2024-25 Conference Movement Primer

The world of college athletics is changing by the year - actually, maybe not that slow, maybe by the month or week. It seems like late spring and summer are the times to monitor which schools are changing conferences and which conferences are raiding other smaller leagues. 

This offseason proved to be one of the most impactful in college athletics with the Big Ten expanding to the West Coast and a pair of Big 8/12 mainstays heading to the SEC. 

Some of these moves don’t directly impact wrestling - others have. There are a few wrestling conferences that have undergone major facelifts and will look much different during the 2024-25 season and beyond. 

Since it can be difficult to follow all of these changes, we’ve gone conference by conference to see how each has evolved for the 2024-25 season. 

ACC: The ACC comes out a winner in this game of musical chairs as they add a very talented Stanford team. Sure, the geography of Stanford being in the Atlantic Coast Conference doesn’t add up, but we’ve had time to come to terms with the fact that these conferences don’t make much sense. 

On the mat, Stanford brings a team that will likely enter the season in the top-15 in tournament and dual rankings. The Cardinal boasts a lineup that features three All-Americans, finished 16th in the nation in 2024, and has inked three top-eight recruiting classes in a row. 

After years of claiming the ACC is on the rise, the 2025 conference tournament will now feature seven teams and gets that much tougher. 

Big Ten: The Big Ten added four schools (Oregon, Southern California, UCLA, and Washington) and none of them currently field a wrestling team. The initial reaction is “Great, maybe one of them will add wrestling,” however, will all of the new financial changes coming to college athletics, you might start to worry whether one or more Big Ten schools will drop in the near future. 

Big 12: The Big 12 was already pretty massive, from a wrestling standpoint, with 13 schools at the 2024 conference tournament. They’ll add Arizona State for the 2024-25 season, a squad that will surely compete for conference and national championships. 

The Sun Devils took home NCAA team trophies in back-to-back years in 2021 and 2022 (4th both years) and have finished in the top-seven at the last four tournaments. 

Despite being hit hard by a pair of multi-time All-Americans transferring to Iowa, ASU returns an imposing lineup that features 2024 national champion Richie Figueroa (125) and four-time All-American Cohlton Schultz (285). 

Even though Oklahoma has left for the SEC in other sports, they will remain in the Big 12 for wrestling purposes. Currently, Missouri and Oklahoma are the only SEC schools with a wrestling program. Maybe their next dual can be for the “SEC Championship.” 

EIWA: The EIWA is the conference that will look the most different from 2023-24 to 2024-25. The Ivy League schools that used to qualify for nationals out of the conference have broken off and will have their own Ivy League tournament. That means that (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn, and Princeton) are no longer in the EIWA. Because of proximity and history, there still may be plenty of EIWA teams that wrestle these schools in dual competition. 

A gigantic 17-team EIWA is probably fun for fans and a great test of endurance, in some cases, most coaches InterMat has spoken with won’t mind a smaller conference tournament less than two weeks before nationals. The larger tournament lent itself to more upsets and “stealing” of NCAA bids. We’ll have to see how this plays out with smaller tournaments. 

Just last week, we learned that the EIWA will add one more team as Morgan State was officially welcomed into the league. Morgan State’s program was reinstated after a 25-year hiatus and took the mat for the first time in 2023-24. For that season, their wrestlers were thrown into the at-large pool for potential NCAA berths (none of their wrestlers were selected). This year they’ll have a chance to compete and qualify through the EIWA. 

Ivy: As mentioned above, the Ivy League schools will qualify for NCAA’s directly through the Ivy League Conference tournament, which gives us another conference tournament to follow. Princeton will host the first Ivy League tournament and you can bet that there will be plenty of pomp and circumstance surrounding the event. 
 

MAC: At this time, there are no significant changes regarding how the MAC will function as a conference in 2024-25. 
 

Pac-12: With Arizona State leaving for the Big 12 and Stanford heading to the ACC, one of the smallest conferences in the nation got even smaller. The Pac-12 will consist of four teams for the 2024-25 season (Cal Poly, CSU Bakersfield, Little Rock, and Oregon State). 

We’ll have to pay attention to the movement outside of the wrestling world to see how this conference may change in the future. Oregon State and Washington State were the only schools left standing from the old Pac-12. Most assumed they would join other leagues and the Pac-12 would disappear. That doesn’t appear to be the case. Recently, the conference announced that they will add Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, and San Diego State. Currently none offer wrestling (Boise State and Fresno State dropped semi-recently). Maybe future members will or some of those could be enticed to add the sport. 

For now, the Pac-12 has a waiver to continue as is for the 2024-25 season and their conference tournament will be just like in years past, but with only four schools. 
 

SoCon: Technically, the SoCon doesn’t add any “new” schools, but Bellarmine will be able to participate in postseason competition for the first time at the DI level. The athletic department started a transition from DII to DI status in 2020 and had to sit out from the postseason for four years during the move. 

The wait is over! Ned Shuck’s team can fully participate in the SoCon wrestling season. In previous years, the Knights held duals against their fellow SoCon schools, but couldn’t start down the path towards NCAA qualifying. 

Last year, Bellarmine went 4-4 in SoCon duals. They defeated Chattanooga, Davidson, Gardner-Webb, and Presbyterian. 

With Bellarmine in the mix, the SoCon tournament will go from an eight-man bracket to one that features nine. The Bellarmine staff has hit the recruiting trail hard and their team has gained plenty of experience in dual meets, so I would not be surprised if they pushed a wrestler or two into the 2025 NCAA Championships.