CIAA eliminates football divisions for conference title game

TROY HULL | THE CHARLOTTE POST

The CIAA is eliminating divisions for football starting with the 2024 season.

Division alignments are a thing of the past for CIAA football.

The conference’s board of directors voted last week to eliminate divisions in favor of a teams with the best two records advancing to the title game starting this year. As a result, a pair of teams from the former northern or southern division can now meet in the final and there are no division champions.

Under the new guidelines, 2023 southern winner Fayetteville State, which went 8-0 in CIAA games and northern winner Virginia Union (7-1), still would’ve played in the final.
Teams will be ranked 1-11 (St. Augustine’s will not field a team in 2024), with the top two squads advancing to the title contest in Salem, Va. There will no longer be northern and southern division winners.   

• The CIAA also voted to award the 2025-27 title games to Durham, which beat out Charlotte and Salem, the host city since 2017.

The Durham Sports Commission, which submitted the winning bid, will host the showcase at 8,500-seat Durham County Memorial Stadium. 

• The CIAA will partner with the SIAC and Black College Hall of Fame for a new bowl game in 2025.

The Division II conferences will send their top team to the Legacy Bowl, which takes the place of a previously proposed week 0 game.

The BCHOF, located on the campus of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, hosts the Black College Football Hall of Fame Classic, played since 2019 at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium the Sunday before Labor Day. 

The Legacy Bowl will join the Florida Beach Bowl, which debuted last year in Fort Lauderdale, Fla, as Division II HBCU showcase. The SIAC’s Fort Valley State beat Johnson C. Smith of the CIAA 23-10 in that game.

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