The Atlantic 10 Conference (A10) is a college athletic conference which operates mostly in the eastern United States; it also has two member schools in Ohio. It participates in the NCAA's Division I-AA for football and Division I for all other sports.
Despite the name, there are 22 partial or full-time members; 12 schools play football, 12 basketball and other sports, and one affiliate member for women's field hockey only. Only three schools—UMass, Rhode Island, and Richmond—are members in both football and basketball. This odd conference construction is because the A-10 Football Conference was created in 1997 by a takeover of the football-only Yankee Conference, due to NCAA rules changes that significantly diminished the legislative input of single-sport conferences. The members of the Yankee Conference narrowly chose the A-10's merger proposal over that of the Colonial Athletic Association; this decision may soon be revisited by the football-playing members of the A-10, as explained below.
Members (and year joined, where known; football-only dates pre-1997 refer to Yankee Conference)
Broken down by who plays what, that's:
Football
Basketball and Olympic sports
Women's field hockey only
Future developments
In 2005, Saint Louis University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte will join the Atlantic Ten from Conference USA. Neither school has a football program.
In 2006, Northeastern University will join the Colonial Athletic Association for basketball and Olympic sports. Although the CAA does not currently sponsor football, Northeastern's move to that conference will greatly affect the Atlantic Ten in football. Currently, five CAA members (Delaware, Hofstra, James Madison, Towson, and William & Mary) are football members of the A-10. The addition of Northeastern will give the CAA the six football programs it would need to begin sponsoring football. Should these schools leave, the A-10 would drop to six football members; if the CAA invites Richmond (which left it in 2001) to rejoin for football only, given UR's long-standing in-state rivalries with William & Mary and James Madison, this would take the A-10 football conference below the NCAA minimum six.
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