Inside the MEAC · preview

Two Eagles, a three-peat, and nine points: the 2026 MEAC

The MEAC plays six-team football, which means the schedule is short, the margins are thin, and one bad Saturday in October can decide a season. It also means the league is unusually easy to read, and this year it reads like a settled top and a scramble underneath.

The team to beat has not been beaten

South Carolina State was picked first with 49 points and five of the nine first-place votes, and the case is straightforward: Chennis Berry has not lost a MEAC game since he took the job.

He arrived from Benedict College before the 2024 season. Two years, two conference titles, no conference losses. The Bulldogs closed last season by beating Prairie View A&M 40-38 in four overtimes in the Celebration Bowl, a game decided by a two-point conversion in the fourth extra period and one of the better football games nobody outside this world watched.

A third straight title would be the first MEAC three-peat since North Carolina A&T won three in a row from 2017 to 2019. The path runs through Orangeburg: Delaware State and North Carolina Central visit in consecutive weeks, and that fortnight will likely settle the league.

Jordan Franklin, the preseason Defensive Player of the Year, is back at linebacker after 62 tackles. The Bulldogs are the standard until someone takes it from them.

The nine points behind them

The gap from first to third is nine points. That is nothing.

North Carolina Central was picked second with 42 points and a first-place vote, coming off 8-4 overall and 3-2 in the league. Chance Peterson, the preseason Offensive Player of the Year, is a receiver, not a quarterback — 48 catches for 720 yards last season, fourth in the conference in yardage.

Who throws to him is less settled than the honors suggest. MEAC coaches voted Joshua Jones onto the preseason all-conference first team at quarterback, and Trei Oliver came out of spring saying he was fairly certain Jones would be his starter. Oliver then spent media day in July pointedly keeping the door open, saying transfers Nelson Layne and Cobey Thompkins remain in the mix and that any of the three could start.

That is either camp gamesmanship or a real competition at the position of the team picked second. It resolves at Texas Southern on August 29.

Delaware State took third with 40 points and two first-place votes, which is the poll quietly disagreeing with itself. More voters picked the Hornets to win the league than picked North Carolina Central, and the Hornets still finished behind them.

The reason for the split is the most remarkable thing that happened in this conference last year.

Two Eagles, year two

DeSean Jackson and Michael Vick played together in Philadelphia. In 2025 they both became head coaches in the MEAC, and the league got a natural experiment nobody designed.

Jackson inherited a Delaware State team that had gone 1-11 in 2024. He took it to 8-4 and 4-1, the program's first winning season in more than a decade and a seven-win improvement — the largest of any program in the FCS. He was named Boxtorow HBCU Coach of the Year. The Hornets ran for 291.2 yards a game, the most in the subdivision.

Vick took Norfolk State to 1-11 and 0-5.

Sit with those numbers for a second. The record Jackson inherited two years ago is the record Vick just posted. Delaware State was the one-win team in this league, and one season later it was the runner-up with the best ground game in the country.

That is the strongest argument available that Norfolk State's 2025 means less than it looks like — and the sharpest possible measuring stick for whether Vick's rebuild is working, because somebody in the same conference just did it from the same starting point in twelve months.

On October 30 the two met at Lincoln Financial Field, back in the building where they were teammates, and Jackson won 27-20.

They play there again on October 31.

That is the best story in this conference and it is not close. It is also a national story that national outlets will cover twice and leave.

Delaware State's problem in 2026 is that a rushing attack that led the country has to be rebuilt, with Jayden Jenkins returning to a larger role alongside Shaun Boykins Jr. The FCS's best ground game does not usually survive that kind of turnover intact.

Underneath

Morgan State was picked fourth with 25 points, a clear step below the top three, with tight end Alex Simmons and linebacker Arturo Mattocks carrying the preseason recognition.

Norfolk State was picked fifth with 18 — and one first-place vote, which somebody will have to explain.

Howard was picked last with 15, and enters a genuine reset. Ted White is a first-time head coach who played at Howard and was the 1996 MEAC Offensive Player of the Year. Running back Eden James is the piece to build around.

What we think happens

South Carolina State until proven otherwise. Two years without a conference loss is not a fluke, and the schedule brings the challengers to them.

The more interesting question is second, and we would take Delaware State over North Carolina Central despite the poll — a coach who just produced the largest single-season improvement in the FCS gets the benefit of the doubt over a poll that already gave him more first-place votes than the team it ranked ahead of him.

And the game to circle is not either of those. It is October 31 in Philadelphia.