MEAC Basketball: Bethune-Cookman weighs potential exit from league

MEAC Basketball: Bethune-Cookman weighs potential exit from conference

LAS VEGAS - NOVEMBER 26: Javoris Bryant #11 of the Bethune-Cookman Wildcats drives to the basket as he is fouled by Garland Judkins #00 of the Texas A&M Corpus Christi Islanders during the third round of the Las Vegas Invitational at The Orleans Arena November 26, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) /

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WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 20: The MEAC logo (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images) /

MEAC Basketball could be in big danger, depending on what conference member Bethune-Cookman decides to do soon.

There are a LOT of factors outside of the world of college athletics that have had a distinct impact on the institution these days. The specter of COVID-19 has highlighted the foundational importance of both professional and amateur sports in the American psyche, and as a point of normalcy in our daily lives.

Within the sphere of college basketball, the pandemic has forced smaller conferences and programs to make some extremely tough decisions about their potential for existence at the D1 level of NCAA competition. The pressure of survival has prompted BCU as an institution to take emergency measures, and in the process, has shined a bright light on one of Black College basketball’s most visible conferences: The MEAC.

The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference has been under siege recently, with the departures of Hampton University, North Carolina A&T University, and Florida A&M University to the Big South and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) respectively. It’s been a huge blow to a conference that’s seen it’s visibility on the hardwood rise considerably in the past three-year period.

BCU may not have had the marquee media moments that North Carolina Central or NCA&T had this past season, but they’re the fourth member of a core of teams that made the MEAC more competitive then it’s been in almost a decade. Head Coach Ryan Vedder, a member of ESPN’s top “40 under 40”, has quietly built a tough-minded, physically imposing team that’s poised to start taking some of that spotlight with the Aggies and Rattlers leaving the league.

That time to shine on the MEAC Basketball stage may be put on hold indefinitely, depending on what the school’s Board of Trustees decides in terms of the future of Bethune-Cookman’s conference affiliation. In the balance is potentially the fate of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference as we know it, as a decision to jump could be that catalyst for a final exodus that could put the conference’s continued existence into doubt. If the decision is made to move, the SWAC and the Atlantic Sun conference are the primary targets for the program to land.

In terms of hoops, the program that Coach Vedder is building would become an immediate competitive factor in either conference. The broader question in the back of everybody’s mind is what will become of the other members of the venerable MEAC when (or if) this move comes to pass.