Let’s get settled.
The 2026-27 NCAA year begins today, and that means all the changes that were coming are now in place. The recent era of conference realignment means it’s tough to remember where each team is in a given season, so I figured today would be a great day to run down what’s new in NCAA Division 1 in this upcoming season so everyone’s on the same page.
Goodbye St. Francis, hello West Florida
The number of NCAA D1 members will remain at 365 this year with one school dropping down and another moving up. Saint Francis University
in Pennsylvania has begun their transition to Division III. The former FCS school who played in the NEC announced their move in March 2025, and that move, which will require a four-year transition period before they’re fully D3, is now complete.
In their place is the University of West Florida. The West Florida Argonauts announced a surprise move up to D1 in April, and they started their four-year transition today. The Pensacola school will play most sports in the Atlantic Sun Conference, but they’ll play football in the FCS United Athletic Conference.
Welcome back LSUNO
The University of New Orleans has changed its name back to the one it had when it was founded, and this will impact athletics. In the late 1960s, Louisiana State University in New Orleans changed its name to the University of New Orleans, a name that stuck for about 60 years. When LSU took the school back in 2025, they announced that they’d be making it change its branding to fit with the rest of the LSU system.
Gone are the blue and grey that defined the Lakefront school for half a century and in are the familiar purple and gold that define LSU. LSU New Orleans will remain the Privateers, but the uniforms will get makeovers.
Three new winter national championships
This winter, the NCAA will award three new championship trophies and push their total to 95. First, the NCAA has split women’s bowling into separate Division I and Division II championships instead of holding one non-divisional National Collegiate championship. Second, the NCAA added two new National Collegiate championships: STUNT and acrobatics & tumbling. STUNT (spelled in all-caps) is essentially cheer stunting, while acrobatics & tumbling is a sport that combined acrobatics and tumbling. USA Gymnastics oversees acrobatics & tumbling, while USA Cheer oversees STUNT.
March Madness is now 76 teams
Both the men’s and women’s NCAA D1 basketball tournaments have expanded from 68 teams to 76 teams. This is a good time to remind you that they made this change for the next tournament for some reason. The eight new teams will be at-large selections, and the First Four will now expand to include four games between conference champions and four games between at-large teams. This is the only change being made to any D1 tournament as far as I can tell.
Major conference realignment
Everyone keeps moving conferences, and this year brings in an extra wrinkle with the reformation of the Pac-12. With so many moves across so many conferences, I’m only going to note the FBS moves.
The Pac-12 now has this membership: Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Oregon State, San Diego State, Texas State, Utah State, Washington State, Gonzaga (non-football) and Dallas Baptist (baseball only).
The Mountain West now has this membership: Air Force, Hawaii (full member), Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota State (football only), Northern Illinois (football only), San Jose State, UTEP, Wyoming, Grand Canyon (non-football), UC Davis (non-football) and Utah Tech (baseball only).
The MAC had the weirdest realignment cycle of all. They lost Northern Illinois to the Mountain West and decided to add Sacramento State from the FCS Big Sky Conference.
With the departure of Texas State, the Sun Belt Conference added Louisiana Tech as a full member after courting them to leave Conference USA. The only change to Conference USA beyond the departure of Louisiana Tech and UTEP is the departure of baseball affiliate member Dallas Baptist.
The WAC is now the UAC
The final major change that’s come today is the end of the Western Athletic Conference brand. The WAC was founded in 1962 as an offshoot of the Border Conference. At its peak in the 1990s, the conference had 16 members, though many decided to split and form the Mountain West in 1999. The league stopped sponsoring football in 2012 after a ton of conference realignment left it with just two football members.
In the early part of this decade, the WAC tried to restart its football league with a goal of becoming an FBS conference again. That plan withered and died in less than three years. The United Athletic Conference formed as a result of a deal with the ASUN to create a combined football conference that would give their members an automatic FCS playoff bid. Now, that league will get the WAC’s entire history and continue while maintaining an alliance with the ASUN. Sure.
The 2026-27 NCAA season will be a fun one. LSU steps into this season with renewed hope in their premier revenue-generating programs and with the same high expectations in their other marquee programs. Verge Ausberry’s first full season as Director of Athletics is here.
