Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference


The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference is a collegiate athletic conference whose full members are historically black colleges and universities in the Southeastern and the Mid-Atlantic United States. It participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I, and in football, in the Football Championship Subdivision.
Currently, the MEAC has automatic qualifying bids for NCAA postseason play in men's basketball, women's basketball, softball, men's and women's tennis, and volleyball. Bowling was officially sanctioned as a MEAC-governed sport in 1999. Before that season, the MEAC was the first conference to secure NCAA sanctioning for women's bowling by adopting the club sport prior to the 1996–97 school year.

History

In 1969, a group whose members were long associated with interscholastic athletics met in Durham, North Carolina for the purpose of discussing the organization of a new conference. After the formulation of a committee, and their research reported, seven institutions, Delaware State University, Howard University, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Morgan State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University and South Carolina State College, agreed to become the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. South Carolina State had been a longtime member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, while the other charter members had been longtime members of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association.
The conference's main goals were to establish and supervise an intercollegiate athletic program among a group of educational institutions that shared the same academic standards and philosophy of co-curricular activities and seek status as a Division I conference for all of its sports.
The conference was confirmed in 1970, and had its first season of competition in football in 1971. The MEAC has had three full-time commissioners. In 1978, the MEAC selected its first full-time commissioner, Kenneth A. Free, who served as commissioner until he resigned in 1995. He was succeeded by Charles S. Harris, who served at the position until 2002. On September 1, 2002, Dennis E. Thomas became the conference's commissioner. He retired on December 31, 2021. Sonja O. Stills became the first female commissioner of the MEAC on January 1, 2022. She is also the only female commissioner of a Division I HBCU athletic conference.
The MEAC experienced its first expansion in 1979 when Bethune–Cookman College and Florida A&M University were admitted as new members. That same year, founding members Morgan State University, North Carolina Central University and University of Maryland Eastern Shore withdrew from the conference. All three schools eventually returned to the conference; Maryland Eastern Shore rejoined in 1981, Morgan State in 1984, and North Carolina Central in 2010.
On June 8, 1978, the MEAC was classified as a Division I conference by the NCAA. Prior to that year, the league operated as a Division II conference. The following month the MEAC received an automatic qualification to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship.
In 1984, membership in the MEAC again changed, as Florida A&M chose to leave. The university returned to the conference two years later. Coppin State College, now Coppin State University, joined the conference in 1985. The MEAC found some stability in membership with the addition of two HBCUs in Virginia, Hampton University and Norfolk State University in 1995 and 1997, respectively. For the next ten years, the MEAC remained an 11-member conference. In 2007, former CIAA member Winston-Salem State University was granted membership, but announced on September 11, 2009, that it would return to Division II at the end of 2009–10 and apply to return to the CIAA before ever becoming a full member of the MEAC.
North Carolina Central University rejoined the conference effective July 1, 2010. NCCU was one of seven founding member institutions of the MEAC, but withdrew from the conference in 1979, opting to remain a Division II member when the conference reclassified to Division I.
Savannah State University was announced as the newest member of the MEAC on March 10, 2010. Savannah State originally applied for membership into the MEAC in 2006 but faced an NCAA probationary period soon after. Membership was then deferred until the completion of the imposed probation period, which ended in May 2009. Savannah State then resubmitted their application for membership again in 2009 and was finally granted probationary membership status. On September 8, 2011, the university was confirmed as a full MEAC member.
While the MEAC has had no new full members since then, the conference added an associate member in 2014 when Augusta University, then known as Georgia Regents University, a Division II institution with Division I programs in men's and women's golf, joined for men's golf. Augusta became the MEAC's first associate member and first non-HBCU with any type of membership. The conference has since added two more non-HBCU associate members, with Monmouth University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham joining for bowling in 2018.
In April 2017, Savannah State announced that it would drop to Division II effective with the 2019–20 school year. In November 2017, Hampton announced they would leave the MEAC to join the Big South Conference beginning with the 2018–19 season.
In February 2020 North Carolina A&T announced departing MEAC to join Big South Conference effective July 2021. Within few months, in June 2020, Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman also announced that they will leave the MEAC and join the SWAC starting in July 2021. As a result, the MEAC will have eight members remaining for 2021, with only six of its members sponsoring football. The MEAC has hired a consulting firm to help assess its current schools and to help it identify potential institutions for addition to the conference. The conference plans to operate with eight current members, starting 2021 until further expansion, in a compact geographical footprint removing North and South divisions.
In May 2021, multiple websites that report on HBCU sports indicated that the MEAC had reached out to two Division II HBCUs about their interest in transitioning to D-I and joining the MEAC. Kentucky State University and Virginia State University, respectively members of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, confirmed that they had discussed possible membership with the MEAC and had commissioned feasibility studies on moving to Division I. Officials at both schools stated that they were considering the move, but would not commit to any change. One report also indicated that Chicago State University, a predominantly African-American school but not an HBCU, had lobbied the MEAC regarding membership. CSU was scheduled to leave the Western Athletic Conference, a league in which it is a major geographic outlier, in July 2022 to become an independent. According to this report, the MEAC had offered CSU associate membership in one sport, but was lukewarm to CSU becoming a full member because it does not sponsor football and is well outside the MEAC's geographic footprint.
In July 2022, the Northeast Conference announced a partnership with the MEAC in which MEAC schools sponsoring baseball and men's and women's golf would become NEC affiliate members in their respective sports beginning in the 2022-23 season.

Member schools

Current full members

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Associate members

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Former full members

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Former associate members

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Membership timeline


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id:line value:black
id:bg value:white
id:Full value:rgb # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports
id:FullxF value:rgb # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports except for football
id:AssocF value:rgb # Use this color to denote a team that is a member for football only
id:AssocOS value:rgb # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in some sports, but not all
id:OtherC1 value:rgb # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference
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bar:1 color:FullxF from:1970 till:1971 text:Delaware State
bar:1 color:Full from:1971 till:end
bar:2 color:FullxF from:1970 till:1971 text:Howard
bar:2 color:Full from:1971 till:end
bar:3 color:FullxF from:1970 till:1971 text:Maryland Eastern Shore
bar:3 color:Full from:1971 till:1979
bar:3 color:AssocF from:1979 till:1980
bar:3 color:OtherC1 from:1980 till:1981
bar:3 color:FullxF from:1981 till:end text:
bar:4 color:FullxF from:1970 till:1971 text:Morgan State
bar:4 color:Full from:1971 till:1979
bar:4 color:AssocF from:1979 till:1980
bar:4 color:OtherC1 from:1980 till:1984 text:D-II Independent
bar:4 shift: color:FullxF from:1984 till:1986 text:
bar:4 color:Full from:1986 till:end
bar:5 color:FullxF from:1970 till:1971 text:North Carolina A&T
bar:5 color:Full from:1971 till:2021
bar:5 shift: color:AssocOS from:2021 till:2022 text:Big South
bar:5 color:AssocOS from:2022 till:end text:CAA
bar:6 color:FullxF from:1970 till:1971 text:North Carolina Central
bar:6 color:Full from:1971 till:1979
bar:6 color:AssocF from:1979 till:1980
bar:6 color:OtherC1 from:1980 till:2006 text:CIAA
bar:6 color:OtherC2 from:2006 till:2010 text:D-II Independent
bar:6 shift: color:FullxF from:2010 till:2011 text:
bar:6 color:Full from:2011 till:end
bar:7 color:FullxF from:1970 till:1971 text:South Carolina State
bar:7 color:Full from:1971 till:end
bar:8 color:FullxF from:1979 till:1980 text:Bethune–Cookman
bar:8 color:Full from:1980 till:2021
bar:8 color:OtherC1 from:2021 till:end text:SWAC
bar:9 color:FullxF from:1979 till:1980 text:Florida A&M
bar:9 color:Full from:1980 till:1984
bar:9 color:OtherC1 from:1984 till:1986
bar:9 color:FullxF from:1986 till:1987 text:
bar:9 color:Full from:1987 till:2003
bar:9 color:FullxF from:2003 till:2005 text:Football Independent
bar:9 color:Full from:2005 till:2021
bar:9 color:OtherC2 from:2021 till:end text:SWAC
bar:10 color:FullxF from:1985 till:end text:Coppin State
bar:11 color:FullxF from:1995 till:1996 text:Hampton
bar:11 color:Full from:1996 till:2018
bar:11 color:OtherC1 from:2018 till:2022 text:Big South
bar:11 color:OtherC2 from:2022 till:end text:CAA
bar:12 color:Full from:1997 till:1998 text:Norfolk State
bar:12 color:Full from:1998 till:end
bar:13 shift: color:OtherC2 from:2007 till:2010 text:Winston-Salem State Transitional
bar:13 color:OtherC1 from:2010 till:end text:CIAA
bar:14 color:FullxF from:2010 till:2011 text:Savannah State
bar:14 color:Full from:2011 till:2019
bar:14 color:OtherC1 from:2019 till:end text:SIAC
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text:^"Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference membership history"
  1. > If the chart uses more than one bar color, add a legend by selecting the appropriate fields from the following six options Leave a blank line after the end of the timeline, then add a line with the selected values from the list, separated by a space. <#