The Commercialization of College Sports: A Sociological Analysis of Conference Realignment and Motives Behind University Moves

Abstract

Within the NCAA, conferences act as social institutions to provide consistent competition for its member schools. This paper observes the reasoning behind conference realignment and university moves as a result of the commercialization of college sports, creating an imperative for conferences to expand to receive larger contracts from television broadcasters for their media rights. A multi-panel dataset was created to analyze the conference-to-conference realignment moves across Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball, FBS, and FCS from 1990 to 2025. Vacancy theory and data analysis provide arguments for a significant number of university moves, bringing a new television market to a destination conference and geographically diversifying its membership. Other trends related to quartile changes in the conference hierarchy, conference competitiveness, university winning percentages, and university television market size are discussed for their potential impact as drivers of the realignment process at both the conference and university levels. Trends supported the argument that conferences that geographically diversify the television markets of membership are more likely to receive more playoff bids, highlighting the importance of a conference’s expansion into new markets to increase competitiveness and revenue from broadcasters.