Battling Bishops

Dwayne Hollis played defensive back for the Battling Bishops between 2009 and 2012, then went on to the Arena Football League, where he won back-to-back ArenaBowl titles with the Philadelphia Soul in 2016 and 2017 and was named the league's Defensive Back of the Year in 2017. Football at North Carolina Wesleyan did not exist until Jack Ginn took charge of the first squad in 2005, more than fifty years after the university itself opened in Rocky Mount; the nickname the players carry, though, is older still, adopted in 1925.

The program's defining afternoon came in the 2007 NCAA Division III playoffs. Seeded eighth, the Bishops beat top-seeded Washington & Jefferson 35–34. That same season they took the USA South Athletic Conference title outright, repeated it in 2009, and shared a third with Christopher Newport in 2010, the three championships the program has to show for itself.

Jeff Filkovski has coached the team since 2013, having followed Mark Henninger, who ran the program through its post-championship years from 2008. Games are played at Vernon T. Bradley, Jr. Stadium, rebuilt in 2022 to replace the old Rocky Mount Athletic Football Stadium the Bishops had used before. Methodist University, sharing both conference and a Methodist affiliation, remains the fixture that matters most on the schedule, even without a trophy attached to it.

Capacity there is 1,000.