The offseason must be looming because a college football conference realignment report surfaced Friday morning.
Pete Thamel of ESPN tweeted a bombshell report about a potentially emerging conference. Ten different schools from the FCS plan to move up to FBS to create a new conference. Thamel tweeted, “Ten schools have come to an agreement to form a new football-only conference with the stated goal of moving from FCS to FBS ‘at the earliest practicable date.'”
The report from Thamel specifically cites the schools by name. They come from the ASUN Conference and the WAC. Thamel wrote, “The schools that have signed on to join the league are WAC football members Stephen F. Austin, Abilene Christian, Utah Tech, Southern Utah and Tarleton State and Atlantic Sun football members Austin Peay, Eastern Kentucky, Central Arkansas, and North Alabama.”
The report also mentioned UT Rio Grande Valley as the likely 10th member of the conference. UTRGV will start a football program soon.
This would be a big shakeup at the Group of 5 levels of the sport mainly as it is only set to be a football-only conference. If conference realignment shakeups of the past are an indicator, the fun has likely just begun.
Reactions to the report from Thamel flew in after it was revealed.
North Alabama is among them. Big news …. https://t.co/W5bDDr6Yg9
— Keith Niebuhr (@On3Keith) December 9, 2022
Moving up just in time for the divide between the top and bottom of FBS to get even wider https://t.co/gIuZqqG6R9
— PodKATT (@valleyshook) December 9, 2022
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022