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).