NCAA Basketball: Examining 10 potential moves in conference realignment

Much like a decade ago, and like the times before then, conference realignment is very real these days in the world of collegiate athletics. Throughout the history of the NCAA, we’ve seen how the changing of conferences has shaped the landscape for college sports and NCAA Basketball, with a particular focus on football most of the time. There are small conference changes nearly every year, but the dominoes are already starting to fall on the next major cycle of realignment.

The process was kickstarted when Oklahoma and Texas announced their intentions to depart the Big 12 for the SEC. As rumors ran rampant, the Big 12 acted last week, officially adding Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF from the AAC, while also grabbing BYU, a WCC school in basketball that plays independent FBS football. These resulting moves will force counter moves from other conferences and will continue to complicate this cycle of realignment on a national scale.

The rumors are wild and anything could happen next as these conferences balance and acquire new members from each other. There were rumblings that the Big 12 would collapse before their recent additions, with those remaining schools swallowed up by other power conferences. There have been rumors of the SEC becoming a super conference, taking in a few of the other football powers around the country. As previously mentioned, anything could happen at this point and no rumor can be ignored.

With change on the horizon, we’ll be looking closely at a few potential conference realignment moves that could happen in the coming months and years. Football is also a major factor in these alignments, as it’s the flagship and money sport of many universities, but we’ll do our best to weigh the basketball impact of these potential moves. These will all take into accounts things like geography and level of talent, but it’s clear that geography hasn’t played the biggest role in conference realignment, neither past nor present.

Without further ado, let’s get right into our list of ten potential conference realignment moves, wondering just which domino will fall next.