Unless something changes, Colonial Athletic Association football four years from now will be a 14-team league, the largest conference in the country above the Division II level and a bit unwieldy.

"I've never heard of a 14-team football league," said James Madison coach Mickey Matthews.

Old Dominion starts playing football in 2009 and in 2011 joins the CAA, now a 12-team league. Georgia State launches football in 2010 and projects a 2012 arrival in the CAA. As CAA coaches left their annual meeting last month in Hilton Head, S.C., they were asked by league Commissioner Tom Yeager to come up with some scheduling suggestions over the summer.

"That's a tough one," said University of Richmond coach Mike London.

The league currently is split into a pair of six-team divisions. It would seem sensible to add ODU to the South with Richmond, William and Mary, James Madison, Towson, Delaware and Villanova. That sticks Georgia State, located in Atlanta, in the North with Massachusetts, Hofstra, New Hampshire, Maine, Northeastern and Rhode Island.

"Wherever you put [the GSU Panthers], any team that plays them is going to have to fly," London said.

Scheduling is trickier. CAA programs now play eight league games, five in-division games and three against members of the other division (determined annually on a rotating basis).

It's an unbalanced formula, but generally approved as an acceptable way to determine the champion of a 12-member league.

Can eight league games, the obligation CAA schools would like to maintain, deliver a legitimate champion in a 14-team league? Each year, the "champion" would not have faced five of 13 (38.5 percent) possible league opponents.

No current members expressed interest in leaving the CAA during the league's annual meeting, according to Chuck Boone, the CAA's director of football operations.

The league has momentum. Last season, the CAA qualified five teams for the 16-team FCS playoffs, the most teams ever from one conference.

"The five teams in the playoffs might have been kind of the perfect storm as far as selection, but in terms of being a national player, we think we're there, very much so," Yeager said.

The Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference, a Minnesota-based Division II league, will have 14 football-playing members in 2008. Each team is scheduled for 10 league games.

The CAA wants to stick with eight to leave room on schedules for Football Bowl Subdivision opponents (and the accompanying six-figure guarantees), geographic rivals, and other reasons.
Contact John O'Connor at (804) 740-5091 or joconnor@timesdispatch.com.