The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level. The conference was originally formed in 1951 as the State Teachers Conference, and was temporarily named the Pennsylvania State Teachers College Conference in 1956 before being assuming its current name in 1964.[1]
The conference's 17 full-time members include 16 based in Pennsylvania and one in West Virginia. The conference's headquarters are in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania and staffed by a commissioner, two assistant commissioners, and a director of media relations.
In 1977, following growing interest, the conference was expanded to offer competition in women's sports. From its inception, each conference member selected its own competitive division within the NCAA (I, II, or III).
In 1980, however, the presidents voted to reclassify the entire conference to Division II within the NCAA.[2]
In 2010, Seton Hill University was accepted to join the conference as an associate member for field hockey. With the transition of West Chester from Division I to Division II, the number of teams competing in field hockey increased from 10 to 12 for the 2011 season.[6]
On August 19, 2012, the PSAC announced that Seton Hill and the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, formerly members of the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC), would become full members beginning with the 2013–14 school year. This announcement was fallout from a split in the WVIAC that ultimately led to the formation of the Mountain East Conference (MEC). Although Seton Hill was one of the schools that initially broke away from the WVIAC, it chose not to join the MEC.[7] The arrival of these two schools brought the PSAC to 18 full members, making it the largest NCAA all-sports conference in terms of membership at that time.[8] While two other conferences briefly expanded to more members, the D-II Lone Star Conference to 19 in 2019–20 and the D-III USA South Athletic Conference to the same number in 2021–22, both have since reduced their memberships to less than 18, once again giving the PSAC the largest membership of any NCAA all-sports conference.[a][b]
In March 2018, charter member Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, facing crises in enrollment, graduation rates, and finances, announced that it would leave NCAA Division II and the PSAC at the end of the 2017–18 school year. The school had dropped football in December 2017.[9]
Later that year, the conference announced that it would expand into West Virginia, bringing in Shepherd University from the MEC as a full member effective with the 2019–20 school year. Shepherd is the first full PSAC member outside of Pennsylvania.[10]
As of April 4, 2024, Mercyhurst announced that it will leave the PSAC to transition to NCAA Division I and join the Northeast Conference, beginning the 2024–25 academic year.[11]
Role in Division I conference realignment
The PSAC played a little-known but nonetheless significant role in the history of NCAA Division I conference realignment. In 1986, the conference was seeking a way out of a football scheduling conundrum. The PSAC had 14 members at the time, and had been split into divisions for decades. One of the methods it historically used to determine a football champion involved a championship game between the winners of its two divisions. However, due to NCAA limits on regular-season games, every PSAC team had to leave a schedule spot open, with only the two division winners getting to play all of their allowed regular-season games. Then-conference commissioner Tod Eberle asked Dick Yoder, then athletic director at West Chester and member of the Division II council, to draft NCAA legislation that would allow the PSAC to play a conference title game that would be exempt from regular-season limits. The initial draft required that a qualifying league have 14 members and play a round-robin schedule within each division; only the PSAC then qualified.[12]
Before Yoder formally introduced the proposal, he was approached by the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, which was interested in co-sponsoring the legislation because it was also split into football divisions and wanted the option of a championship game. Since the CIAA then had 12 members, Yoder changed the legislation to require 12 members instead of 14. Although at the time all NCAA legislation had to be approved by the entire membership, regardless of divisional alignment, the proposal passed with little notice. It was generally seen as a non-issue by Division I-A (now FBS) schools since no conference in that group then had more than 10 members. While the PSAC planned to stage its first exempt title game in 1988, it decided against doing so at that time because the D-II playoffs expanded from 8 to 16 teams that season, and it feared that the result of a title game could cost the league a playoff berth. The new NCAA rule would not see its first use until the Southeastern Conference took advantage of it by expanding to 12 members in 1991 and launching a title game the following year. In 2014, then-Sports Illustrated writer Andy Staples said that the rule "helped dictate the terms of conference realignment for more than 20 years."[12]
2008 – Long Island University–Post (LIU–Post) joined the PSAC as an affiliate member for field hockey and football in the 2008 fall season (2008–09 academic year).
2011 – Seton Hill University joined the PSAC as an affiliate member for field hockey in the 2011 fall season (2011–12 academic year).
2013 – LIU Post left the PSAC as an affiliate member for field hockey and football after the 2012 fall season (2012–13 academic year).
2018 – Cheyney left the PSAC to become an independent school without an affiliation with any athletic conference or any college sports organization after the 2017–18 academic year.
2024 – Mercyhurst left the PSAC to transition and join to the NCAA Division I ranks and the Northeast Conference (NEC) after the 2023–24 academic year.
2024 – Frostburg State University joined the PSAC as an affiliate member for field hockey in the 2024 fall season (2024–25 academic year).
Notes
↑ After the LSC expanded to 19 members, it lost two to D-I transitions, Tarleton in 2020 and Texas A&M–Commerce in 2022, leaving it at 17 members. After a single school year as a 19-member league, the USA South amicably split into two leagues; eight members left to form the new Collegiate Conference of the South and 10 remained in the USA South, with one member leaving for a third conference.
↑ While the D-III Middle Atlantic Conference, which had 18 members at two different times in the 21st century and now has 16, operates under a single administrative structure, it is actually an umbrella organization of three conferences. Its members are divided into two conferences, MAC Commonwealth and MAC Freedom, that each compete in the same set of 14 non-football sports, including men's and women's basketball. The third conference, known as the Middle Atlantic Conference (not to be confused with the umbrella organization), sponsors competition in 13 other sports, among them football, for Commonwealth and Freedom members.
↑ Seton Hill competed in the PSAC as an affiliate member for field hockey from the 2011 to 2012 fall seasons (2011–12 to 2012–13 school years).
↑ West Chester had dual athletic conference membership with the Middle Atlantic States Collegiate Athletic Conference (now known as the Middle Atlantic Conferences (MAC)) from 1969–70 to 1973–74, and with the East Coast Conference (ECC) from 1974–75 to 1981–82, then the Golden Rams left the ECC and the NCAA Division I ranks in order to fully align with the PSAC and the NCAA Division II ranks.
↑ While LIU Post was a full member of the East Coast Conference (ECC) from 1989 to 2019, neither of its PSAC sports were sponsored by the ECC. In 2013, Post moved both of its PSAC sports to the Northeast-10 Conference (NE-10). In July 2019, Long Island University merged its two athletic programs—the LIU Post Pioneers and the Division I LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds—into a single Division I athletic program, the LIU Sharks. The merged program inherited Brooklyn's memberships in Division I and the Northeast Conference (NEC). Sports that had been sponsored by both campuses (among them field hockey) maintained LIU Brooklyn's NEC membership; sports that had been sponsored only by Post (among them football) became NEC members.
Membership timeline
Full member (all sports)Full member (non-football)Associate member (football)Associate member (sport)
Sports
In wrestling; Bloomsburg, Clarion, Edinboro, and Lock Haven compete as members of the Division I Mid-American Conference. The PSAC held an annual championship open to all Division I and Division II teams, however with the transition of all of the former members of the Eastern Wrestling League into the MAC starting in 2019 the Division I level PSAC programs will focus on Division I level competition. The PSAC offers championships in the following sports.[14]
A 2-divisional format is used for baseball, basketball (M / W), football, and tennis (W).
Edinboro sponsors coeducational varsity teams in esports and wheelchair basketball.
Gannon recognizes its cheerleaders (both male and female) and all-female dance team as varsity athletes.
Mansfield fields a varsity team in sprint football, a weight-restricted form of football played under standard NCAA rules but governed outside the NCAA.
Shepherd and West Chester recognize their female cheerleaders, but not their male ones, as varsity athletes.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
