maintenance and/or TV broadcast purposes was not disclosed.

Combined national championships already occur in D1 cross country, tennis, and track & field. Lacrosse has a combined host for 2025 in Foxborough, Massachusetts, 2026 is still TBD, while 2027 is in Philadelphia and a surrounding suburb for the women’s championship (Chester). In 2028, the men’s lacrosse final weekend will be back in Foxborough but the women’s final weekend will be held in Chicago.

The one weekend that is frequently brought up as a popular combination is the men’s and women’s final four. There are good reasons to hold both final fours in the same city during the same weekend but right now there’s one gigantic hurdle: contracts. Don’t be surprised if the two championships are hosted by a single site starting in 2032 when the next iteration of the March Madness contract begins. Then again, the NCAA could look a whole lot different 7 years.

Bemidji State Adds Esports Club Team

Bemidji State University (Bemidji, Minnesota) and Northwest Technical College will add an esports club team beginning with the 2026-27 academic year. BSU hopes to elevate the program to the varsity level in the future. BSU and NTC share the same administrative staff.

Bemidji State is a member of the NCAA Division 2 Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) but the NCAA doesn’t offer esports as a championship sport. While the school did not disclose where the team will compete, there are several options including NACE and NECC. Current NSIC members Minnesota State Mankato and St. Cloud State compete in the NACE as will future NSIC program Jamestown (ND).

Huntingdon Moves Wrestling Programs

Huntingdon College (Montgomery, Alabama) will join the NCAA Division 3 St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC) in wrestling beginning with the 2025-26 academic year. Both the men’s and women’s wrestling programs competed as independents. Huntingdon is a full member of the Collegiate Conference of the South, which does not sponsor wrestling.

The SLIAC will have seven members for each sport: Blackburn College (Carlinville, Illinois), Eureka College (Eureka, Illinois), Huntingdon College (Alabama), Lyon College (Batesville, Arkansas), Schreiner University (Kerrville, Texas), Westminster College (Fulton, Missouri), and the University of the Ozarks (Clarksville, Arkansas). Despite the geographic sprawl, the SLIAC does not require its affiliate members (Huntingdon, Schreiner, and Ozarks) to schedule regular season meets against the core conference members.

In January 2025, the three NCAA divisions approved women’s wrestling as a championship sport. The first set of championships will be conducted during the 2025-26 academic year.