User:BuffaloChip97/NCAA conference realignment

NCAA conference realignment refers to changes in the alignment of college or university athletic programs from one National Collegiate Athletic Association athletic conference to another. These changes occur every few years with some of these changes causing a ripple effect with other programs changing conference alignment in response.

2011
During the 2010 calendar year several NCAA Division I conferences announced expansion plans. Most of the changes involved conferences in the top Football Bowl Subdivision, with six of the current 11 FBS conferences, as well as the ranks of FBS independents, either gaining or losing football members. A seventh FBS conference lost one non-football member, while two non-football conferences each gained one member.

The second-tier Football Championship Subdivision also saw changes, with eight schools changing their football affiliation, and a ninth announcing that it would establish a football program at that level. The most significant change to the FCS landscape will be the demise of the Great West Conference as a football entity, as all five of its football members will depart for more established conferences. Four schools accepted invitations to join the Big Sky Conference—two as full members and two as affiliate members in football only. The other, which had already announced its intent to join The Summit League(which does not sponsor football), opted to join the Missouri Valley Football Conference. In another significant change, two members of the Southland Conference will upgrade their football programs to FBS level to facilitate their move to the Western Athletic Conference.

Talk of conference expansion began in December 2009, when Big Ten Conference commissioner Jim Delany announced that the league would consider adding one or more teams. Media reports indicated that the Big Ten had two major motives for expansion. First, adding one or more schools would increase the reach of the conference'scable network, the Big Ten Network. The conference reportedly receives as much as 88 cents per month for every subscriber to the network in the Big Ten member states, and in the 2008–09 fiscal year, the Big Ten Network alone distributed $6.4 million to each of the conference's 11 schools. Second, expanding to 12 or more schools would allow the conference to launch a potentially lucrative conference championship game in football.

Shortly after the Big Ten announced its intention to explore expansion, the Pacific-10 Conference, under new commissioner Larry Scott, announced similar plans. As with the Big Ten, television played a major role in the Pac-10's plans, although for a different reason. The conference's current deal with Fox Sports Net expires after the 2010–11 school year, and in the wake of lucrative TV deals recently signed by the ACC and SEC, the Pac-10 apparently felt a need to expand its footprint to gain more leverage in broadcast negotiations.