The news is official: Announced on Friday afternoon, Kennesaw State will officially become the 10th and newest member of Conference USA.
Per a league announcement, the Owls are set to become full CUSA members on July 1, 2024; the timing of the realignment means the 2025 softball season will be KSU’s first in their new conference home.
The move both brings the C-USA membership to an even ten and adds another football program to the league. Looking through a softball-focused lens, though, the move is a home run for the conference.
It was just two seasons ago, the 2021 season, when Kennesaw State earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. Sure, it could be argued that the Owls benefitted from a variety of other factors in the COVID-affected campaign, but at the end of the day, KSU was good enough and had the results on the field to buoy their ultimately-successful case for the postseason.
Conference USA is in a time of great upheaval – only five schools that are currently members of the league will still be present in a year’s time. Here’s a handy chart of what’s in store over the next two years for the conference:
| Current & Staying | Leaving in 2023 | Joining in 2023 | Joining in 2024 |
| Florida International | Charlotte | Jacksonville State | Kennesaw State |
| Louisiana Tech | Florida Atlantic | Liberty | |
| Middle Tennessee | North Texas | New Mexico State | |
| UTEP | UAB | Sam Houston State | |
| Western Kentucky | UTSA |
The league is losing some softball juggernauts, including their defending champion and programs on the rise. Those joining the league, though, arrive with question marks. Jacksonville State and Sam Houston State have both recently joined new conferences, only to bolt from those quickly to join C-USA.
Kennesaw State, along with Liberty, adds stability to the conference’s offering. At least on the softball front, the Owls bring a program with impressive history that includes Division 2 national championships in 1995 and ’96 and national runner-up finishes in 2000 and ’05. In the last half-decade, the Owls have also established themselves as perennial postseason contenders at the Division 1 level, winning the ASun regular-season and tournament titles in 2018 in addition to their at-large postseason berth in 2021.
From Kennesaw State’s perspective, the move could be seen as a mixed blessing. Yes, Conference USA is an FBS league whereas their current home in the ASun is part of the FCS. Though those distinctions apply solely to football, there is a certain differentiation that comes with them that crosses multi-sport lines.
Looking solely through that same, softball-only lens, the Owls are leaving a stacked softball league in the ASun – one that should be a a particularly competitive and deep league even after the departure of Liberty. The Owls would certainly be among those programs projected to contend for conference championships in the ASun following Liberty’s own departure for CUSA – as it stands, the Owls are in that discussion as a legitimate possibility even with their archrival Flames still around.
In terms of what Kennesaw State is leaving behind, it isn’t stretching too far to see a recipe where the ASun could challenge to be a multi-bid league into the NCAA tournament even after the departure of Liberty. The Owls are one of several schools in the current ASun that play a tough, RPI-friendly non-conference schedule – and have experience knocking off top-shelf, Power 5 teams. That status for the ASun seems a good bit further out of reach with the news of KSU’s departure.
What Conference USA’s softball offering will look like long-term remains to be seen. Both Western Kentucky and Louisiana Tech are recent NCAA tournament teams and both are strong programs; Liberty should immediately join the CUSA upper echelon when they join the fray and Kennesaw State is in position to do the same. The remainder of the league, even post-realignment, could be one giant question mark; a top-heavy conference usually is not on the table for multiple bids into the NCAA tournament.
For those of you who scrolled to the end just to get a tl;dr version of exactly what the softball implications are of this move, let’s sum it up: For Conference USA, they’re great and make the league’s softball offering both stronger and exponentially better. For the ASun, it’s a tough blow, as they’ll lose two of their top softball programs in consecutive years. For Kennesaw State, it’s a mixed result, although the Owls should still be contenders in their new league home.
