Question: While some traditions have wide-ranging campus support, others are officially discouraged by the administration, many traditions are paralleled at peer schools, such as which collegiate athletic conference comprising sports teams from eleven schools, which are ten small liberal arts colleges and one medium-sized research university?
Context: The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC, ) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated in NCAA Division I, consisting of eleven schools coming from three states of the northeastern United States: Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. The Nazarene International Education Association (NIEA) is a part of the Church of the Nazarene.  The Church of the Nazarene owns and operates 11 liberal arts institutions in Africa, Canada, Korea, and the United States, as well as 3 graduate seminaries, 37 undergraduate Bible/theological colleges, 3 nurses training colleges, 1 junior college, and 1 education college worldwide.  At least in terms of the American institutions, the Church of the Nazarene seems to have changed its original official philosophy of abandoning academies, bible colleges, and universities to focus on liberal arts colleges, as 7 of the 8 "liberal arts colleges" call themselves universities, and there is now a bible college in Colorado Springs.  The early-twentieth-century philosophy, as expressed by J.B. Chapman:It was originally the plan to call every school we started a “university” ... It was our ultimate aim to have universities and our schools were named according to our vision of future developments.  But I am, personally, convinced that we should definitely abandon the idea of building any universities, that we should drop these names from our schools... [Moreover,] it is my conclusion that we ... cannot permanently maintain academies and they do not meet our need, that a special Bible school does not meet our needs and that we should express ourselves on this conviction... That the College, with the necessary fitting school and Bible department[,] is the school that we need and will build." The Ivy League is a collegiate athletic conference comprising sports teams from eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States.  The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group beyond the sports context.  The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University.  The term "Ivy League" has connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism. The New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) is a collegiate athletic conference comprising sports teams from eleven schools, which are ten small liberal arts colleges and one medium-sized research university.  The schools are all private, located in the Northeastern United States, and are often associated with the Little Ivies.  The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eleven schools as a group.  The eleven institutions are Amherst College, Bates College, Bowdoin College, Colby College, Connecticut College, Hamilton College, Middlebury College, Tufts University, Trinity College, Wesleyan University, and Williams College. The Great American Conference (GAC) is a collegiate athletic conference of eleven schools, with headquarters located in Russellville, Arkansas.  It is affiliated in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s Division II level.  Athletic competition began play during the 2011–12 school year.  Member schools are located in Arkansas and Oklahoma in the South Central United States. The South Dakota Intercollegiate Conference was an NAIA-associated collegiate athletic conference that ceased operations following the 1999–2000 academic school year when it merged with the North Dakota College Athletic Conference to form the Dakota Athletic Conference.  The SDIAC was formed in 1917 from twelve schools, though membership was down to five during World War II, as the religious schools formed the South Dakota College Conference (later Dakota-Iowa Conference).  Those schools joined back in by 1948.  From 1995 to 2000 seasons, the league was known as the South Dakota-Iowa Intercollegiate Conference, thanks to the addition of Dordt and Westmar colleges in Iowa.  Westmar closed in 1997.  The SDIIC split in 2000, with half of the schools heading to the DAC (Black Hills State, Dakota State, Si-Tanka Huron, and South Dakota Mines), while the other half joined the Great Plains Athletic Conference (Dakota Wesleyan, Dordt, Mount Marty, and Sioux Falls). While some traditions have wide-ranging campus support, others are officially discouraged by the administration.  Many traditions are paralleled at peer schools in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), and in the Ivy League.  Bates along with Bowdoin and Colby College share multiple traditions and rivalries that comprise the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Consortium (informally known as the CBB). The Maroons are the intercollegiate sports teams of the University of Chicago.  They are named after the color maroon.  Team colors are maroon and gray, and the Phoenix is their mascot.  They now compete in the NCAA Division III, mostly as members of the University Athletic Association.  The University of Chicago helped found the Big Ten Conference in 1895; although it dropped football in 1939 (as inconsistent with its academic vision), its other teams remained members until 1946.  Football returned as a club sport in 1963, as a varsity sport in 1969, and began competing independently in Division III in 1973.  The school was part of the Midwest Collegiate Athletic Conference from 1976 to 1987, and its football team has joined the Midwest Collegiate Athletic Conference's successor, the Midwest Conference, as of the 2017 season.  Stagg Field is the home stadium for the re-instated football team. Liberal arts colleges are primarily colleges or universities with an emphasis upon undergraduate study in the liberal arts.  The "Encyclopædia Britannica Concise" offers the following definition of the liberal arts as a, "college or university curriculum aimed at imparting general knowledge and developing general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum."  Although the genesis for what is known today as the liberal arts college began in Europe, the term is commonly associated with the United States.  Liberal arts colleges are found in countries all over the world as well.  See the list (link) of international members of the Association of American Colleges and Universities for other institutions offering liberal arts education programs. The traditions of Dartmouth College, an American Ivy League college in Hanover, New Hampshire, are deeply entrenched in the student life of the institution and are well-known nationally.  Dartmouth's website counts the College's "special traditions" among its "essential elements", and in his inauguration address, former College president James E. Wright said that the school is "a place that is marked by strong traditions".  Some of these traditions remain supported by the administration, while others are officially discouraged.
Answer: New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC)