Report: Miami linked to American Conference for potential move
Miami, one of the oldest members of the MAC, has reportedly been aggressive in seeking a new home.
UPDATED at 6:30 p.m. Eastern time to include new reporting from The Athletic and Miami athletic director David Sayler's official statement.
Brett McMurphy of On3 Sports dropped a bombshell report on Friday morning, listing three schools which had pitched the American Conference on joining as full or affiliate members in recent weeks.
Amongst the listed programs was Miami University, which was listed alongside James Madison University of the Sun Belt Conference and football independent unit UConn. (UConn is a member of the Big East in all other sports.)
“As the landscape of college sports continues to evolve competitively, legislatively and legally, the American Conference remains focused on driving innovation and helping shape key decisions and opportunities for our member institutions, student-athletes and the industry,” the conference said via statement Friday to McMurphy. “The American is not proactively seeking additional members. We will continue to evaluate the changing landscape and opportunities that strengthen the conference and support our collective mission.”
Per McMurphy, Miami and James Madison pitched the conference on full membership, while UConn– a previous all-sports member– tried to pitch on affiliate membership.
Miami athletic director David Sayler released a statement to the Cincinnati Enquirer's Chase Souder on Friday afternoon to address the reports from this morning.
"In today's dynamic and ever-changing D1 athletics landscape, it's understandable there is speculation, but at Miami we don't focus on hyptheticals," Sayler said. "We focus on our student athletes, developing winning programs and graduating champions."
"Over the past two years, [the] Miami RedHawks have won 18 championships, reached three consecutive conference championship football games, and claimed both the men's and women's all-sports trophies in back-to-back seasons," Sayler continued. "Last year, Miami was the only Group of Six school among the 19 institutions that qualified for a bowl game and both the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments. Our 31-0 men's basketball team captured national attention as the fifth program this century to go undefeated in regular season play."
Miami is not the first school to entertain other options for conference membership; Northern Illinois and Toledo were both approached by the Mountain West for football-only membership in 2025 (with NIU ultimately leaving the MAC in 2026), while Ohio and the Sun Belt Conference were previously reported to have "preliminary talks" a few months later.
What is unique about Miami's being linked to the American Conference is that the university was willing to pay for admission, with McMurphy reporting the university offered the American Conference between $30-40 million to join right away. (Chris Vannini of The Athletic later confirmed the report regarding Miami's pitch independently.)
The idea of a dowry to join a conference has been the expansion move du jour in recent years. Sacramento State agreed to pay the Mid-American Conference an $18 million expansion fee over five seasons to gain instant admission as an affiliate member, while fellow FCS promotion program North Dakota State paid the Mountain West $12.5 million to join starting the 2026 season.
The Memphis Tigers, a current member of the American Conference, attempted to join the Big XII in July 2025 by offering $200 million up-front. The Big XII rejected the offer, but the move showed other programs a way forward– taking an about face from programs such as SMU, which agreed to making no money off television rights to join the ACC in recent years.
Miami is one of the MAC's most resource-rich programs, recently approving a new basketball arena estimated to cost between $242-281 million, while having a name-image-and-likeness budget of between $8-10 million for their football roster. It's been an astronomical shift in budgeting for the RedHawks, where the university supplements 22 percent of the athletics budget; over the last two years, there has been an overflow of new, outside money raided via fundraising.
Sayler has not been shy about Miami's ambitions, especially in light of their recent success in men's and women's basketball, baseball and hockey, telling CBS Sports in March the university was being aggressive in setting the program up for the future.
"Our goal is to be the best Group of Six program in the country across all of our sports," Sayler told CBS' Chris Hummer. "That's what we want to be. And just, you know, keep an eye towards the future and whatever happens next in this crazy world of college athletics."
