(Stats Perform) – North Carolina A&T announced Friday it will move to the Big South Conference in 2021, a major blow to the shrinking Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
The Greensboro university, which announced move at an on-campus news conference, will join the Big South on July 1, 2021 as the conference’s 12th full-time member. It will have the largest enrollment in the conference and return it to eight teams for football (Presbyterian is departing this year), including three associate members.
The most significant ramifications are in football. N.C. A&T has developed into the leading power among HBCU football programs (historically black colleges and universities). It has won at least a share of three straight and five of the last six MEAC titles and four of the first five Celebration Bowls, which match the MEAC and Southwestern Athletic Conference champs, and generally decide the Division I black college football national title. The Aggies have gone 72-21 over eight straight winning seasons, including a 12-0 record in 2017.
The MEAC, which will celebrate its 50th year of competition during the 2020-01 academic year, has been on the negative end of conference realignment in recent years – the biggest blow being N.C. A&T, one of its seven founding institutions. Hampton left the MEAC for the Big South in 2018 and Savannah State departed in 2019 to drop back to Division II.
Following N.C. A&T’s departure, the MEAC will have 10 members, but just eight for football.
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