Greetings and happy start to the GCR preseason ramp up, oh great and wonderful college football fans. With 261 (+3 from 2021) teams across 26 conferences (sort of +1) and 16 realignments, it seemed it might be time to kick it up a little early this year. The first games are coming up at the end of August which will be here before we know it. Spring games are done so let’s get going.
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Over the next couple of months, according to no known plan per se, but completely dependent on my schedule, I will talk about a number of things including changes (this post), conference by conference pre-season SOS (for those that are new, I do not have a preseason rank – quite literally all 261 teams from Morgan St (258th last year) to Georgia (1st last year) are tied for first, or worst, if that’s your bent), and the toughest and easiest schedules by league (Power 5, Group of 5, FCS). All of the planned games are now in the 2022 version of the GCR so the rest is just reporting.
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With no further ado, the GCR would like to officially (not that we have any official capacity at all) the 3 newest member NCAA Division I teams, each of which has been promoted from Division II into an FCS conference. Here’s a summary:
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| Team | Home Field | Old Conference | New Conference | First Team | 2021 Rec |
| Lindenwood Lions (LIN) | St Charles, MO | Great Lakes Valley | Ohio Valley | 1990 | 9-3 |
| Stonehill Skyhawks (STON) | Easton, MA | Northeast 10 | Northeast | 1988 | 8-2 |
| Texas A&M Commerce Lions (COMM) | Commerce, TX | Lone Star | Southland | 1915 | 7-4 |
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For the first 2, I’ll use their complete names (or the ABBR above) for the GCR posts, but to avoid confusion with the Aggies, I’ll use Commerce as the school name (or COMM). Ok, ok, it makes it easier for me – fine. But I’m doing it anyway. I look forward to seeing how they compete.
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Between now and the 2025 season, at least, there will be conference and/or division realignment of some sort every year. As of 2022, the Power 5 (ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac 12, SEC, and Notre Dame) are unaffected, but they will be. Here is a listing of all the changes for this year with the first two being Group of 5 (American, Conference USA, Independents other than Notre Dame, MAC, Mountain West, and Sun Belt). The rest are FCS (ye old Division I-AA). Note: the ASUN (called the Automatic Qualifying 7 – no, I’m not joking) and WAC conferences combined forces last year to make a 9-team A7/WAC Challenge (again, not joking) Conference. An AQ7 team that stayed in the ASUN is not listed and the 2 WAC teams are not listed as they both stayed put. James Madison is the only FCS school to make the jump to the Group of 5 this year.
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| Conference | Count From-To | Teams Added | Teams Lost |
| Conference USA | 14-11 | — | Marshall, Southern Miss, Old Dominion |
| Sun Belt | 10-14 | James Madison, Marshall, Old Dominion, Southern Miss | — |
| ASUN | 7-6 | Austin Peay, Kennesaw St, N Alabama | Steph F Austin, Abilene Christian, Lamar, Sam Houston |
| Big Sky | 13-12 | — | S Utah |
| Big South | 9-6 | Bryant | Hampton, Monmouth, Kennesaw St, N Alabama |
| Colonial | 12-13 | Monmouth, Hampton | James Madison |
| Northeast | 8-8 | Stonehill | Bryant |
| Ohio Valley | 7-7 | Lindenwood | Austin Peay |
| Southland | 6-6 | Commerce | Incarnate Word |
| WAC | 2-8 | Abilene Christian, Lamar, Sam Houston, Incarnate Word, S Utah, Steph F Austin | — |
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That’s it for today. Next time will be starting at the least challenged conference according to the GCR preseason SOS and begin to work our way upwards to the Conference with the most challenging overall schedules next year (and no, it’s not the conference you are thinking).
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Thanks for reading, welcome to 2022 college football, and thanks for sharing with others, G
