Carolina. About a month after Longwood became a Big South member, the football side of the conference suffered a significant blow with the loss of football-only associate Stony Brook to CAA Football, the technically separate football league operated by the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA). The Seawolves' move left the Big South with only six schools in its football league—one of which, Liberty, had announced plans to leave the Big South and upgrade to FBS football once it received an invitation from an FBS conference. The NCAA requires that conferences have at least six members to maintain their automatic berths in the FCS playoffs. With that in mind, the Big South announced on February 14, 2013 that Monmouth University, set to leave the Northeast Conference (NEC) for the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) in July 2013, would become a football-only associate in 2014. Monmouth was seeking a new home for its football program because its new conference has not sponsored the sport since 2007. The move was a significant upgrade for Monmouth football; at that time, the NEC imposed a limit of 40 full scholarship equivalents in football (which has since increased to 45), while the Big South then (as now) allowed the FCS maximum of 63. In order to more effectively manage the transition, Monmouth competed as an FCS independent in 2013 before playing a full Big South schedule in 2014. The initial agreement between the Big South and Monmouth was for four seasons, and Monmouth remained a Big South football member until joining both the all-sports CAA and CAA Football in 2022. On September 1, 2015, Coastal Carolina announced that it would depart from the Big South to the FBS Sun Belt Conference in 2016 for all sports except football, which will join the conference in 2017 in its second year of the FBS transition. Patriot League Realignment reached still further into the ranks of mid-major schools when Boston University, a charter member of the America East Conference, announced on June 15, 2012 that it would depart for the Patriot League in 2013. The BU ice hockey teams for both men and women remained in Hockey East, as the Patriot League does not sponsor the sport. In an irony, the Patriot League, which began in 1986 as the football-only Colonial League before becoming an all-sports conference in 1990, brought in a school that dropped football in 1997. The official