The University of Delaware football team will compete as a member of the new Colonial Athletic Association football conference beginning with the 2007 season. CAA Commissioner Thomas E. Yeager announced the football conference, which will include all of those universities that currently compete in the Atlantic 10 Football Conference, during a press conference May 4 in Richmond, Va.

“College football, with all of its tradition, pageantry and rivalries, creates an interest and excitement on campus and across communities that is unmatched,” Yeager says. “We look forward to having the CAA name attached to such a distinguished group of institutions and building on the successes that those members have had in the past.”

“We are pleased to continue in a league with all of the other former members of the Atlantic 10,” UD President David P. Roselle says. “It is great that the Colonial Athletic Association is now an all-sports league and that the members are located in major media centers up and down the East Coast. We believe that the future for the CAA is very bright, indeed.”

UD Director of Athletics Edgar Johnson says there is value to the Hens in having “all of our sports teams under the banner of one conference for the first time since 1970.”

In addition to UD, members of the CAA football conference will be Hofstra, James Madison, Northeastern, Towson and Villanova  universities, the universities of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Richmond and the College of William and Mary. All 12 teams are currently members of the Atlantic 10 and will continue that affiliation through the 2006 season.

“The addition of Northeastern as a full CAA member and the sixth football-playing institution qualified the CAA for football conference recognition by the NCAA,” Yeager says. “With the commitment to begin conference competition, invitations were sent to the other six institutions, and we are thrilled that the long, competitive history of this league will be preserved.”