Stony Brook, Albany Football Move To CAA
By Kyle Kensing
Conference realignment sends ripples throughout the football landscape, and this week the aftershocks were felt in the Championship Subdivision.
Stony Brook and Albany accepted invites to join the Colonial Athletic Association on Tuesday, and will begin play there in 2013. Both were 2011 NCAA Playoffs participants and are programs on the rise. Their membership provides the league widely considered the best in FCS some needed stability in a tumultuous time.
The CAA departs with Georgia State and Old Dominion upon conclusion of the year. Each accepted an invitation to Bowl Subdivision conferences, following Massachusetts’ path. The Minutemen exited the CAA at season’s end last year for the MAC. Charlotte, which has yet to play a single game since relaunching its football program, also opted for the FBS leap.
Along with the four FBS departures is Rhode Island’s upcoming move to the Northeast Conference. URI will lower its scholarship allotment per NEC rules. The conference also lost Hofstra and Northeastern recently, both folding their football programs after the 2009 season.
In his official address, SBU president Samuel L. Stanley, Jr. touted the move to the fiercely competitive CAA as “elevat[ing SBU’s] intercollegiate athletics program to higher levels of excellence.”
SBU was already on the national radar for the baseball program’s surprising run to Omaha and the College World Series. This year’s gridiron Seawolves have a very realistic shot at winning the national championship, adding Iowa transfer and the Big Ten’s second leading rusher in 2011 Marcus Coker to a backfield already returning Miguel Maysonet.
Reigning NEC champion Albany returns key ingredients from an offense that produced better than 33 points per game in 2011, including NFL sleeper running back Drew Smith.
SBU and Albany replenish the CAA’s northern stock after losing UMass and URI. Commissioner Tom Yeager told the Associated Press that more expansion was in the works for the CAA, but emphasized the need for realignment in its other sports. Rumored inquiries to Elon and Furman of the Southern Conference floated previously. Losing SBU drops the Big South Conference’s football membership to just six, not enough for the NCAA Playoffs recognition the league just gained in 2010. Other Big South members might be suitable targets — Liberty and Coastal Carolina have both been consistently above .500 in recent seasons.