Addition of Hiram allows PAC to split into 2 divisions in several sports; football coaches eager for new format

First, administrators at Hiram approached Presidents’ Athletic Conference officials about joining as an affiliate member for men’s volleyball. It was a welcome request for PAC brass. The conference was set to sanction men’s volleyball for the first time in 2025, and the Terriers would grow the PAC to seven teams for the new sport.

A couple of months later, PAC commissioner Joe Onderko got another call from Hiram. This time, Hiram officials wanted to join the PAC as a full-blown member in all sports.

Or, to be more precise, rejoin. The school, located about 40 miles southeast of Cleveland, had been a member of the PAC from 1971-89 before moving to the North Coast Athletic Conference.

Onderko was happy to accept, and with the Terriers returning, that opened up a whole new set of possibilities.

Hiram’s addition brought the number of football, women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s basketball teams to 12. So Onderko and the PAC school presidents decided to split those sports into North and South divisions, which will begin with the 2025-26 academic year.

“I think it was always in the back of our minds that if we ever got to 12 members with football, (divisions) would be an option for us,” Onderko said. “I wouldn’t even say we were actively working toward 12 members. Our last two, Allegheny and Hiram, basically came to us.”

Hiram athletic director Scott Pohlman said joining the PAC made perfect sense from a geographic and economic standpoint. In the NCAC, Hiram was playing schools as far away as seven hours.

“If you look at what we’re doing with the PAC … with the North Division, our furthest trip is going to be an hour and 5 minutes,” Pohlman said. “So we reduced travel time that our kids are spending, but we also reduced the amount of missed class time.

“And then there’s an economic component. … If you have to get a bus for a weekend, it’s gone from a $1,200 trip to a $3,500 trip.”

For football, the PAC North Division comprises Allegheny, Geneva, Grove City, Hiram, Thiel and Westminster. The South will be made up of Bethany, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western Reserve, Saint Vincent, W&J and Waynesburg.

At first glance, an obvious head-scratcher would be Case Western, located in Cleveland, in the South Division. Having CWRU in the North Division would make infinitely more sense.

“I think anytime people split up a league, there’s always questions,” said Geneva’s Geno DeMarco, who, entering his 32nd year on the job, is the dean of PAC football coaches. “Why is Dallas in the NFC East?”

But Onderko said the conference presidents were shooting for consistency when they assigned divisions. To wit: Carnegie Mellon and Case Western Reserve are affiliate members of the PAC for football only. Meanwhile, two member schools that field women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s basketball teams, Chatham and Franciscan, don’t have football.

So, for football, Case Western and CMU simply were substituted in place of Chatham and Franciscan in the South.

“We don’t want to have one division that looks like this for football and one that looks completely different for volleyball and basketball,” Onderko said. “Even though Case is not technically in the South, but what was the idea here? The idea was consistency, and the football divisions look like the basketball and the (women’s) volleyball.”

For football, beginning with the 2025 season, each PAC team will play all five of its divisional opponents plus two scheduled crossover games. Those games will take place in Weeks 4-10. During Weeks 1-3, each team can schedule two nonconference games plus have a bye.

The PAC left wiggle room for moving a conference game to one of the first three weeks — if the teams mutually agree and the conference approves — to push the bye week later into the season.

Week 11 will feature a conference championship game, pitting the No. 1 teams from each division. The initial plan is to have the North winner and the South winner host the title game in alternating years. (Onderko said the PAC hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a neutral-site championship game in the future.)

The other five teams from each division will square off in Week 11, ideally having both No. 2 teams play each other, the No. 3s and so on. But Onderko said the conference wants to avoid rematches — only the conference title game could have a rematch depending on what crossover games were scheduled — so the Week 11 matchups for the Nos. 2-6 teams could be juggled.

In the big picture, the split divisions could help raise the PAC’s football profile. D3football.com ranked the PAC No. 12 out of 29 D-III conferences at the end of the 2023 season but noted it was “a very difficult conference to rank because they won’t play anybody outside of their own league until the playoffs.”

But with two nonconference games, the league can measure itself against other programs during the regular season.

Further, the D-III football playoffs are expanding to 40 teams. That means more at-large bids, and the PAC could make a more convincing case to get two teams in to the national tournament.

“As football coaches, we always wanted to get 12 members,” DeMarco said, “and a lot of that had to do with … hoping that we could get two teams into the national playoffs.”

Added Onderko: “I think if we would have had that a year ago, we probably would have had two teams in. I think Carnegie Mellon probably gets into the playoffs (along with conference champion Grove City) if that’s the case.”

On a more practical level, having divisions could help cultivate rivalries. Saint Vincent football is still relatively new, having come back on the scene in 2007, and coach Aaron Smetanka welcomes the chance to see some of the same teams on an annual basis in hopes of finding a true rival.

Further, he appreciates the relatively small geographic footprint of the conference.

“Especially with the landscape of college football at the highest level where you have teams from coast to coast that are in the same conference,” he said. “(In the PAC) the rivals are close by, close-connected teams, people from different towns that are so close. There’s that added layer on top of that gameday atmosphere that comes into it.

“You’re cutting a lot of those out at the highest Division I levels.”

Pohlman said he has heard from many older Hiram grads who were in school when the Terriers were in the PAC, and they are eager to see those matchups again. In particular, he said they are excited to be able to travel to those matchups more easily, a factor that could raise attendance across the PAC in all sports.

Pohlman said he noticed a difference fan support when the Terriers men’s volleyball team came to Carey Center and knocked off Saint Vincent in the 2024 Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference final.

“A lot of our students were able to drive down to watch those games at Saint Vincent,” he said.

DeMarco coached Geneva when the Golden Tornadoes were an NAIA school, and, at that time, his team was required to make several longer road trips. Since Geneva joined the PAC in 2007, it has been able to maintain its longstanding rivalries with Westminster and Grove City as well as keep fans and alumni interested by facing schools in closer proximity and seeing many players from WPIAL high schools play with and against each other.

The bottom line, DeMarco said, is about maintaining tradition. That’s the thread he believes ties everything together.

“(Fans) love that,” he said. “It would be very difficult to go through a year and not play Grove City. Your alums are used to that sort of thing. … That’s what college football is about.

“You win a rivalry game, you win for the next 364 days. You lose one, and you’re a bum for the rest of the year. I’ve been on both sides of that. But that’s what makes it fun, and the players love it.”