College Sports Realignment Roundup for March 7, 2025

It was a busy week of sporting cuts in the NCAA Division 1 and Division 2 ranks. Missouri-St. Louis discontinued its track & field programs earlier in the week, which you can read about here. By the end of the week, more schools announced discontinuation or, in the case of Virginia, a “restructuring”.

Cal Poly Makes Cuts, Virginia Restructures

Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo, California) announced it would discontinue both men’s and women’s swimming & diving, effective immediately. While Cal Poly is a member of the Big West Conference, those two teams competed in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF). The school cited the impending House v. NCAA settlement and its impact on the athletic department’s finances as one of the reasons. Cal Poly stated in the FAQs, “Budget issues are an ongoing concern, however at this time there are no plans to discontinue any other athletic programs.”

Before the Cal Poly news, the MPSF was already low on men’s swimming & diving members with only three lined up for 2025-26. On the women’s side, there’s an influx of teams joining in 2025-26 that will boost the membership total to 11.

Staying with the swimming & diving theme, it was revealed that Virginia will not have a diving program for the 2025-26 academic year. The roster size limits set to be imposed under the House settlement is one of the reasons for the decision. Whether diving will return in 2026 or beyond remains to be seen. Virginia will continue to have a swimming program in 2025-26.

San Francisco State Cuts Three Sports

San Francisco State became the second NCAA Division 2 school to announce cuts this week. SFSU will discontinue men’s baseball, men’s soccer, and women’s indoor track & field starting with the 2025-26 academic year. Baseball and soccer competed in SFSU’s primary conference, the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA), and women’s indoor track & field competed as a D2 independent program. The cuts don’t impact the CCAA that much as it will have 10 members in baseball and 12 members in men’s soccer for the 2025-26 academic year.

SFSU will have 10 NCAA D2 varsity teams in 2025-26 and the women’s track & field team will maintain its outdoor program. The university estimates it will save up to $1 million a year according to the FAQs. Like Cal Poly and other public California institutions, budget cuts and enrollment forecasts are part of the driving forces behind the decisions.

Sporting Cuts Trend

I track all realignment changes on my main website, including all the sports that will be added or cut in 2025 and beyond. For the 2025-26 academic year, 43 sports teams will be discontinued or changed from varsity to club level. NCAA D1 currently has 9, D2 has 19, D3 has 3, and NAIA has 12. The sport that has been hit the hardest so far is tennis with 10 programs not returning next year. Track & Field has 7 cuts between indoor and outdoor programs, golf has 5, and swimming & diving has 4.

If we include the roughly 30 sports being discontinued between the closures at Fontbonne University (Clayton, Missouri) and Northland College (Ashland, Wisconsin), approximately 75 sports teams will be cut between the NCAA and NAIA in 2025-26 as of this posting. There are currently 231 teams being added in 2025-26 across the NCAA and NAIA, which is a net gain of about 160.

Sporting cuts are always going to be a part of college athletics due to various factors such as the number of athletes on a team, enrollment expectations for a team, demographic changes, cost cutting, state funding changes, etc. The biggest uncertainty looming over college athletics is the House settlement. The impact will be felt far, wide, and for a long time and the financial impacts are already setting in for some schools. Once the settlement takes hold and the actual monetary impact becomes known to colleges, it won’t be long before they adjust quickly, which could mean more cuts in the future.

Wittenberg Reverses Tennis Cuts

Wittenberg University (Springfield, Ohio) reversed its decision to discontinue its tennis programs. The school announced in September 2024 that it would cut men’s and women’s tennis and women’s bowling after the 2024-25 academic year. While women’s bowling won’t be returning in 2025-26, the tennis programs will return and compete in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC). The NCAC will have 9 men’s tennis programs and 8 women’s tennis programs with the recommitment from Wittenberg and the addition of John Carroll in 2025-26.

Texas A&M-Texarkana Considering Football

I talked about Texas A&M-Texarkana looking to move up to NCAA Division 2 in late February and those aspirations haven’t changed. Part of that report said TAMUT plans to add five more sports, however, one of those sports listed wasn’t football. According to the Texarkana Gazette, TAMUT is planning to add football along with an on-campus stadium but those details have not been finalized. TAMUT is currently a member of the NAIA’s Red River Athletic Conference, which doesn’t sponsor football. Whether TAMUT waits to launch its football program alongside its move to NCAA D2 or joins a current NAIA conference before the jump remains to be seen.