By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

Just because it was inevitable, and for awhile, doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot of joy and anticipation in the lobby of the Peyton T. Anderson Enrollment Center at the entrance to Middle Georgia State.

Video of the press conference (starts at 10:00)

The news wasn’t necessarily news, but it was official, MGSU officials, coaches, and student-athletes listening to the start of a new era of athletics.

“We know there's much work still to be done, but a simple message for our Peach Belt brethren,” MGSU athletics director Michael Brown said, “is that the Knights are coming.”

They’re coming to the Peach Belt Conference in the NCAA’s Division II, a major step for an athletics department that was a junior college until less than two decades ago.

MGSU held a press conference on Thursday to make official what has been unofficial for a year or so, that the school was moving up into the NCAA and into the Peach Belt.

Brown’s 618th day on the job was certainly among the most gratifying.

“It was a whirlwind from the start, but there was such a great plan in place that it was really easy to step in because they had a strategic plan,” he said. “t was just about executing and that's what they charged me with.”

The conference approved the move in 2024, and the school officially applied to the NCAA in February. Brown said the NCAA confirmed Thursday that the school had been approved as a provisional member.

“Do you student athletes know that you stand on the shoulder of giants,” asked school president Christopher Blake. “There are people who’ve come before you who would give you a run for your money today.

“I want to make sure that wherever they are and wherever they've gone that they know that this is a day in which we honor them.”

Thus begins a transition process of a few years, with a full Peach Belt schedule beginning this fall.

Middle Georgia State will be eligible for PBC championships immediately, but not for the NCAA Division II postseason for three years, with full eligibility starting in 2028-29.

The NCAA has a transition period when schools move up as they prepare for more sports, more scholarships, bigger budgets and staffs, stronger competition, and different academic standards, among other things.

“What we’re focusing on is more scholarships,” Brown said. “We want to operate with long-term success in mind, and I think that’s the direction we’re heading.

“We're not a finished product and we know that it's going to take some time and effort, but I think we got the right people in place and the right visionaries to take us to that next level.”

The school was Middle Georgia College, a junior college, until it merged with Macon State College in 2013 and became a four-year college.

The consolidation led to a new mascot, the Knights, as the athletics programs began competing in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, an organization completely unattached to the NCAA.

The Knights started in the NAIA and Southern States Athletic Conference in 2013-14.

Middle Georgia State has five campuses and about 8,500 students, but athletics only takes place in Cochran (softball, baseball, and men’s and women’s teams in basketball, tennis, and soccer) and Macon (men’s and women’s tennis, volleyball, women’s cross country).

That won’t change. The school is adding distance events in women’s track next spring.

MGSU will step up in competition, but also in familiarity.

Middle Georgia State release
Peach Belt Conference release

Cochran isn’t a far drive to Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia Southwestern in Americus, Columbus State in Columbus, and Clayton State in Morrow.

And schools in the Peach Belt are more familiar than schools like Thomas, Faulkner, Point, William Carey, and Blue Mountain, part of the Southern States Athletic Conference.

Brewton-Parker was the only close SSAC program for MGSU, although ABAC joined last year. Point (southwest of LaGrange on the state line) and Life (Marietta) joined in 2022 and 2023.

The Peach Belt is in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, while the SSAC is in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

The fit is better, too. All but three schools in the SSAC are private.

Georgia Southwestern made the same move in 2005-06.

Two Peach Belt commissioners attended. David Brunk’s retirement became effective on June 30, and Diana Kling’s first day as the league’s third commissioner started on July 1.

But she has been with the Peach Belt since 2005, and has been involved with the Middle Georgia State’s work to join.

“The process has been ongoing, and the planning for probably 10 years,” she said. “Dr. (Jennifer) Brandon (VP for student affairs) is the first to say the plan was never to do it quickly, it was to do it correctly.

“And they’ve made sure that every step of the way, they were ready for the next transition. That’s part of why we’ve been so confident, and happy to have them, because they did it with intention.”

Head men’s basketball coach Scott Moe is entering his 27th year at the school. And he had his first full-time assistant last year in Tyler Thayer as part of the transition.

This might be the most anxious Moe has been in all that time for school to start.

“I tell people I’m one of the few coaches in America that went from JUCO to NAIA to NCAA, and I never changed my office,” he laughed. “I’ve coached on three different levels and never changed my office or my address.”

And one of his first games as an NCAA Division II coach?

“We’re opening our season with Valdosta State,” he said of the regular top-25 Division II program to the south. “A very big powerhouse.

“The Blazers are coming to Cochran. Hard to believe.”