5 College Football Programs Officially Change Conferences Monday

Today is the day. July 1 brings the new year for college athletics, and in 2024, it means one of the most significant waves of conference realignment in the history of college football has officially begun.

As the calendar changes from June to July, five FBS college football programs officially switch conference. They represent one third of the schools that will change leagues this summer.

Here are the moves that took place today.

Oklahoma and Texas leave the Big 12, join the SEC

This wave of conference realignment kicked off in July 2021, when the Sooners and Longhorns accepted invitations to leave the Big 12 for the SEC. Oklahoma and Texas were the undeniably faces of the Big 12, a league created by the merger of OU’s Big 8 and Texas’ Southwestern Conference.

They follow in the footsteps of Missouri and Texas A&M, which left the Big 12 for the SEC in 2012, a year after Nebraska and Colorado left for the Big Ten and Pac-12 respectively.

The move comes after a breakout season for the Longhorns, in which they beat new conference mate Alabama during the regular season and reached the College Football Playoff. The Sooners took a step forward in year two under Brent Venables, going 10-3 with a signature win over Texas in the Red River Showdown. That elite college football rivalry now joins a conference full of them in the SEC.

SMU leaves the AAC for the ACC

Perhaps the most unanticipated move of this realignment wave, the Mustangs make it to the Power 4 with a jump to the ACC , alongside outgoing Pac-12 members Cal and Stanford.

The move was made possible by SMU’s deep institutional pockets. The program will forego nine years of television revenue from its new league, an amount totaling over $200 million. The school’s donor class is clearly fired up by the move, however, and has made up a significant chunk of that gap in donations, with $159 million raised by the athletic department in the last year, per The Athletic .

SMU is perhaps best known as the school that received the NCAA “death penalty” in 1987, after becoming one of college football’s top programs earlier in the decade. After repeated violations of rules against paying recruits and players, the NCAA handed down the most significant penalties in the organization’s history. The team’s 1987 season and ’88 home slate were canceled, and bowl and live television bans were extended through ’89. The team was stripped of 55 scholarships over four years and barred from off-campus recruiting and on-campus paid visits until 1988. The Mustangs staff was also capped at five full-time assistant coaches. The school ultimately canceled the entirety of the ’88 season as well.

The Mustangs went 2-9 when they returned to play in ’89. They would not post a winning season until 1997, and didn’t reach a bowl until ’09. Now, nearly four decades after the death penalty, the program has joined a major conference, after becoming an annual bowl team and one of the better Group of 5 programs of the last few years.

Army joins Navy in the American Athletic Conference

After losing SMU to the ACC, the American voted to accept Army as a football-only member in October. The former FBS independent joins a conference for the second time in program history, after playing in Conference USA from 1998-2004.

The Black Knights join archrival Navy in the league, in a unique arrangement that will protect the Army-Navy Game as the final regular season contest of the college football season. ( That date will now be shared by some low-level bowls, however).

The move leaves Notre Dame, UConn and UMass as the only FBS independents remaining. That number will dwindle to two next year, when UMass returns to the MAC .

Kennesaw State becomes the 134th FBS program, joining Conference USA

Conference USA’s growth strategy over the last few years has been to invite promising FCS programs. After inviting Sam Houston and Jacksonville State last year, the Kennesaw State Owls are the latest call-up.

The Owls are a few years removed of a very impressive run. From 2017-2021, the former Big South school went 49-10, with a 17-2 conference record, three conference titles and four trips to the FCS playoffs in five years. Brian Bohannon’s team has hit a slide at an inopportune time, however, going 8-12 over the last two seasons.

Kennesaw State becomes the fifth FBS program in the state of Georgia, and the only CUSA member from the state.

The league is set to bring in two more programs from the FCS ranks, with Delaware and Missouri State beginning their transitions to FBS this year and joining Conference USA in 2025.

10 more schools will officially change conferences in August, all from the Pac-12

A number of the other world-shaking conference moves taking place this summer won’t become official until August.

On August 1, Cal and Stanford will join SMU in the newly-bicoastal ACC. That same day will see four other outgoing Pac-12 programs — Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah — join the Big 12. For Colorado, it represents a homecoming; the Buffaloes were founding members of the league in 1996 before leaving for the Pac-12 in ’11.

The next day, four more teams depart the Pac-12, with Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington making their way to the Big Ten. The Los Angeles schools were the first to accept invitations to the Midwestern conference, doing so in 2022, a year after  Oklahoma and Texas announced their move to the SEC. They were joined by Oregon and Washington last summer , signaling the end of the Pac-12 as we know it.

Related: 5 New College Football Head Coaches Poised to Win Now

Related: College Football Top 25 Rankings for 2024

Related: How College Football Would Look With an NFL-Style Schedule in 2024