Morgan State and North Carolina A&T Open 2026 Season at Truist Stadium

North Carolina A&T and Morgan State go way back, all the way to 1930, and Saturday’s season opener brings the old rivals back together even though conference realignment split them apart years ago. Kickoff at Truist Stadium in Greensboro, North Carolina, is set for 6 p.m. Eastern, streaming on FloCollege.

The two programs no longer share a league. A&T left the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) for the Big South Conference in 2021 before landing in the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) Football Conference in 2023, while Morgan State stayed put in the MEAC. But the history hasn’t gone anywhere: Morgan State holds a 44-38-2 edge in the all-time series and has won the last two meetings, a 16-13 decision in Greensboro in 2018 and a 22-16 win in Baltimore in 2019, the most recent time these two squared off.

A&T is entering the program’s 125th season of football, and its fourth in the CAA, hoping second-year coach Shawn Gibbs can start turning things around. Gibbs, a North Carolina Central alumnus who spent 11 seasons on the A&T staff before three years as head coach at Fort Valley State, is 24-19 in five seasons as a head coach overall, but his A&T debut was a rough one: 2-10 overall, 2-6 in CAA play, tied for 10th. The department is also getting a new leader, with Katreshia Louis-Verrett taking over as athletics director on Sept. 1.

Change is the theme in Greensboro. The Aggies enter with 43 newcomers, including 18 transfers, on a roster that has turned over by nearly half since last season, and Gibbs only settled his quarterback battle this week, naming redshirt freshman Braxton Thomas the Game 1 starter over junior Kevin White, the most experienced option with 19 career games and 12 starts, Maryland transfer Champ Long, last year’s opening-day starter, graduate transfer Alston Hooker and redshirt freshman Jy Walls. Thomas missed most of last season after a season-ending arm injury against UCF in the second game, but the week before that, in a loss at Tennessee State, he had completed 11 of 13 passes for 169 yards and a touchdown, a flash of what he can do.

The Aggies’ offensive line has bulked up, too, with the projected starting five averaging 6-foot-5 and 309 pounds compared with 6-foot-3 and 297 pounds a year ago. But the numbers from 2025 tell a tougher story: no A&T runner topped 100 yards in a single game, the first time that had happened in 22 years, and the defense surrendered an average of 43.6 points a game since A&T joined the CAA in 2023. Gibbs has framed this fall around belief rather than proving anything, saying the approach now is to “honor and glorify who we’ve always been” rather than continue trying to prove the program belongs in the conference.

Morgan State is chasing something more specific: its first winning season since going 6-5 in 2009 (a 7-6 mark in 2014 was later vacated). Fifth-year coach Damon Wilson, who is 18-27 across four seasons at the school, is coming off a 4-8 finish and a 1-4 mark in the MEAC, but he is no stranger to building programs. He previously spent 13 seasons as head coach at Bowie State, winning three CIAA titles (2018, 2019 and 2021) and earning American Football Coaches Association Division II National Coach of the Year honors in 2021. The Bears were picked to finish fourth in the MEAC’s 2026 preseason poll.

Morgan State brings back 15 starters, four on offense, six on defense and five on special teams, and placed nine players on the 2026 Preseason All-MEAC team, led by first-team selections tight end Alex Simmons, linebacker Arturo Mattocks and defensive back Aki Harvey. Mattocks, a 2026 preseason All-MEAC first-team pick, is looking to bounce back after a 2025 season that ended in the opener because of injury. In his last full season, 2024, he racked up 68 tackles with three for loss, an interception, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery. Harvey, who started all 12 games at cornerback, recorded 24 tackles with a 69-yard interception return and a fumble recovery in 2025. At quarterback, the Bears are turning to Eastern Michigan transfer Cameron Edge, a 6-foot-2, 230-pound former four-star recruit out of Delaware who began his career at Maryland.

“These guys have really been competing against each other, and the camaraderie that I’ve seen has been at an all-time high since we’ve been here,” Wilson said of his team’s preseason camp.