The Central States Intercollegiate Conference (CSIC) was an American intercollegiate athletic conference affiliated with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) from 1976 to 1989.
[1] It was known to be one of the toughest NAIA conferences in the nation.
[2] In 1976, four members from the Great Plains Athletic Conference decided to move away from that conference, which was affiliated with the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and form the Central States Intercollegiate Conference (CSIC).
Other institutions who joined the CSIC were Kearney State College (now the University of Nebraska at Kearney) and Wayne State College, who competed in the Nebraska College Conference; and Missouri Southern State College (now Missouri Southern State University) and Missouri Western State College (now Missouri Southern State University), who competed as NAIA independents.
[3][4] In 1987, all institutions in the CSIC applied for NCAA membership,[5] with the announcement of four schools Missouri Southern, Missouri Western, Pittsburg State and Washburn already becoming a member of the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA, now the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association), effective beginning in the 1989–90 school year.