Campbell, moving up again, leaves Big South for Colonial

Campbell University has joined the list of schools leaving the Big South Conference for the Colonial Athletic Association.

Campbell, which four years ago upgraded its football program to scholarship status, will move all of its sports to the CAA in the summer of 2023, the school said Wednesday.

The Camels join Hampton and N.C. A&T, both of which already announced they are leaving the Big South for the CAA. Monmouth, a football-only member of the Big South, also is joining the Colonial, as is Stony Brook.

That will give the conference 14 non-football members and 15 football members, many of whom compete in other conference in sports other than football. Campbell will be one of nine schools that compete in the CAA in all sports. With a total enrollment of 5,622, it will be the second-smallest of those nine.

As realignment in power conferences filters down the food chain, the CAA has been on an expansion drive since losing James Madison earlier this year to the Sun Belt.

“Campbell’s athletic teams have demonstrated that we can compete with some of the best teams in the country,” Campbell president J. Bradley Creed said in a statement. “This move to the CAA aligns extremely well for Campbell, in terms of the profile of sports and athletics, as well as the academic reputation of these highly regarded colleges and universities.”

Hannah Bazemore, Campbell’s acting athletics director, said in a statement the school’s goal is “to give our student-athletes and coaches an opportunity to compete among the nation’s leaders.”

The CAA annually lands multiple berths in the NCAA’s FCS playoffs. Over the last five seasons, the Colonial had 16 qualifiers for the FCS playoffs, compared to seven for the Big South. Campbell’s best finish in three seasons of Big South football competition was fifth.

Since rejoining the Big South in 2011, the men’s basketball team has won one regular-season title and the women’s team none; neither team has won the conference tournament. The baseball team has had more success, with five regular-season championships, four tournament championships and five NCAA tournament appearances.

Other Carolinas members of the CAA are Elon, UNC Wilmington and Charleston, although only Elon competes in football.

Campbell’s move leaves the Big South with nine members – Charleston Southern, Gardner-Webb, High Point, Longwood, Presbyterian, Radford, UNC Asheville, USC Upstate and Winthrop.

The Big South issued a statement Wednesday from its council of university presidents, saying it is committed to staying the course, despite what it said is “an era of NCAA transformation.”

“The members of the Council of Chief Executives Officers unanimously reaffirmed and reasserted their commitment to the Big South,” according to the statement.

Campbell was a charter member of the conference when it began operations in 1985. The school left the Big South in 1994 — in part because the Baptist school refused, at the time, to play games on Sundays — before rejoining in 2011 in all sports other than football.

Campbell started its football team in 2008 as a non-scholarship program in the Pioneer Football League. In 2018, when Campbell started offering football scholarships, it joined the Big South in football as well.

Campbell’s move leaves the Big South with only two football-playing members, Charleston Southern and Gardner-Webb. But the conference announced an agreement earlier this year to combine with the Ohio Valley Conference in the 2023 season, so it can maintain access to the FCS playoffs. The NCAA requires a conference to have at least six members to gain an FCS berth.

Campbell’s move is part of a domino effect that began when Texas and Oklahoma announced last summer their intent to move from the Big 12 to the SEC. Since then, several Carolinas schools have announced they will change conference affiliations. In addition to Campbell and N.C. A&T, Charlotte is moving from Conference USA to the American Athletic Conference and Queens University of Charlotte is moving from Division II to Division I and joining the Atlantic Sun.