How The Colonial Athletic Association Went About Expansion In A Proactive And Not Reactive Manner

As Joe D’Antonio and his staff presided over the final Colonial Athletic Association championship event with the current lineup this past weekend, he said that fact had not occurred to him.

“It really hasn’t crossed my mind,” D’Antonio, the CAA commissioner, said from the conference’s baseball tournament in Elon, N.C., which eventually was won by Hofstra. “It’s just what we do. No matter who the teams are, we’re still going to work hard to provide the teams with a great experience.”

But it will be a new cast once the calendar flips from June to July. After James Madison announced its move to the Sun Belt Conference on Nov. 5, 2021, the Colonial acted quickly, adding Hampton, Monmouth and Stony Brook on Jan. 25. The CAA then brought in North Carolina A&T on Feb. 22 to bring its membership up to 13.

But that process of expansion began long before James Madison left, and it demonstrates how in the ever-shifting sands of conference realignment, mid-major conferences must be just as flexible and proactive as their high-major brethren.

“Here’s the thing that I think is important to recognize,” D’Antonio said. “This was a 16-month process that we undertook relative to what we would consider next steps for the CAA and on the future success of the conference. When you look at the timeline, our work on this project began well before JMU made any decision that it was going to leave to go to the Sun Belt.

“As a matter of fact,” he added, “JMU was active, helpful and a supportive participant in all of our expansion discussions prior to them making a decision to transition. So this was in no way a reaction to what JMU did.”

D’Antonio said, “When we made the decision to activate the plan that we had in place, we were really focused on three main things. 1—The school had to be a geographical fit. 2—Any institution that we were looking at in this process had to be an institution with a strong academic background and reputation and 3—We were also focused on making sure the institution was not only committed to investing in its student-athletes and their future, but also committed to investing in the future success of its athletic programs.”

James Madison announced its intention last Nov. 5 to join the SBC by no later than July 1, 2023. However, that timetable was moved up when the CAA exercised a provision in the CAA bylaws blocking the Dukes from participating in any of the conference’s tournaments for the 2021-22 academic year. James Madison will become a full Sun Belt member next month.

“It started back in August for us,” Monmouth athletic director Jeff Stapleton said of the process of exploring potential membership in the CAA. Monmouth had been in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference since 2013.

The CAA “gave us a call,” Stapleton added, “and said we’re looking to expand. ‘Hey, would you like to talk about membership? We’re putting feelers out and would you like to have a conversation?’”

A common thread among the athletic directors of the incoming CAA schools was how their universities’ new membership in the CAA could help with recruiting students other than student-athletes.

Stony Brook’s Shawn Heilbron, whose school had been in the America East since 2001, said, “We’re aligning ourselves with more schools that look like us from an academic standpoint. That was important to our president. That was important to me. I think it certainly helps, the name recognition of a lot of the schools in the CAA. Students know those schools.”

Hampton University had been a member of an HBCU conference, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, since 1991. But the Pirates moved to the Big South Conference in 2018.

“Our president (William R. Harvey) wanted Hampton’s athletic prowess to match its academic prowess and conference affiliation was key to that,” Hampton athletic director Eugene Marshall Jr. said. “So we looked at a number of different conferences and decided on going into the Big South. He had been trying to get into the CAA for a number of years and unfortunately, he wasn’t able to make that work. Timing and everything didn’t make it jibe.”

But now it did.

“It helps us from an academic perspective because we’re surrounded by great academic institutions,” Marshall said.

The large geographic footprint of the conference also was important. The CAA stretches down the East Coast from Northeastern University in Boston to College of Charleston in South Carolina.

Marshall said, “Now you can recruit students from Boston to Myrtle Beach and we have a very good alumni base on the east coast, especially Boston, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and the DMV (Delaware, Maryland and Virginia), so we have a great alumni group right there.

“It enables us to recruit all students, not just student-athletes,” Stapleton said, “but our entire student body, from New England, Long Island, greater Philly and northern Maryland. That’s where we recruit a lot of our students, and this league has institutions in that footprint. It’s so important for us to get out in those communities.”

North Carolina A&T made a journey similar to Hampton’s, moving from the MEAC to the Big South in 2021 before going to the CAA.

North Carolina A&T athletic director Earl Hilton said, “We consider ourselves a very aggressive, doctoral research, land-grant institution. In that posture, we have continued to frame a competitive group of peer institutions against whom we have benchmarked ourselves. We believe membership with the Colonial Athletic Association represents where we are and expect to be academically and athletically as we strive to become an R1 institution.”

For Stony Brook, it also meant a chance to have almost all of the Seawolves’ athletic programs in one conference, rather than being spread out, as Heilbron explained.

“It was something that initially was not a priority but more we started talking about it, it became something that really was important,” Heilbron explained. “The fact that we have not had all of our teams in one conference, it’s something that you don’t really think about. but then when you can get (almost) everyone under one umbrella and realize what that can mean for your department, it really starts to have a lot of positives to it. So, we’re really excited about that aspect of it.”

The only sport Stony Brook offers that the CAA doesn’t sponsor is women’s bowling.

As for D’Antonio, he likely didn’t have time for nostalgia this past weekend because the conference will hold meetings Tuesday through Friday in Ponte Vedra, Fla. On the agenda will be such topics as potentially splitting the conference into divisions for scheduling purposes, as well as the scheduling model itself.

“We’ve solidified our schedule for the 2022-23 academic year,” D’Antonio said, but he added, “we haven’t made any decisions relative to 2023-24. We’re trying to create both a competitive and a (financially) sustainable model. That process is ongoing.”

As for divisions, he said, “We’re continuing to discuss what divisions could look like. I’m not sure if these meetings will reveal a final decision but it will be discussed.”

North Carolina A&T’s Hilton said, “The CAA reached out to us in November with a proposal to divide the conference into divisions and focus on regional scheduling, thereby creating a more attractive travel schedule for our student-athletes. We considered the move from both an academic association and athletics competition perspective and feel like a transition to the CAA is best for A&T and our student-athletes.”

For Stony Brook and Heilbron, regional scheduling likely would mean a chance to play Long Island rival Hofstra twice per season, instead of once.

“It would be huge,” he said. “From the moment I got to Stony Brook, I recognized what the rivalry with Hofstra meant, what it means for Long Island. … Our games now are great, but they’re typically in December. To think that we’ll possibly play twice a year in the heat of conference play, it’s exciting.”