Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts sees more conference realignment in college sports’ future. Alberts recently sat down with Amie Just of the Lincoln Journal-Star to discuss past, present and future conference realignment moves.

Alberts is well-versed in realignment. He played for the Huskers during their Big Eight glory days. As an alumnus, Alberts saw the Big Eight become the Big 12 and Nebraska eventually make the move to the Big Ten. As Nebraska’s AD, he has seen the Huskers’ conference expand from 14 teams to 18 members for the 2024 season.

“I don’t believe it’s done. It’s never been done,” Alberts told Just. “It’s more likely than not that there will be continued periods of angst. I believe that the next go-around — that’s my basic conclusion — will be far more disruptive than anything we’re currently engaged in. We need to prepare ourselves mentally for that.”

As realignment suggests “super conferences” are likely on the way, Alberts sees a potential college sports landscape with football breaking off from conference arrangements for Olympic sports. College basketball coach Rick Pitino recently publicly called for separate football leagues on social media.

“This is my own personal opinion, but I think the future has to contemplate football being taken out of the mix,” Alberts told Just. “We’re moving to a 35 to 40 top brands being part of something. If you just look at football in isolation, eventually conferences will matter less in a sense. If we can find a way to take football and have that be this entity here, I think then you can get back to doing some much more intelligent thinking around the rest of the sports, which should be regionally based.”

Alberts continued, acknowledging the travel and scheduling concerns that have been raised with the B1G adding Pacific Coast programs.

“All of these moves are driven by one sport,” the Nebraska AD said. “That’s football. And the football schedule is much different than a tennis schedule or a golf schedule. So these Olympic sports, the travel looks a little bit different. … We’re not there today, but I would think in the next 10 years, that reality makes more and more sense.”

Just promises that there’s more to come from Alberts after their lengthy conversation on realignment and B1G expansion.