The Owls will begin to make the transition to Conference USA after the 2022 football season, and will officially merge all of its sports come July 1, 2024.

KENNESAW, Ga. — A big change is on the horizon for Kennesaw State athletics, as the Owls announced Friday their acceptance of an invitation to join Conference USA come 2024.

Kennesaw State will be making quite the jump in football, as the current Atlantic Sun Conference members will be jumping from the Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) ranks, the level where the College Football Playoff takes place.

The Owls will begin to make the transition to Conference USA after the 2022 football season, and will officially merge all of its sports come July 1, 2024, a university official stated.

After a campus visit from conference officials in August, members of the C-USA Board of Directors unanimously voted to approve an invite to KSU to join the conference, according to a statement.

In basketball, baseball and other sports like, the elevation in competition will be noteworthy. Its football, baseball and men's and women's basketball programs will enter a conference with the likes of Southern Miss, Louisiana Tech, Rice, Middle Tennessee, Marshall and Florida Atlantic, to name a few.

KSU currently boasts the largest enrollment of any FCS program, as the university has a student population of more than 43,000 students and is continuing to grow as an athletic institution since they initially began in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) all the way back in 1982, a university statement said.

"The Owls are fresh off one of their most successful athletic years in university history. In 2021-22, KSU won conference titles in baseball, football, men’s tennis, and women’s track and field, and the co-ed cheerleading team took home its third consecutive national championship," the statement read.

Time will tell if the Owls athletic programs continue their impressive mark of improvement in order to compete at the Conference-USA level here very shortly.