Sport Employees and Resilience: An Examination of Organizational Change with NCAA Conference Realignment

NCAA conference membership is critically important to institutions as it is closely associated with revenue generation (i.e., conference-wide revenue distribution, ticket sales, fundraising, etc.) in addition to institutional visibility and prestige. Therefore, universities may pursue conference realignment opportunities based on higher potential revenue, institutional and athletics financial stability, and increased notoriety. Over the past 20 years, there have been at least 80 cases of schools moving conferences at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level. As universities move conferences, employees within the athletics department are exposed to rapid change in organizational structure and are forced to adapt to new institutional, athletics department, and conference goals. This study aims to examine employee strategies for navigating change through the context of conference realignment and structural changes in the NCAA college athletics environment. Within this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 athletics department employees across three different institutions that had undergone conference realignment within the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of NCAA Division I athletics. This study will help further the literature on how sport employees react to change and how their attitude affects the overall success of an organization.