The CAA is now what it always was - a sprawled-out conference of convenience that kind of by default has become the elite conference for Eastern FCS football. They don't have a true conference champion, more than half the members have basketball somewhere else, they aren't a moneymaking conference, but that's more of a function of the overall landscape of football in the East than it is anything that the CAA has done specifically right or wrong. They essentially lucked into the fact that CAA football is essentially a one-sport conference (like the old Gateway) that can expand almost indefinitely without worrying about basketball membership, while simultaneously masquerading as a true all-sports conference with football, and they have plodded along.

If the Ivy League chose to be true FCS members THEY would be the elite conference for Eastern FCS football by a very large margin. But they don't choose to be.