The Mid-South Conference (MSC) is an athletic conference affiliated with the NAIA. Member institutions are located in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia.
The Mid-South Conference has nine full members: Campbellsville, Cumberland (TN), Cumberlands (KY), Georgetown College (KY), Lindsey Wilson, Life, Pikeville, Shawnee State, and Thomas More. Seven of these members sponsor football; Life and Shawnee State do not.
The Mid-South Conference also has six associate members that compete primarily in other conferences. Faulkner, Kentucky Christian, Union and recently former member Bluefield are associate members of the MSC for football and men's volleyball, Bethel is an associate member of the MSC for football and archery, and Reinhardt is an associate member of the MSC for football and men's volleyball. This gave the conference 13 members for football. In the spring of 2016, the conference expanded to 20 members, adding the six football members of The Sun Conference, as well as Faulkner University for football, On January 4, 2018, the conference added Keiser University for football, and St. Thomas announced in July they were joining the conference for football in 2019. Another Sun Conference member, Florida Memorial in Miami Gardens, Florida joined the MSC as an affiliate member for football in 2020, after re-adding the sport. Also in 2020, Bethel became a Mid-South full member, brought track and field back to the MSC, and transferred all sports other than football and archery to the conference; additionally, Freed–Hardeman and UT Southern, then known as Martin Methodist College, also joined Mid-South.
In April 2018, Thomas More University (then Thomas More College), which had been an NAIA member before moving to NCAA Division III in 1990, announced that it had been formally invited to rejoin the NAIA effective in 2019–20 as a member of the Mid-South Conference. The school, while acknowledging that it was considering this move, denied published reports that it had accepted the invitation. Thomas More eventually confirmed in July that it would join the Mid-South in 2019. In December 2020, Life University also announced its departure from the MSC for the Southern States Athletic Conference in 2022–23.
Most recently, Thomas More announced in August 2021 that it would return to the NCAA, but this time in Division II as a member of the Great Midwest Athletic Conference. It will join the G-MAC as a provisional member in July 2022, but will continue as an NAIA member through 2022–23, after which it will start G-MAC competition.
The league is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, and the commissioner is Eric Ward.
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