Editors Note: Some of this stuff has proven to be "to be confirmed rumors" rather than confirmed-for-sure happenings. We are working on separating the wheat from the chaffe on this and will post an update, which will also be linked in the body of this article. For now we will leave the article as initially published until we have confirmed exactly what to change.
Collegiate Rugby Association of America is making some major schedule changes for the 2023-24 season which could have wide-ranging ramifications for the college game as a whole.
The central part of the changes is the move of the D1A 7s tournament to December.
7s Moving to Fall
This event would coincide with the CRAA Fall Classic, which will be almost exclusively bowl games in 15s. The reason for that is partly because the women's D1 Elite is moving back to a spring playoff after one season wrapping up their competition in the fall, and partly because almost all, if not all, of the ACRA women's DII conferences and teams have shifted to National Collegiate Rugby.
The Fall Classic will return to Charlotte, NC on December 2. More bowl game matchups are expected for the weekend, but the big question is what teams will embrace 7s at the end of the fall? This could be a fairly robust 7s tournament, but it would depend the interest.
As GRR has reported, there appears to be a slowing down of the interest in 7s at least as a major component of the higher-division collegiate schedule. However, many other divisions continues to look at the spring as the time for 7s, and NCR's CRC tournament now seems to have the momentum in the spring. If their CRC tournament is able to get sanctioned, they could attract even more teams in the higher divisions.
