The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference has changed its name in an effort to avoid confusion—but it may have accidentally created some new confusion in the process.
The MAAC will be known as the Metro Conference beginning next academic year, it announced Thursday afternoon. The move comes as the East Coast–based league seeks to differentiate itself from the Mid-American Conference—the MAC.
“The goal of this project was to establish a bold and clear identity that eliminated longstanding confusion surrounding the conference’s name,” commissioner Travis Tellitocci said in a statement. “Throughout this process, we wanted to create a brand that better positions the conference for the future while still honoring the tradition and foundation that have defined this league for the past 45 years.”
While the name will likely clear up any cases of mistaken identity in the present day, there’s a slight catch.
College basketball already had a Metro Conference within living memory for many fans
From 1976 to ’95, the Metro Conference served as a haven for schools with decent-sized fan bases and little-to-no permanent football home. At various points, 13 different schools called the league home: Charlotte, Cincinnati, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Memphis, Saint Louis, South Carolina, South Florida, Southern Miss, Tulane, VCU and Virginia Tech. Most, though not all, were located in major metropolitan areas.
At the risk of putting down the future Metro, the past Metro was a force—the kind of middle-class conference dying off in college basketball today. It put three teams in the men’s NCAA tournament on four occasions, twice sending four teams when the conference had just seven members. Many of its players of the year enjoyed NBA success, including Cardinals center Pervis Ellison (the 1992 Most Improved Player with the Bullets), Golden Eagles forward Clarence Weatherspoon (All-Rookie with the 76ers in 1993) and Hokies guard Dell Curry (Sixth Man of the Year with the Hornets in 1994).
“We discussed a lot about the history and could there be overlap,” Tellitocci told SB Nation MAAC whisperer Sam Federman. “In the end, that was more than 30 years ago. Our student-athletes hadn’t even been born by that point.”
All things considered, this decade has been pretty friendly to the MAAC from a basketball standpoint
At 13 schools, the league has never been bigger, with Merrimack and Sacred Hearts coming aboard before the 2025 season. While it suffers from the problems that leagues on the lowest rung of the Division I ladder have suffered from since time immemorial, the MAAC has had one thing going for it in the 2020s: headlines.
In 2022, it was Saint Peter’s stunning the sports world en route to the Elite Eight. Around the same time, Iona wrung three winning seasons out of coach Rick Pitino, helping rehabilitate his public image. On March 19, Siena threw a massive scare into Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament, leading by double digits before falling apart in the second half. It’s not just the men, too: Fairfield’s women have cracked the Top 25 twice in the past three years.
The lesson: The soon-to-be Metro’s name may be new, but any success that comes with it isn’t.
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