Chris Colvin begins his seventh year as Commissioner of Conference in 2025 as he officially took over as Commissioner on June 1, 2019.
A member of the NCAA Division II Championships Committee, Playing Rules Oversight Panel, the Division 2 Conference Commissioners Association (D2CCA) Executive Board, and the NCAA Division II Implementation Committee, Colvin has made a significant impact in his first six years as Commissioner. Colvin currently serves as the second vice president of the D2CCA.
Conference Carolinas has seen its membership grow in the last five years, starting with the additions of UNC Pembroke and Francis Marion University in 2021-22. Young Harris College was added as a member in 2023-24 before Shorter University joined the league in 2024-25. Ferrum College became the 16th member on July 1, 2025 as they are in the reclassification process to NCAA Division II.
Conference Carolinas will sponsor football as a conference sport for the first time since 1974-75 during the 2025-26 academic year. Conference Carolinas football will feature Barton, Chowan, Erskine, Ferrum, UNC Pembroke, North Greenville and Shorter in the 2025 season.
Following the addition of Young Harris in 2023-24, Conference Carolinas began playing certain sports in three divisions and became the first league in the country to use the KPI metric to seed the conference championships in women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s soccer, and men’s and women’s basketball. The conference began using KPI to seed the conference tournament in baseball in 2025 and will do so in tennis in 2026.
Sport sponsorship has also grown during Colvin’s tenure. Along with football, Conference Carolinas will also sponsor women’s flag football during the 2025-26 academic year. Conference Carolinas became the first NCAA Division I or II conference to sponsor women’s flag football and the second conference in the NCAA.
Prior to those additions, the conference began sponsoring beach volleyball and women’s wrestling in conjunction with the South Atlantic Conference in 2024-25. Conference Carolinas announced the addition of acrobatics & tumbling in Colvin’s first year as Commissioner. The conference is one of two in the NCAA to sponsor acrobatics and tumbling. During the 2020-21 academic year, Conference Carolinas added men’s and women’s bowling through a partnership with the Great Midwest Athletic Conference. The inaugural Conference Carolinas/Great Midwest Athletic Conference Men’s and Women’s Bowling Championships took place in the spring of 2022. In addition, the 2023-24 academic year marked Conference Carolinas' first academic year as the sole sponsor of men's wrestling.
With all of those additions, Conference Carolinas is the sole sponsor of 26 sports and offers opportunities in four additional sports for a total of 30, which is the most in Division II and second only to the Ivy League in entire NCAA. In addition, Conference Carolinas also provides championship opportunities for its member institutions in spirit. This is all in addition to hosting developmental championships in various sports for its member institutions. Conference Carolinas is believed to be the first NCAA conference to offer sub-varsity championships to its members.
Following Colvin’s arrival in 2019, Conference Carolinas completely updated and modernized its constitution, bylaws and sport regulations. The conference has revamped its student-athlete and administrative programming efforts. The conference has also significantly enhanced its social media presence, sponsorship revenue and promotional efforts.
The conference has also secured premier neutral sites for many of its championships, including the Jerry Richardson Indoor Stadium at Wofford College for men’s and women’s basketball, CaroMont Health Park in Gastonia, North Carolina for baseball, and Doug Shaw Stadium in Myrtle Beach for outdoor track and field. The vast majority of conference championships are held at neutral site venues through the region.
Colvin originally joined Conference Carolinas as Commissioner after serving for four years as the Director of Athletics at NCAA Division III Nichols College where he led the Bison through a significant transformation in both competitive success and institutional alignment.
While at Nichols College, Colvin led 21 NCAA Division III sports programs in the Commonwealth Coast Conference. He created the Bison Club, which was Nichols’ first modern Athletic Booster Club. The creation of the Bison Club resulted in a 350 percent increase in department revenue under his watch.
The Bison saw unprecedented competitive success during his tenure with 11 total Commonwealth Coast Conference Championships in men’s and women’s tennis, men’s basketball and men’s ice hockey. The 2017-18 academic year proved to be a banner athletic year for the Bison under Colvin’s leadership with four conference championships in one year for the first time in school history. The Bison also finished in the top 25 percent of the NACDA Learfield IMG College Directors’ Cup, which was the highest finish in school history. In 2018-19, the Bison men’s basketball team advanced to the Elite 8 under a first-year head coach.
Additional highlights for Colvin while at Nichols included oversight of the athletics recruitment process, which produced a record-breaking class in 2018. He also created a cross-departmental Female Student-Athlete Recruitment Task Force to work toward improving female student-athlete recruiting.
The Female Student-Athlete Recruitment Task Force led to a 50 percent increase in the number of female student-athletes in that year's class. He also implemented a new fan affinity program titled “Nichols Nation” through a mobile application that rewarded students with points and prizes for attending Bison athletic events. Colvin also placed significant focus on student-athlete mental health issues, contracting a Sports Psychologist to work with student-athletes, teams and coaches.
During his tenure at Nichols, Colvin remained very active within the NCAA, serving as a member of the NCAA Division III Women’s Tennis National Committee (2018) and the NCAA Division III Football East Region Regional Advisory Committee (2016 and 2017).
Prior to his time serving as the Director of Athletics at Nichols, Colvin served as the Associate Athletic Director at Furman University where he was second in command for the Paladins’ 20-sport Division I program in the Southern Conference. His responsibilities included management of the Paladins’ $20 million athletics department budget, including daily monitoring, budgeting, forecasting and analyzing of department expenses and revenues. Among other responsibilities, Colvin also served as the primary athletics department liaison to the offices of human resources, admissions and financial aid and student life.
Colvin graduated from Furman in 2000 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration and Communications. He earned his Master’s Degree in Industrial Statistics from the University of South Carolina in 2005.
Colvin is joined at Conference Carolinas by his wife, Megan, and children Lanie (15), David (13), Anna-Blake (12) and Gracyn (11).