Kennesaw State joining Big South for football

Kennesaw State football will make its debut on the field in 2015.

Credit: Hyosub Shin

Credit: Hyosub Shin

Kennesaw State football will make its debut on the field in 2015.

Kennesaw State has accepted an invitation to join the Big South Conference, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

The Owls are joining as a football-only associate member for the 2015 season, the first year they will play the sport.

Kennesaw State will remain in the Atlantic Sun, which doesn’t offer football, for other sports.

A press conference has been scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday at Fifth Third Bank Stadium.

The university’s financing plan for football was approved by the Board of Regents in February. Brian Bohannon, formerly an assistant at Georgia Tech, was hired as coach earlier this year.

The last hurdle for the university was finding a conference home.

Athletic director Vaughn Williams has said that the Owls would be open to joining a conference as a football-only member so that he could preserve the ties that Kennesaw State had with the Atlantic Sun. Williams declined to comment.

The Big South is composed of six teams in football, with its members in South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. The conference lost Stony Brook after the 2012 football season to the Colonial Athletic Association and will lose Virginia Military Institute to the Southern Conference after the 2013 season. The conference added Monmouth (N.J.), which is also joining as a football-only associate member in 2014.