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Inside NIU’s Move To The Mountain West With NIU’s Sean T. Frazier & Bryan Perry

Guest Sean T. Frazier, Northern Illinois; Bryan Perry, Northern Illinois
17:50 min watch

Summary

Northern Illinois Vice President & Director of Athletics Sean T. Frazier and NIU General Counsel Bryan Perry sit down with ADU’s Jason Belzer at the 2025 NCAA Convention to break down the strategic thinking, data-driven evaluation and process behind the university’s decision to move from the MAC to the Mountain West in football. “There’s no such thing as standing still,” reflects Frazier, noting that this move was ultimately the result of the decision by USC and UCLA in 2022 to leave the Pac-12 Conference for the Big Ten. That watershed moment propelled Frazier and his team to hunker down and develop a strategic plan addressing all options related to the creation of superconferences and the concept of coast-to-coast competition within the broader context of the House settlement, College Football Playoff expansion, transfer portal and NIL. Frazier and Perry speak to the fit of the Mountain West, the sustainability of competing in separate conferences for football and Olympic sports and the longtail vision for NIU within the hierarchy of intercollegiate athletics.

The conversation is indexed below for efficient viewing (click the time stamp to jump to a specific question/topic).

  • - You decided it was the right time for NIU to move into a new conference, specifically around football. What compelled the university to think about this being the right time for this move, with all the question marks around college sports?
  • - Schools right now are having to decide - do we want to compete at the highest level of college sport or do we want to potentially preserve another model? NIU has always swung above its weight; there's been a very strong return on investment for the programs you've been able to build. What were the factors you considered when assessing the move to the Mountain West - strength of current programs, finances?
  • - How do you determine that this is the right move for NIU - weighing that against the reality of institutional resources, the support - how do you make a decision?
  • - As you think about the next five to ten years, where do you hope NIU lives within the college athletics hierarchy? How will the decision to move to the Mountain West propel you to that place?