Conference realignment could be coming back to Utah's borders

OREM — Conference realignment never sleeps, and the winds of change in college athletics may be circling back around on the state of Utah again.

The latest spin around the realignment carousel involves Grand Canyon spurning the West Coast Conference to move to the Mountain West, and UC Davis joining the Mountain West as a non-football member while the league reportedly looks to add a football-only member from DeKalb, Illinois.

That move could be made official as early as this week, according to the Extra Points newsletter. But Northern Illinois' forthcoming move to the Mountain West may also be followed by an impact on the Beehive State.

The most recent addition would give the Mountain West 10 schools in most sports and nine in football, and may signal the league's halting of aggressive expansion after the Pac-12's Oregon State and Washington State raided the conference for Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State (as well as Gonzaga from the WCC).

The move would also leave the WCC with nine schools in 2026, essentially replacing Gonzaga with Seattle U. from the Western Athletic Conference, and the Big West with nine following Davis' departure.

An odd number of schools makes sense for football leagues, allowing each school to have a natural bye week, but makes less sense for regionally-compact conferences focused on basketball and other sports.

So conference expansion likely isn't done, and multiple sources indicated to KSL.com that Utah Valley is one school to monitor as the dominoes shift out west.

The Wolverines' lack of a football program, a student population with more than 46,000 students (including around 30,000 on-campus students) and competitive programs in Olympic sports such as women's volleyball, men's and women's soccer, and cross country in a growing market make them an especially attractive candidate for the Big West, according to one source.

The Big West is made up entirely of public schools in California, while the West Coast Conference is strictly a private-school league, but has been open to adding public schools in recent years.

Another source believes that the Big West is less interested in adding a school with football, either at the FCS or FBS level. Hawaii recently announced its intentions to leave the league where most of its sports played to sign on as a full-time member of the Mountain West, where the Rainbow Warriors have played as a football-affiliate since 2012.

In addition to the Big West and WCC, the Summit League and ASUN conferences have also been kicking the tires on teams from the WAC, which would be down to seven teams including Abilene Christian, California Baptist, Southern Utah, UT Arlington, Utah Tech and Tarleton State — a move first reported by Extra Points and confirmed by KSL.com.

Of the group, only SUU, Utah Tech, Abilene and Tarleton field FCS football programs, competing as roughly half of the unofficial "United Athletic Conference" with five schools from the ASUN.

The Big Sky could also have interest in the football-playing schools in the conference, but multiple high-ranking sources in college athletics have repeatedly told KSL.com that the league is not interested in a reunion with Southern Utah, which left the conference to join the WAC in 2021.

This all comes as the WAC is currently operating under interim leadership, including interim commissioner Rebekah Ray since former commissioner Brian Thornton was named Big 12 vice president of men's basketball in October.

It should also be noted that if any of the above mentioned schools — or any other out west — become a target for the Pac-12, which must still add two football-playing members to meet the minimum requirement of a FBS conference by 2026, the next round of conference realignment could shift into overdrive.

Regardless, it seems realignment watch is back on the table out west.

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