If the Kennesaw State Owls are going to start up a Division I football program, they're going to need a new conference for the sport. The Atlantic Sun, their current home, doesn't do football, and is used as a temporary conference by most programs anyway. However, KSU has previously discussed leaving all other sports in the A-Sun while doing something else for football, which is pretty much exactly the same as Notre Dame in every way. No big deal.
New athletic director Vaughn Williams has said he's already "had some preliminary conversations with representatives from the Southern Conference and the Ohio Valley Conference."
The SoCon currently has nine football schools, all of which reside in Georgia or neighboring states -- plus non-football schools Charleston and UNC-Greensboro and VMI, which is only around for the wrestling. The OVC also sits at 10, along with football-free SIU Edwardsville, though adding a school from north Atlanta would stretch every definition of the term Ohio Valley.
The SoCon is a perennially tough conference that has produced two of the three best programs in FCS history in the Georgia Southern Eagles and Appalachian State Mountaineers, but it's also home to Western Carolina, which loses to most teams besides Shorter, so it's not like a last-place year-one finish would be assured in the event of a jump.
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