College Sports Realignment Roundup for March 17, 2025

The big news of the day was Azusa Pacific moving conferences and announcing the return of its football. Adrian College and Long Island University also announced some sporting additions. Let’s begin with the Azusa Pacific news…

Azusa Pacific Dropping to NCAA Division 3

Azusa Pacific (Azusa, California) is making a notable move between NCAA Divisions. APU will leave the NCAA Division 2 Pacific West Conference to join the NCAA Division 3 and the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC). The move will become effective with the 2026-27 academic year and APU will be a full NCAA D3 member starting in the 2028-29 academic year.

Azusa Pacific will become the 10th full member of the SCIAC and is also bringing back football in 2026. The SCIAC will have 8 football teams in 2026-27 with Whittier bringing back its football program alongside Azusa Pacific. The only two SCIAC members who don’t have football or planning to add the sport are Cal Tech and Occidental. APU and Whittier adding football means the SCIAC will have a 7-game conference schedule leaving teams to find 3 non-conference opponents.

Azusa Pacific returning to the gridiron could have probably only happened with a move to the SCIAC. The school was clear in its FAQs from December 2020 when it announced football would be discontinued that cost was a major factor. APU claimed that football expenses doubled from 2010 to 2020 and noted that over a dozen California-based schools dropped football while only one school in the state added the sport. Moving from D2 to D3 will also remove the scholarship burden placed on the school as D3 does not allow athletic scholarships, to say nothing of the travel costs that will undoubtedly plummet. APU will be swapping flights to Hawaii with bus rides around Southern California.

APU’s move won’t place any of the Pac West-sponsored sports near the minimum requirement of 6, largely due to the 13 full members the conference will have in 2026-27. Moving to the SCIAC will help Azusa Pacific consolidate its conference memberships with every sport sponsored by the SCIAC except Acrobatics & Tumbling. Women’s swimming & diving and water polo are currently not in the Pac West as it doesn’t sponsor either sport. Azusa Pacific confirmed via email to me that both sports will move to the SCIAC in 2026-27.

More Sports Coming to Azusa Pacific?

Buried in the SCIAC’s press release was a mention that APU’s addition of football will bring the school to 19 varsity sports. Furthermore, the school will “consider other additions that fit the SCIAC sport sponsorship portfolio, currently at 21 sports.” There are currently 5 sports that SCIAC sponsors that APU does not offer: men’s golf, men’s swimming & diving, men’s water polo, women’s golf, and women’s lacrosse. With football being added to the men’s side, it’s far more likely that a women’s sport will be added in the future to help maintain Title IX balance.

Adrian College, Long Island Add Sports

Adrian College (Adrian, Michigan) will add three sports beginning with the 2025-26 academic year: men’s club baseball, men’s club wrestling, and women’s competitive cheerleading. Adrian is a member of the NCAA Division 3 Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA).

Adrian has both a varsity baseball team and a club baseball team competing in the National Club Baseball Association’s (NCBA) Division I level. The newest club baseball team will compete in the NCBA’s Division III level, giving the school three teams in the same sport. Adrian also has a men’s varsity wrestling team and the club team will compete in the National Collegiate Wrestling Association (NCWA). The college has a vast array of sports with 53 club and varsity programs among its offerings, including four men’s hockey teams (1 varsity, 3 club) and three women’s hockey teams (1 varsity, two clubs).

Moving to the Eastern seaboard, Long Island University (Brookville, New York) will add two sports beginning with the 2025-26 academic year: women’s triathlon and women’s flag football. Both will be varsity programs and will compete as independent programs as LIU’s primary conference, the Northeast Conference, doesn’t sponsor either sport. Only 43 NCAA schools sponsor triathlon. As for women’s flag football, there’s been no shortage of news on that front. Over 70 colleges are planning to add the sport in 2025-26.