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Written By
It should not surprise anyone that a school from Washington, D.C., will join a conference centered in the Deep South just for football. Sacramento State is forcing people to rethink where the United States’ midpoint is by joining the MAC in football.
Nevertheless, Gallaudet’s move to the Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas-based Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) for football has many layers that make it arguably the most unique arrangement in college football. The Bison’s football move interweaves complex NCAA championship qualification rules and even an obscure unaffiliated program.
D3football.com first reported on the possibility of Gallaudet’s participation in the SCAC’s Football Championship Weekend at historic War Memorial Stadium in February. However, there was no announcement from the league until last week.
The SCAC’s Championship Weekend is one of college football’s most elaborate events. Last year, all six of the conference’s football members played in seeded games to close the season. The idea has even reached the FBS level, with the PAC-12 adopting the format to fill its non-conference schedule.McMurry’s departure to the American Southwest Conference left questions for the event, as the SCAC now has an uneven number of football-playing schools.
Faced with a dilemma, SCAC Commissioner Dwayne Hanberry admitted that his conference considered Westgate Christian University, a tiny, unaffiliated Christian school out of Houston that began football in 2024. While a game at Little Rock’s venerable War Memorial Stadium would have been a remarkable opportunity for a largely unknown Westgate Christian program, it would have had little benefit for the SCAC. Westgate Christian’s short football resume includes multiple blowout losses, including a 93-7 defeat at the hands of Hardin-Simmons, a 79-10 drubbing against Arkansas Pine-Bluff, and a 70-12 loss to Northeastern State.
Westgate Christian would have been the “sixth” SCAC school until the news of Gallaudet’s independence reached Hanberry. He recalled the idea to add Gallaudet “kinda just fell in [his] lap” after seeing the news of Gallaudet leaving the Old Dominion Athletic Conference to become a football independent at this year’s NCAA convention.
Hanberry then called longtime Hendrix head coach Buck Buchanan to help gauge Gallaudet’s interest. Buchanan was instrumental in selling the idea to Gallaudet head coach Stefan LeFors. Hanberry mentioned that LeFors showed immediate interest. However, LeFors had to confirm with Gallaudet athletic director Warren Keller that the logistics of bringing a Division III school from Washington, D.C., to Little Rock were realistic. Once Keller cleared the move, Gallaudet signed on for a two-year agreement to participate in the SCAC’s Championship Weekend.
Just playing a game in the Deep South is a substantial undertaking for Gallaudet. The Bison have played just once in the Deep South, travelling to UAB in 1992. However, the move provides more than just a rare intersectional destination game for the Bison.
The most notable part of the agreement is that Gallaudet is more than just a placeholder school. The Bison became football-only SCAC members, bringing the league to six and granting it automatic-qualifying status in the Division III playoffs for the first time since 2011. As of now, Gallaudet will only play in SCAC Championship Weekend. Naturally, many asked how a school can be a “conference member” but only play a single conference game.
Hanberry explained an NCAA bylaw that allowed Division III’s Coast-to-Coast Conference, a non-football entity spanning from Maryland to Wisconsin to Santa Cruz, California, was the impetus for the decision. The Coast to Coast Conference allows schools to form their own schedules, with little intraleague play. Nonetheless, it holds conference tournaments with seeding based on regular-season National Power Index, allowing it to have automatic qualifier status in NCAA championships.
The SCAC will use a similar model, with its other five members: Austin, Centenary, Hendrix, Lyon, and Texas Lutheran, playing head-to-head, while it uses the NCAA’s National Power Index (NPI) to seed Gallaudet. For instance, Gallaudet would have been the five-seed using 2025’s results with the SCAC’s current membership. The 223rd-ranked Bison would have played the 225th-ranked Centenary Gentlemen in the SCAC Fifth-Place Game.
Beyond reinstating the conference’s automatic qualifying status in football, the move could also make the league’s media deal with Flosports more lucrative. Not only does the SCAC add a small sliver of the vast Washington D.C. media market, but they get the media rights for a game involving one of Division III’s most well-known brands. Not only is Gallaudet the United States’ preeminent school for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, but many college football fans know of its reputation as the inventors of the huddle.The Bison have a rich football tradition that dates back to 1883.
Many Division III voices have understandably questioned conferences' partnership with the maligned streaming service, but Hanberry argued the SCAC’s deal benefits the league and fans. He argued that the FloSports contract helped the SCAC to move its conference championships to neutral venues.
“It's not a disconnect to say there's a reason why in the past two years, since we've signed our Flo contract, that more of our championships have gone to a neutral site venue that is not just neutral, but a pretty nice neutral site venue”, Hanberry explained.
The SCAC recently moved its soccer championships to Round Rock Multipurpose Complex and its baseball tournament to Dell Diamond, the home of the Round Rock Express, the AAA affiliate of the Texas Rangers.
“I don't think we would have had the ability to make all of that work, maybe some of that work, but certainly not all of that work, within the financial constraints of what we deal with both at the conference level and institutional level. The Flo money has helped us transition into what I consider super-nice facilities to provide championship opportunities for our student-athletes. And I'm proud that we're able to do that. And I hope people know that that's the trade-off. Maybe some of this happens without it, but certainly not all of it,” Hanberry concluded.
Gallaudet’s affiliate membership, even if it is just on a one-game basis, should continue the SCAC’s efforts to provide grand stages for its student-athletes through FloSports revenue.
Conferences must adapt more quickly than ever in this turbulent age of collegiate athletics. Hardly anyone in the business knows this more than Dwayne Hanberry, who has seen nearly everything in 31 years as commissioner. Gallaudet’s football affiliate membership with the SCAC may seem strange at first, but the agreement is an overall win for both sides.
