Useful Notes / Collegiate American Football Conferences

As described on the Collegiate American Football main page, there are a lot of different conferences and programs in college football, the number and organization of which is apt to shift around from season to season. On any given Saturday in the fall, most of the major broadcast and sports networks on American television will feature matchups of these schools, often littered with references to 150+ years of history that the casual viewer might find confusing. These teams are also frequently featured, referenced, and parodied in other American media. This page lays out the alignments of college football conferences as of the upcoming 2024 season and provides a description of their more prominent programs.

Football Bowl Subdivision

The top level of NCAA Division I football, also known as FBS or occasionally by its former designation of "I-A" (pronounced "one-A"). The 10 conferences in FBS are the ones most casual football fans think of when they hear the term "college football", particularly the "Power Five" conferences that receive the heaviest media attention and are guaranteed at least one bid in the "New Year's Six" bowl games. The remaining "Group of Five" are generally made of smaller schools that don't receive as much national attention. For more on the Power Five programs (except for Notre Dame), see their dedicated page. For more on the schools in the Group of Five (sans UMass and UConn), see their page.

Below are descriptions of each of the remaining conferences. Some non-Power Five programs, plus all of the FBS independents, also have descriptions (those schools without a description are italicized at the start of each folder). Win-loss records are (mostly) accurate as of the end of the 2023 season.^note Disclaimer: Listing win-loss numbers and even national championships is complicated, to say the least. College programs (and even colleges themselves) frequently dissolve and reform, change divisions and conferences, play in games not recognized by the NCAA, have wins officially rescinded due to rule violations, and do other things that make it hard to judge schools' true performance. Since the NCAA doesn't even officially recognize a national champion at the FBS level, teams are often inconsistent with what titles they acknowledge, sometimes leaving them unclaimed even if picked by numerous selectors and other times jumping on a title given by a random panel that no other school takes seriously. We try to provide context and qualifications when possible, but this isn't The Other Wiki.

"Historic" figures include names mentioned in the program description or who have entries on the Collegiate American Football Names To Know or Collegiate American Football Non-Player Figures pages, or those in the National Football League Names to Know family. Individuals who have their own pages on this wiki, such as politicians and entertainers (including pro wrestlers), also qualify. Win-loss records are updated at the end of bowl season.

Power Five Conferences

See Power Five Conferences. For Notre Dame, which is a non-football member of the Power Five Atlantic Coast Conference, see the "FBS Independents" folder.

Group of Five Conferences

See Group of Five Conferences. For UMass and UConn, see the "FBS Independents" folder.

FBS Independents

In the past, many schools, especially along the east coast, were able to fill out strong schedules without the need for a conference, but that largely ended once TV money became the focus of major-college sports. With three schools having left the independent ranks in 2023 (BYU to the Big 12, Liberty and New Mexico State to Conference USA) and Army leaving in 2024 for the American Athletic Conference, only three remain, and the count will drop to two when UMass joins the Mid-American Conference in 2025. All of these schools belong to conferences for other sports; Notre Dame has special circumstances that minimize its need for a football conference.

Current schools: Notre Dame, UConn, UMass
Departing schools: UMass (2025)

FBS Independents

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Location: South Bend, IN (though technically it's in the separate adjoining community of Notre Dame, IN)
School Established: 1842^note The full name of the school is University of Notre Dame du Lac (French for "Our Lady of the Lake")... actually a Non-Indicative Name, since the school is on two lakes. Go to The Other Wiki for more details.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1887-)^note Temporarily joined the ACC for 2020.
Overall Win Record: 948-338-42 (.730)
Bowl Record: 20-20 (.500)^note After playing in the Rose Bowl at the end of the 1924 season, the school elected not to play in bowls, a policy that stayed in place until 1969.
Colors: Blue and gold^note For obvious reasons, the Fighting Irish have adopted green as an informal alternate color, with green home jerseys that get used on special occasions.
Stadium: Notre Dame Stadium (capacity 77,622)
Current Head Coach: Marcus Freeman
Notable Historic Coaches: Pat O'Dea, Knute Rockne, Elmer Layden, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine, Lou Holtz, Charlie Weis, Brian Kelly
Notable Historic Players: Knute Rockne, Curly Lambeau, George Gipp, Jack Chevigny, The Four Horsemen (Harry Stuhldreher, Jim Crowley, Don Miller, Elmer Layden), Buck Shaw, Frank Leahy, "Jumping" Joe Savoldi, Bill Shakespeare, Wayne Millner, Lou Rymkus, Angelo Bertelli, Frank Danciewicz, Johnny Lujack, George Connor, Leon Hart, Frank Tripucka, Johnny Lattner, Ralph Guglielmi, Paul Hornung, George Izo, Nick Buoniconti, Daryle Lamonica, John Huarte, Alan Page, Kevin Hardy, Rocky Bleier, Bob Kuechenberg, Joe Theismann, Walt Patulski, Dave Casper, Steve Niehaus, Rudy Ruettiger, Greg Collins, Joe Montana, Rusty Lisch, Dave Waymer, Greg Bell, Allen Pinkett, John Carney, Steve Beuerlein, Tim Brown, Ricky Watters, Allen Rossum, Rick Mirer, Derek Brown, Jeff Alm, Bryant Young, Ron Powlus, Jeff Faine, Jerome Bettis, Justin Tuck, Brady Quinn, J.J. Jansen, Jimmy Clausen, Michael Floyd, Manti Te'o, Harrison Smith, Zack Martin, Sam Hartman
National Championships: 11 (1924, 1929-30, 1943, 1946-47, 1949, 1966, 1973, 1977, 1988)^note 11 unclaimed (1919-20, 1927, 1938, 1953, 1964, 1967, 1970, 1989, 1993, 2012)
Conference Championships: 0

The University of Notre Dame du Lac is the most famous Catholic university in the country, in no small part because it hosts the most famous remaining football independent and arguably the best-known program in the nation, notably being featured in high-profile sports biopics like Knute Rockne, All American and Rudy. Notre Dame itself features some of the most distinctive iconography in sports, from the oldest marching band in the nation to the giant mural of Jesus signaling a touchdown that overlooks the stadium from across campus to the fanbase that makes every game day look like St. Patrick's Day. It is a common joke (with a ring of truth to it) that certain American Catholics hold greater reverence for the Fighting Irish's polished golden helmets than any other aspect of their faith. The program's national following was built over decades of football success, including having produced seven Heisman winners and more undefeated seasons (11),^note Technically, a few other schools could claim to have equaled or surpassed this tally, but only by counting 19th century seasons where they played only a handful of games. College Hall of Fame players (46), consensus All-Americans (110), and NFL draft picks (525) than any other college program as of 2023. The Irish are also second to their longtime rival USC in producing Pro Hall of Famers (12^note The Pro Hall counts Notre Dame with 13 alumni, but one of them was longtime San Francisco 49ers owner Ed DeBartolo Jr., a Notre Dame alum who didn't play football and was inducted as an owner. to the Trojans' 14).

Their football reputation launched in the 1920s under Knute Rockne (1918-30), whose success on the football field was perhaps only matched by his ability to market the team to a nationwide audience; his death in a plane crash in 1931 was viewed as a national tragedy. Rockne was the first of the "Holy Trinity" of Notre Dame coaches, followed by Frank Leahy (1941-43, 1946-53) and Ara Parseghian (1964-74) who established the university as a football power, each claiming multiple national titles over the decades. Leahy's tenure saw the team regularly dominate the Heisman race, with Irish QBs Angelo Bartelli (1943) and Johnny Lujack (1947), end Leon Hart (1949), and HB Johnny Lattner (1953) claiming the trophy. Even during the team's worst Audience-Alienating Era in the 1950s, star Jack of All Trades Paul Hornung was still able to win the 1956 Heisman on a losing team, and QB John Huarte won the trophy in Parseghian's first year for returning the Irish to their former dominance. Though subsequent coaches Dan Devine (1975-80) and Lou Holtz (1986-96) kept the school a power and won a championship apiece (with Holtz also producing the school's last Heisman winner, WR Tim Brown, in 1987), the program's level of success leveled off as the century wound down, and by the 2000s the Irish had become merely a very good team rather than one that could compete for national titles (though they've remained winning enough to coast on past glories and hold onto a nationwide fanbase even without bringing home any championships). Brian Kelly (2010-21) helped to restore some of Notre Dame's winning tradition in the 2010s, with an appearance in a BCS Championship Game after 2012 and multiple CFP berths, but the school still has yet to win a national title in over three decades. Observers have often attributed this apparent ceiling to Notre Dame being one of the few universities at its level of competition to truly value education equally to athletics; its football players have some of the highest graduation rates of any program in the nation.

As a result of all its success, Notre Dame can largely dictate its own terms in the football world. The team—and the school itself—became famous in part due to national radio broadcasts dating back to the Rockne years, and it currently has a very lucrative TV contract with NBC to nationally broadcast its home games. Until the 1990s, they had been independent in all sports but eventually joined the original Big East outside of football in 1995. They took a half-step away from football independence when they joined the ACC in 2013, nominally remaining independent but agreeing to play five ACC teams each year. In turn, the ACC gave Notre Dame access to its bowl games in seasons when the Irish don't make the CFP or its associated bowls. Notre Dame's schedule once consisted primarily of old "rivalries" between it and its nearby Midwestern—which is to say Big Ten—neighbors. Trips to Michigan (the school's first ever opponent, which was often dominant at the same time as the Irish) and Michigan State (which is quite close geographically) historically were annual or near-annual occurrences but have been disrupted by the move.^note Oddly, the Irish have not of late often played Northwestern, despite that being the closest major football school to them. Currently, in addition to its ACC commitments, the Irish still play Stanford, USC, and Navy every year^note except in 2020, when COVID-19 scuttled all three games. The USC rivalry dates to the Twenties, when the Irish added them to its regular schedule in part to increase the program's recruiting power on the West Coast (Stanford joined the regular rotation in the '80s so they could rotate away games). As for Navy, the US Navy kept Notre Dame afloat during World War II by placing one of its many wartime officer training centers on the Notre Dame campus; the annual game with the Midshipmen is Notre Dame's way of paying them back.

UConn Huskies

Location: Storrs, CT (campus); East Hartford, CT (stadium)
School Established: 1881^note as Storrs Agricultural School; after several name changes, became the University of Connecticut in 1939. "UConn", long used informally as a short form for the school, became the sole athletic brand name in 2013.
Conference Affiliations: ALNESC (1897–1922),^note Did not play in the war years of 1917-18 New England^*Operated from 1923–47; the earliest predecessor to today's CAA Football, though CAA Football doesn't recognize it as such. (1923–46),^note Did not play in 1943 Yankee^*Founded in 1946, with play starting in 1947, by the last four New England Conference members and two other schools under a new charter; became a football-only conference in 1976 and disbanded in 1997, merging into the Atlantic 10 Conference. Both the Yankee and A-10 are also de facto predecessors to CAA Football, with the CAA effectively taking over A-10 football in 2007. (1947–96), A-10 (1997–99), Ind. (2000–03, 2020–), Big East (2004–12), American (2013–19)
Overall Win Record: 521–609–38 (.462)
Bowl Record: 3–4 (.429)
Colors: National flag blue and white
Stadium: Pratt & Whitney Stadium (capacity 40,000)
Current Head Coach: Jim L. Mora
Notable Historic Coaches: Skip Holtz
Notable Historic Players: Kirk Ferentz, Dan Orlovsky
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 26 (1 ALNESC – 1901; 7 New England – 1924, 1926, 1928, 1936–37, 1942, 1945; 15 Yankee – 1952, 1956–60, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1982–83, 1986, 1989; 2 Big East – 2007, 2010)

The University of Connecticut has enjoyed significant success in several sports since the late 1990s, most notably men's and women's basketball, respectively claiming 6 and 11 national titles. In fact, UConn has more official national team titles than any other Group of Five school, with 24 in all (the others being 2 in men's soccer and 5 in women's field hockey).^note Though not the most in D-I outside the Power Five—that distinction belongs to Denver, a school that last played football in 1960. It has 24 titles in skiing alone, and also has 10 in men's ice hockey and one in men's lacrosse. Football is another story entirely. While the Huskies had enjoyed off-and-on regional success in the small-college ranks and later in I-AA/FCS, that didn't continue after their move to FBS in 2002 (though they did share a couple of Big East titles).

By the end of the 2010s, the football team had fallen firmly into Butt-Monkey status, becoming a regular member of ESPN's "Bottom 10", with said column consistently calling them "U-Can't". To make matters worse, their bread-and-butter sports of men's and women's basketball were being visibly hurt by being in the geographically far-flung American (the women weren't hurt on the court, but suffered from an utter lack of in-conference competition). In the end, basketball won out, with the Huskies rejoining several of their former conference rivals in the Big East in 2020. As it turned out, UConn became the first FBS school (of three) to cancel its 2020 football season due to COVID-19.^note The Big Ten, MAC, MW, and Pac-12 initially canceled their seasons, with plans to move them to the spring, but all four leagues eventually decided to play abbreviated conference-only fall seasons. The hiring of Jim Mora as coach in 2022 saw the program immediately return to bowl eligibility, though only time will tell if that marks the start of a long-term revival.

While the school is located in Storrs, it plays its home games about 23 miles/37 km away (by road) at Pratt & Whitney Stadium in East Hartford, the second-longest distance from an FBS school's campus to its home field (UCLA is 26 miles from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena). The stadium was originally conceived as a possible home for the New England Patriots when they were considering relocating away from greater Boston due to struggles over a new stadium deal, but once the Patriots decided to stay in Foxboro, East Hartford scaled back its stadium plans and made UConn its main tenant.

UMass Minutemen

Location: Amherst, MA
School Established: 1863^note Founded as Massachusetts Agricultural College, became Massachusetts State College in 1931, and took current name in 1947.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1879–96, 1923–46, 2016–), ALNESC^*Athletic League of New England State Colleges, which operated from 1896–1923 (1897-1922), Yankee (1947-96), A-10 (1997-2006), CAA (2007-11), MAC (2012-15)
Overall Win Record: 580–641–50 (.476)
Bowl Record: N/A^note 1–1 (.500) as a "Small College"
Colors: Maroon and white
Stadium: Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium (capacity 17,000)
Current Head Coach: Don Brown
Notable Historic Coaches: Dick MacPherson
Notable Historic Players: Victor Cruz
National Championships: 1 in FCS (1998)
Conference Championships: 22, all in CAA Football and its predecessors (17 Yankee – 1960, 1963–64, 1966–67, 1969, 1971–72, 1974, 1977–79, 1981–82, 1986, 1988, 1990; 4 Atlantic 10 – 1998–99, 2003, 2006; 1 CAA – 2007)

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is its state's flagship public school, located in the western half of the state (just north of Springfield) and notable for its massive library. Its football team became independent by default, being effectively kicked out of MAC football after 2015. The Minutemen had been a quite successful FCS program, even winning a national title in 1998, but had little success after moving to FBS and MAC football in 2012; they are the only FBS program to never play in an FBS bowl game.^note Technically, Sam Houston also hasn't played in a bowl game, but being brand new to the FBS, it isn't even eligible to qualify for a bowl game until 2024, so it wouldn't be fair to include SH unless it misses out in 2024. After four seasons, they left to an uncertain future, with no FBS conference in their region willing to take them in. They've become a fixture in ESPN's "Bottom 10" as "UMess" and went completely winless in a COVID-shortened 2020 season. However, the Minutemen (and Minutewomen) will return to the MAC in 2025, this time as full members.

Football Championship Subdivision

The second level of D-I football, also known as FCS or its former designation of "I-AA" (pronounced "one-double-A"). It was created in 1978 when the NCAA split D-I football into two groups. In that first year, I-AA had five conferences (Big Sky, Ohio Valley, MEAC, SWAC, Yankee) and eight independent schools, for a total of 43 teams. Over the next few years, more independent teams and one conference (Mid-Continent, now the non-football Summit League but also an early forerunner of the modern MVFC) were added. Membership numbers ballooned in 1982 when the NCAA set stringent criteria for I-A membership based on home game attendance^note at the time, it was 17,000 per game over the previous four years and relegated around 30 I-A schools to the I-AA level. Any D-I non-football school which starts a new football program or a D-II program that transitions to D-I must start out in the FCS for at least two years.

FCS is distinguished from FBS by a shorter regular season of 11 games instead of 12^note Except in years in which the period between Labor Day weekend and the last Saturday in November has 14 Saturdays; in those seasons, FCS teams can play 12 games., fewer football scholarships,^note FBS schools can award up to 85 full scholarships while FCS schools are limited to 63. Unlike FBS football, which is a "head-count" sport, FCS football is considered an "equivalency" sport, meaning FCS schools can award partial scholarships; however, like FBS schools, FCS schools are still limited to 85 players receiving scholarships, and (effective in 2027–28) lower requirements for overall athletic funding.^note Specifically, FCS programs need only meet overall D-I requirements for scholarship funding. FBS schools must (1) provide at least 90% of the maximum number of full scholarship equivalents across a total of 16 sports, including football, (2) must spend a minimum of $6 million annually on athletic scholarships, and (3) fund at least 210 full scholarship equivalents across all of their NCAA-recognized sports. Before 2023, other distinctions were fewer restrictions on new recruits^note FBS teams could only award scholarships to 25 new players per year, while FCS teams could provide aid to 30 new players; however, due to a combination of effects from COVID-19 and the transfer portal, these restrictions were suspended in 2020 before being permanently eliminated in 2023. and no minimum attendance requirement.^note FBS schools were supposed to maintain an average attendance of 15,000 per game in any rolling two-year period; however, this rule was rarely enforced even before COVID-19, and was also scrapped in 2023. It is also distinguished by having an official NCAA championship. (The FBS College Football Playoff is not operated by the NCAA.)

FCS conferences can be broadly divided into three groups: the majority contain the rank-and-file FCS schools, the Division I members who try to operate a fully-funded program within the NCAA FCS guidelines and compete for a slot in the playoffs. There are also the non-or-reduced scholarship conferences (Ivy, Northeast, Patriot, Pioneer) who operate their programs on a smaller scale and try to focus more on academics, with the Ivy League not participating in postseason play at all. And there are the two conferences (MEAC, SWAC) made up of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which have always had a unique set of traditions, especially the "classics", a set of games played at large neutral site stadiums in major cities like Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas, that have a bowl-like atmosphere and are typically the highest-attended FCS games in any given season.

FCS was even more disrupted by COVID-19 than FBS, with so many conferences opting out of the fall season that the NCAA canceled the playoffs. With most of these conferences announcing plans for spring seasons, the NCAA rescheduled the playoffs for spring 2021, though a few schools chose to play partial fall seasons.^note Notably, North Dakota State played one fall game, mostly as a showcase for superstar QB Trey Lance, a redshirt sophomore who was eligible for the 2021 NFL Draft. Not long after that game, he chose to skip NDSU's spring conference season to prepare for the draft and ended up as the #3 overall pick. Additionally, due to the large number of conferences and teams that opted out, the playoffs were reduced from their normal 24 teams to 16.

Big Sky Conference

Current schools: Cal Poly (football only), Eastern Washington, Idaho, Idaho State, Montana, Montana State, Northern Arizona, Northern Colorado, Portland State, Sacramento State, UC Davis (football only), Weber State
Current commissioner: Tom Wistroll
Reigning champion: Montana
Website: bigskyconf.com

Formed in 1963, the Big Sky Conference is one of the better FCS conferences. Popular among Western schools seeking easy wins, though two of its teams have delivered upsets over ranked FBS programs (Eastern Washington against Oregon State in 2013, Montana against Washington in 2021). The Medal of Dishonor in this respect would however go to North Texas, which ended up on the wrong end of a 66–7 shellacking by Portland State in 2015. At the Mean Green's homecoming.^note The loss, the largest ever by an FBS team to an FCS team, was so humiliating that North Texas fired its head coach on the spot. It's also known for having another oddly-colored field, in this case Eastern Washington's red field, nicknamed "The Inferno". Idaho State's ICCU Dome^note "ICCU" is an abbreviation for Idaho Central Credit Union. (originally the Minidome and later Holt Arena) is the oldest on-campus domed stadium in America, built in 1970. Two other conference teams play in domes: Idaho (the Kibbie Dome,^*One of the rejected names for it was the Palouse Pea Palace. Before it picked up a corporate sponsorship in 2023 and officially became the P1FCU Kibbie Dome, it also had an overly long official name of William H. Kibbie–ASUI Activity Center. Both names would be even longer if they were spelled out (respectively Potlatch No. 1 Federal Credit Union and Associated Students of the University of Idaho). built in 1975) and Northern Arizona (the Walkup Skydome, built in 1977, not because of extreme heat, as you might guess, but because of the cold temperatures and heavy snow in Flagstaff, which sits at an elevation of 6,900+ feet). NAU's stadium, at 6,980 feet, has the highest elevation of any in FCS, and is second only to Wyoming in all of D-I. Montana State has won national championships at the NAIA (1956)^note Technically a shared title with St. Joseph's (Indiana), since the game ended in a scoreless tie, D-II (1976), and FCS (1984) levels, making it the only team to win titles in three different classifications.

Idaho rejoined the Big Sky in 2014 (after an 18-year absence) but without its football team, which (as mentioned above) returned to the Sun Belt; however, after the Sun Belt decided to drop Idaho after 2017, the school decided to take up the Big Sky's standing invitation to return its football team to that league. The Vandals became the first team ever to voluntarily drop from FBS to FCS without extenuating circumstances.^note McNeese and Yale chose to take the drop when the rest of their respective conferences were bounced to I-AA in 1982. Southern Utah left the Big Sky in 2022 to join the WAC and its revived football league (and become part of the United Athletic Conference in 2023).

With Kennesaw State having left the FCS ranks for CUSA in 2024, the Big Sky is home to the two largest football-sponsoring schools outside FBS—UC Davis has about 32,000 undergraduates and Sacramento State has about 28,000.^note At least two schools in lower divisions, plus another D-I school apart from Arizona State and Liberty, have larger total enrollments than Davis' 41K, and one has a much larger undergrad enrollment than Davis' 32K, but they don't count for various reasons. D-II Southern New Hampshire has over 135,000 total students, but only about 4,000 are actual on-campus students; its online operation is a little larger than Liberty's. D-III NYU has over 50,000 students but its enrollment is split nearly evenly between undergraduates and postgraduates, the latter of which will normally have exhausted any athletic eligibility they may have had. Neither has a football team. Grand Canyon, a non-football WAC member, has a bit more than 25K on-campus students but has an online operation that puts its total enrollment a bit over 100K. The largest non-FBS school by (on-campus) undergraduate enrollment in 2024 will be another non-football school, UC San Diego (nearly 34K).

Big South–OVC Football Association

Current schools: Big South: Charleston Southern, Gardner–Webb; OVC: Eastern Illinois, Lindenwood, Southeast Missouri, Tennessee State, Tennessee Tech, UT Martin, Western Illinois
Current commissioner: Big South: Sherika Montgomery; OVC: Beth DeBauche
Reigning champions: Gardner–Webb and UT Martin (co-champions); Gardner–Webb received the alliance's automatic playoff bid
Website: bigsouthovcfootball.com

The Big South–OVC Football Association was created in 2023 as a football-only alliance between the Big South Conference and Ohio Valley Conference (OVC). This alliance is following the model that the ASUN and WAC used in 2021 and 2022 before merging for football in 2023 (see the United Athletic Conference below), with both leagues playing full in-conference schedules plus a partially interlocking set of inter-conference games and sharing a single automatic playoff berth.

The Big South began in 1983 as a non-football league and did not sponsor the sport until 2002. Comprised initially of schools from throughout the Carolinas and Virginia, it usually had one or two good teams with a bunch of bottom-feeders, but most of the "good teams" left during the various realignments of the 2010s (most notably the aforementioned Coastal Carolina and Liberty). Six full members of the conference (High Point, Longwood, Radford, UNC Asheville, USC Upstate, and Winthrop) don't have football teams. Another full member, Campbell, played in the Pioneer Football League (below) through the 2017 season, but...

In an attempt to attract new football members, the Big South announced a football alliance with the ASUN Conference in 2016. With defections since 2014 of its biggest football schools, the Big South was in danger of losing its status as an FCS conference, as 6 members are needed for a league to maintain its automatic playoff berth. Under its terms, any current member of either league that added football or upgraded from non-scholarship to scholarship football had a guaranteed football home in the Big South.^note The offer also applied to any future members, as long as they're located within the current geographic footprint of the two leagues. It has held on since then, regularly swapping members to meet minimum requirements for operation. However, with the ASUN starting football in 2022 (taking two Big South football members with it) and Hampton moving on to the CAA, the Big South was put on the clock to restore its football membership to the "magic number" of 6... and its task got harder when North Carolina A&T announced it would move to CAA Football in 2023 (with the rest of its sports joining in 2022). However, it was able to lure Bryant as a new football-only member in time for the 2022 season. Still later, Campbell announced that it too would leave for both sides of the CAA in 2023, Bryant announced it would join CAA Football in 2024, and Robert Morris announced that it would return to NEC football in 2024.

The other side of the alliance, the OVC, was founded in 1948. It was once a I-AA power but has since receded to the middle of FCS, though Jacksonville State (the one in Alabama, and now in FBS) made the 2015 FCS title game as an OVC member. They are popular among southern schools seeking an easy win. Tennessee State was the only Division I HBCU school not in either the MEAC or SWAC, before Hampton and North Carolina A&T decided to leave the MEAC. TSU made history in 2023 as Notre Dame's first-ever FCS opponent.^note Also notable since both head coaches—UND's Marcus Freeman and TSU's Eddie George—were Black.

One full OVC member, Morehead State, plays football in the Pioneer League. Three other full members don't play football at all, namely Little Rock, SIU Edwardsville, and Southern Indiana.

The OVC has gone through significant churn in the current decade. Founding OVC member Eastern Kentucky and Jacksonville State left in 2021 for the ASUN Conference, playing the season as de facto members of the new WAC football league before the ASUN started its own league in 2022. In July, another founding member, Murray State, left for the Missouri Valley Conference (not to be confused with the MVFC above), with non-football member Belmont joining them in this move, and Austin Peay left for the ASUN. Murray State, however, did keep football in the OVC for the 2022 season while it sought to join the MVFC, eventually being accepted into that league for 2023.

Three new members arrived in 2022, although only one of them plays football. Little Rock, a non-football Sun Belt member for over 30 years, saw the writing on the wall with the SBC's coming football expansion and moved to the OVC. Two D-II upgraders, football-sponsoring Lindenwood (out of the St. Louis area) and non-football Southern Indiana, also arrived. While all this was going on, the OVC and the Southland Conference, another league that experienced major membership losses, announced a football scheduling alliance for 2022 and 2023... but then the OVC and Big South announced their more comprehensive football alliance. In 2024, the alliance adds Western Illinois, which became a full OVC member in 2023. WIU is probably most notable for its nickname of Leathernecks—which does come from the Marines, with permission.^note In 1927, the Marines' parent organization, the Department of the Navy, okayed Western's use of the nickname, as well as the Marine seal and bulldog mascot. The team's HC and AD at the time, Roy Hanson, was a highly decorated Marine veteran of World War I, and was serving as a Marine reservist. WIU's football stadium bears his name. As an aside, Western didn't use Leathernecks for its women's teams until 2008, instead calling them Westerwinds.

Given that Charleston Southern and Gardner–Webb are the Big South's only representatives in the alliance in 2024, it's possible that the alliance may end up evolving back to OVC football... stay tuned.

CAA Football (aka Coastal Athletic Association)

Current schools: Albany, Bryant, Campbell, Delaware, Elon, Hampton, Maine, Monmouth, New Hampshire, North Carolina A&T, Rhode Island, Richmond, Stony Brook, Towson, Villanova, William & Mary
Departing schools: Delaware (2025)
Current commissioner: Joe D'Antonio
Reigning champions: Albany, Richmond, and Villanova (co-champions); Villanova received the automatic playoff bid
Website: caasports.com

CAA Football is the football arm of the Coastal Athletic Association (or just CAA). Legally, CAA Football and the all-sports CAA are separate entities, but both share the same administration.^note The NCAA considers the football conference part of the all-sports CAA, but the CAA itself treats the football league as separate. The all-sports CAA was created in 1979 as the basketball-only ECAC^note Eastern College Athletic Conference, a huge (over 200 schools) multi-sports consortium founded in 1938 that no longer sponsors football or basketball at the NCAA Division I level South. It added other sports in 1985 and became the Colonial Athletic Association, but did not start sponsoring football until 2007. However, CAA Football can trace its history to the late 1930s through three other leagues,^note (though it ignores the earliest of said leagues) including the Yankee Conference, one of the charter members of I-AA in 1978, though it's been the division's Revolving Door Band. Of the 1978 Yankee Conference teams, only Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island remain. Historically, it has been one of the better FCS leagues. In 2010, James Madison defeated then-#13 Virginia Tech in the second win by an FCS team over a ranked FBS team. The same school ended North Dakota State's five-year reign as FCS champions in the 2016 semifinals on the way to the FCS crown. (NDSU got its revenge by beating JMU in the 2017 and 2019 title games.) A decent chunk of the schools in CAA Football are not members of the all-sports CAA. As of 2023, when the CAA adopted its current name, only Campbell, Delaware, Elon, Hampton, Monmouth, North Carolina A&T, Stony Brook, Towson, and W&M are members of both sides. The all-sports CAA has five members without football teams (College of Charleston, Drexel, Hofstra, Northeastern, and UNC Wilmington).

Depending on definitions, CAA Football member Villanova (otherwise a Big East member) has a claim to the most NCAA D-I team titles of any FCS school, with 21 in all,^note 13 in cross country (9 women's, 4 men's), 4 in men's track & field (3 indoor, 1 outdoor), 3 in men's basketball, and one FCS title in 2009. though Yale has a separate claim to this honor.^note The NCAA credits Yale with 29 titles in all, surpassing Nova. However, only 9 of these were actually awarded by the NCAA. The other 20 are men's golf titles awarded by the National Intercollegiate Golf Association before the NCAA launched its own men's golf championship in 1939. The NCAA recognizes pre-1939 NIGA titles as its own. The CAA suffered a significant blow in the 2021 realignment saga when James Madison, which had spent the last 20 years openly seeking an FBS move, was announced as a future member of the Sun Belt Conference. While JMU initially planned to join the Sun Belt in 2023, the move was pushed forward to 2022 after the all-sports CAA chose to enforce a provision in its bylaws stating that any school that announces its departure can be banned from the conference's postseason tournaments.^*JMU was still eligible for the 2021 CAA Football title because that league's bylaws lacked said provision. The all-sports CAA has since changed its bylaws on this point, no longer banning departing members from its conference tournaments. The CAA reloaded shortly thereafter, bringing football member Stony Brook into the all-sports league and also poaching Campbell, Hampton, Monmouth, and North Carolina A&T for both sides of the league and Bryant for football only to expand its football membership to 13 effective in 2022, 15 in 2023, and 16 in 2024. (A&T joined the all-sports CAA in 2022 but didn't join for football until 2023.) The 16-team lineup will last only one season, as Delaware starts a transition to FBS in 2024 and joins Conference USA in 2025.

Ivy League

Current schools: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale
Current commissioner: Robin Harris^note titled as "Executive Director"
Reigning champions: Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale (co-champions)
Website: ivyleague.com

Although the athletic Ivy League considers 1954 as its founding date, the member schools had agreed on common policies and scheduling in football in 1945,^note Before recommitting to the Ivy group in 1954, Penn briefly flirted with breaking away and competing on a more national level. It was also involved in the aborted plans for an "airplane conference" around 1959 that also included the likes of Penn State, Notre Dame, UCLA, and USC. and it claims the history of the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League, founded in 1901, and the near-century of football played by its schools prior to the formal organization of the League. Historically, the Ivies were the powerhouse of college football (with Princeton, Yale, and Harvard being especially good and Harvard-Yale serving as the Ur-Example of rivalry games)^note Although traditional powers today, Michigan and Notre Dame were both considered unique anomalies in their early history by being able to field good football teams outside of the Ivies' then-monopoly on the sport, but the schools' collective decision to emphasize academics over athletics in the post-World War II era has made this a relic of the past. Princeton lays claim to 28 national championships, more than any other school by a considerable margin, but the last they won was in 1950. The league remained classified as a major conference until the NCAA's 1982 re-realignment of D-I. Yale actually met the attendance requirement to remain in I-A but voluntarily reclassified to keep the league intact.

One artifact of the Ivies' former glory is that they have some of the oldest and largest stadiums in FCS. Only Columbia and Dartmouth have stadiums that seat less than 20,000, with the Yale Bowl (at just over 61,000 seats) being the largest on-campus stadium outside of FBS. Penn's Franklin Field (built in 1895) and Harvard Stadium (built in 1903) were among the first large college stadiums (the former having also served for many years as the NFL Eagles' stadium), and the Yale Bowl (built in 1914) is where the term "bowl" originated in its football sense. Only Columbia's Wien Stadium and Princeton Stadium were built after 1925, respectively opening in 1984 and 1998.

While it has an automatic berth in the FCS playoffs, the Ivy League chooses not to participate, citing academic concerns (the last Ivy team to play any postseason game was Columbia, who staged a stunning upset of Stanford in the 1933 Rose Bowl). Its members also limit themselves to 10 games each season instead of the 11 (or 12 in some years) allowed for FCS members. Most notably, the Ivies do not allow athletic scholarships, though student-athletes are eligible for the same financial assistance based on need as the rest of the student body (which, at schools that charge upwards of $50,000 in tuition, is usually necessary). Some outside observers feel that financial aid to athletes amounts to scholarships under a different name.

Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC)

Current schools: Delaware State, Howard, Morgan State, Norfolk State, North Carolina Central, South Carolina State
Current commissioner: Sonja Stills
Reigning champions: Howard and North Carolina Central (co-champions); Howard received the Celebration Bowl berth
Website: meacsports.com

Formed in 1970, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) is a conference of HBCU institutions. Like the MAC and Sun Belt in FBS, its colleges are often scheduled as easy wins. Savannah State, in particular, was criticized for regularly agreeing to play in vastly one-sided games against powerhouse schools, where they inevitably lost by over 70 or 80 points before dropping back to D-II in 2019. Due to a distinct lack of success in the FCS playoffs (no national championships^note Florida A&M was an independent when it won the 1978 title and just 5 playoff wins total), it decided in 2015 to vacate its automatic bid to the FCS playoffs (for the second time in the FCS era), opting instead to send its champion to the Celebration Bowl in Atlanta to play the SWAC (below) champion (the MEAC and SWAC champs had previously squared off in the Heritage Bowl from 1991-99). A non-champion is still eligible for an at-large playoff invitation if the selection committee deems them worthy, and North Carolina A&T in 2017 and North Carolina Central in 2023 have received one. On a happier note, the MEAC was involved in the biggest point-spread upset in NCAA football history in 2017, which happened, appropriately enough, in Las Vegas, when Howard, a 45-point underdog, beat UNLV 43–40.

Two full MEAC members, Coppin State and Maryland Eastern Shore, don't play football. Since 2017, five football schools have left the conference—Hampton for the Big South in 2018; Savannah State for D-II in 2019 (after having only upgraded from D-II in 2010); and three schools in 2021, with Bethune–Cookman and Florida A&M leaving for the SWAC and North Carolina A&T for the Big South. Needless to say, these moves raised serious questions about the future of MEAC football. Reportedly they've had talks with some possible D-II upgraders.^note Specifically HBCU schools Kentucky State and Virginia State, though one rumor is that they've also contacted some D-II PWI (primarily White institutions) schools. Howard had all-sport membership offers from the CAA and NEC in 2022, but turned both conferences down, while Chicago State, a non-football school^*For now. They've launched a fundraising campaign that could possibly have them fielding a football team in 2025. then without a conference, offered itself up as a member but got voted down by the league's chancellors, and eventually joined the NEC for 2024 and beyond.^note CSU isn't an HBCU school, but it's long had a Black-majority student body and is part of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Also in 2022 the MEAC announced an agreement with the NEC to place MEAC schools as associate NEC members in three sports (baseball and men's and women's golf) that the MEAC doesn't sponsor, leading to speculation that it might be the first step toward a full merger of the leagues; watch this space.

Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC)

Current schools: Illinois State, Indiana State, Missouri State, Murray State, North Dakota, North Dakota State, Northern Iowa, South Dakota, South Dakota State, Southern Illinois, Youngstown State
Current commissioner: Patty Viverito
Reigning champion: South Dakota State
Website: valley-football.org

Another football-only league, the Missouri Valley Football Conference (or MVFC) has a history that is, to say the least, a Continuity Snarl. While the MVFC claims 1985 as its founding date, its history can be traced through two branches dating back as far as 1907, and involves four other conferences—one being the now non-football Missouri Valley Conference (note the missing word!) and another being a women's sports league. Nonetheless, it's at or near the top of the FCS pecking order, and its top teams are often competitive with the bottom half or so of FBS (with one in particular standing out; see below). The FCS championship game has twice been an all-MVFC affair, making it the only conference to pull off that feat (involving North Dakota State both times, with the Bison beating Illinois State in 2014 and losing to South Dakota State in 2022).

Though the MVFC and MVC are separate entities, they share a very close relationship. The two leagues have six members in common^*Illinois State, Indiana State, Missouri State, Murray State, Northern Iowa, Southern Illinois, and along with the Pioneer Football League (see below), which includes two other MVC members^*Drake and Valparaiso, operate out of the same office complex in St. Louis. The four Dakotas schools are members of the now non-football Summit League, another one of the precursor leagues alluded to in the previous paragraph. Murray State, which joined the MVC in 2022, played the 2022 football season in its previous all-sports home of the Ohio Valley Conference before joining the MVFC in 2023.

The MVFC is home to the other four FCS schools that play in domes, namely Northern Iowa (the UNI-Dome, pronounced "uni-dome"), North Dakota (the Alerus Center), North Dakota State (the Fargodome), and South Dakota (the DakotaDome). South Dakota has a similar stadium setup to that of ACC member Boston College; USD's domed stadium and basketball arena are physically attached, and some luxury boxes allow their occupants a full view of events at each venue.

The latest membership change was announced in 2023, when Western Illinois left the Summit League for the OVC, playing one last season in the MVFC before joining the Big South–OVC alliance in 2024.

North Dakota State Bison

Location: Fargo, ND
School Established: 1890^note Went by "North Dakota Agricultural College" until 1961
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1894-1921),^note Did not play in 1918 due to Spanish flu... NCC (1922-2003),^note ...or in 1943-44 due to the war. Great West (2004-07), MVFC (2008-)
Overall Win Record: 777–379–34 (.667)^note 214-42 (.836) since joining D-I in 2004
Bowl Record: 5-1 (.833)^note They played these six bowls between 1964 and 1970, when the NCAA sponsored regional bowl games for lower division schools in the pre-playoff era.
Playoff Record: 35-13 (.729) in D-II; 43–5 (.896) in FCS
Colors: Green and yellow
Stadium: Fargodome (19,000 capacity)
Current Head Coach: Tim Polasek
Notable Historic Coaches: Gil Dobie
Notable Historic Players: Gus Bradley, Carson Wentz, Trey Lance
National Championships: 17 (8 D-II - 1965, 1968-69, 1983, 1985-86, 1988, 1990; 9 FCS - 2011–15, 2017–19, 2021)
Conference Championships: 37 (26 NCC - 1925, 1932, 1935, 1964-70, 1972-74, 1976-77, 1981-86, 1988, 1990-92, 1994; 1 Great West - 2006; 10 MVFC - 2011-19, 2021)

North Dakota State University is one of the most decorated programs in college sports. In simple terms, the Bison have won more national championships (17) than any other team on any level of college football, starting on the Division II level. They've had just three losing seasons in the last 50 years, and were the team of The '80s in D-II, playing in six championship games, winning four of them. Moving to the FCS in 2004, they established themselves as a power right away, then became utterly dominant since the 2010s. From 2011-19, the Bison won eight FCS titles, the same number of games they lost in that time span. In that era, NDSU produced two Top 5-drafted QBs (Carson Wentz and Trey Lance), went 6-for-6 against FBS teams (including one over ranked Iowa in 2016), and had an FCS-record 39-game winning streak that wasn't snapped until spring 2021. That performance resulted in the program being ranked at one point as high as #27 in the country, higher than any non-FBS team.

While fans and observers have speculated for years whether the school would be able to make the jump to the FBS and continue to compete at a high level, NDSU has refrained from doing so, mainly for financial reasons. Its tiny and remote home market^note How remote? The nearest FBS school is Minnesota, over 200 air miles away, and the nearest Group of Five school is Northern Illinois, more than 500 miles away. There are about 250,000 people in the Fargo, ND–Moorhead, MN media market, which is actually about the same size as the home markets of Michigan State, Notre Dame, and Oregon, but while they're secondary markets in big states, NDSU's market is the largest one in a sparsely-populated rural state. Not only that, the northern half of that market consists of the Grand Forks area, home of their principal rival North Dakota. That combination of geographic isolation and lack of revenue potential means no amount of on-field success would make a Power Five conference interested in adding NDSU. presents a tremendous obstacle for making money as it is, and the added travel, scholarship, and facilities cost of the FBS could bankrupt the school (especially if the team's performance ever plateaued). Instead, the program seems mostly content to continue to dominate its local competition and let its win record serve as its main recruiting tool.

Northeast Conference (NEC)

Current schools: Central Connecticut, Duquesne (football only), LIU, Mercyhurst, Robert Morris (football only), Saint Francis,^note The one in Pennsylvania; see below for a former conference mate. Formally Saint Francis University ("Saint" spelled out). Stonehill, Wagner
Current commissioner: Noreen Morris
Reigning champion: Duquesne
Website: northeastconference.org

Formed in 1981, the Northeast Conference (or NEC) did not sponsor football until 1996. It is in the lower tier of FCS, largely because it restricts football scholarships to a shade over two-thirds of the FCS maximum (45 instead of 63). As of the 2023 season, the only full NEC members that don't play football are Fairleigh Dickinson^note The D-I program at the school's "Metropolitan" campus in Teaneck, New Jersey, that is. The "Florham" campus thirty miles away in Madison is a member of the D-III Middle Atlantic Conference and does play football. and Le Moyne (see below). Chicago State joins this group in 2024, though as noted in the MEAC folder it is exploring adding FCS football. Until fairly recently, those ranks included three other schools: LIU Brooklyn, Mount St. Mary's, and St. Francis Brooklyn.^note Formally St. Francis College ("Saint" officially abbreviated). First, Long Island University merged the Brooklyn athletic program with the D-II LIU Post program (which did play football) into a single D-I LIU program effective in 2019–20. The football team that played as the LIU Post Pioneers in 2018 accordingly became the LIU Sharks. As for Mount St. Mary's, it left the NEC in 2022 for another non-football league, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. St. Francis Brooklyn shut down its entire athletic program at the end of the 2022–23 school year, and the conference quickly replaced them with Le Moyne, a longtime D-II Jesuit school in suburban Syracuse, New York, whose signature sport is lacrosse. Merrimack and Sacred Heart announced their departure for the MAAC effective in 2024, and both chose to become FCS independents for at least 2024. The NEC shored up its football numbers for 2024 by bringing back Robert Morris, which had been in NEC football from its start in 1996 until leaving after the 2019 season, as a football associate, and picking up another D-II upgrader, Mercyhurst from Pennsylvania (they're already D-I in hockey, having moved up in 1999).^note Both RMU and the other football associate, Duquesne, are (or will be) NEC members in an additional sport. Duquesne is also a member in the niche sport of women's bowling, while RMU will join for men's lacrosse at the same time it joins for football.

The 2023 season was the first in which Merrimack, which joined the conference in all sports from D-II in 2019, was eligible for the FCS playoffs. Stonehill, which made the same move in 2022, is ineligible until 2026, while Mercyhurst will be ineligible until 2028. Stonehill replaced Bryant, which left for the non-football America East Conference in 2022 and parked football in the Big South, thereby becoming part of the Big South–OVC football alliance in 2023 (and moving from there to CAA Football in 2024). As alluded to above, Chicago State (non-football), Mercyhurst (all sports), and Robert Morris (football plus men's lacrosse) are effectively replacing Merrimack and Sacred Heart.

Patriot League

Current schools: Bucknell, Colgate, Fordham (football only), Georgetown (football only), Holy Cross, Lafayette, Lehigh^note Army and Navy also call the Patriot League their primary conference.
Current commissioner: Jennifer Heppel
Reigning champions: Holy Cross and Lafayette (co-champions); Lafayette received the automatic playoff bid
Website: patriotleague.org

Founded in 1986 as the football-only Colonial League, it became the Patriot League in 1990 when it added other sports. Basically an "Ivy League Lite"—its members are relatively small^note only Boston University, which no longer has a football team, has over 10,000 undergrads, academically strong schools, though not quite at the Ivy level. The league was actually founded to give the Ivies a chance to fill out their football schedules with schools that shared their academic focus. The conference did not allow athletic scholarships at all until permitting them for basketball in 1996 (allegedly to keep Holy Cross from jumping ship). Scholarships were extended to all non-football sports in 2001, but football scholarships were not allowed until 2013^note Fordham actually started giving them out in 2010, which created the scenario where they were still a member of the league but were ineligible for the league title and their opponents' games against them didn't count towards their league records. Once the other schools started giving them out, they were eligible once again and won the title in 2014., and Georgetown still doesn't award football scholarships. Unlike the Ivies, the Patriot League participates in the FCS postseason. The league has only reached the championship game once: Colgate in 2003. They lost 40–0 to Delaware.^note Before the league was formed, Lehigh played in the 1979 championship game, losing 30–7 to Eastern Kentucky. It's also home to the most-played and longest continuous rivalry in all of college football, namely Lafayette–Lehigh. The Leopards and Mountain Hawks played their 159th game in 2023, and have played at least once in each season since 1897.^note From their first matchup in 1884 to 1901, they played twice in each season except in 1891, when they played three times, and 1896, when they didn't play at all. They didn't play in calendar 2020 thanks to COVID-19, but played during the Patriot League's rescheduled spring 2021 season.

Five more schools are full members but don't play Patriot League football. Army and Navy play in the FBS, while American University (dropped football in 1941), Boston University^note not to be confused with the FBS Boston College (dropped it in 1997) and Loyola University Maryland (dropped it in 1933) no longer field football teams.

Pioneer Football League (PFL)

Current schools: Butler, Davidson, Dayton, Drake, Marist, Morehead State, Presbyterian, St. Thomas, San Diego, Stetson, Valparaiso
Current commissioner: Greg Walter
Reigning champion: Drake
Website: pioneer-football.org

The Pioneer Football League (PFL) is another football-only league in FCS. It began in 1993 and exists entirely because of a 1991 NCAA rule change. Before then, some schools that were D-I for the majority of their sports were allowed to play football in D-II or III. Typically this route was chosen by smaller schools or schools whose athletic focus was outside of football (typically basketball). D-III was an especially attractive football option, since a school didn't need to spend money on football scholarships, but this immediately opened up the possibility of some Loophole Abuse: schools could recruit a player for football, then award him a scholarship in another sport. Dayton, a school with a deep basketball tradition, competed in D-III football and became a powerhouse at that level, making five D-III championship games from 1980-91 and winning two of them (1980, 1989). The 1987 D-III championship game paired two D-I schools playing in D-III, Dayton and Wagner (Wagner won 19-3). The perception that slumming big boys were dominating D-III football (and accusations about the scholarship issue mentioned above, which the schools denied was happening) angered the D-III schools, and they got the NCAA to require all D-I members to conduct all sports at their own level by 1993 (this is usually called "the Dayton rule"). Many schools forced up to D-I in 1993 wanted to keep running their program the same as they had in D-II or D-III, without additional scholarship expenses, so they banded together to form the league.^note One of the charter members, Drake, was returning to the I-AA level after moving to D-III in 1987. They'd been a I-A team until the NCAA forced them to reclassify in 1982. All Pioneer members are small private schools except Morehead State, a small public school that elected to de-emphasize football. We're not kidding about the "small" part. The largest school, St. Thomas, has barely over 10,000 total students, with only a little more than 6,000 being undergraduates; most have undergraduate enrollments less than 5,000, and the PFL is home to the smallest D-I school (including the non-football schools!) in Presbyterian, with barely over 1,000 undergrads. As noted in the MVFC folder, the PFL operates out of the same St. Louis office complex that also hosts the MVFC and the non-football Missouri Valley Conference.

The latest arrivals came in 2021, specifically the aforementioned Presbyterian and St. Thomas of Minnesota. Presbyterian effectively replaced Jacksonville (FL), which dropped football after 2019. While technically independent in 2020–21, the Blue Hose nonetheless played a full Pioneer League slate that spring; they weren't eligible for the league title but were eligible for individual awards. As for St. Thomas, the Twin Cities school was involuntarily kicked out of its D-III league for being too strong in multiple sports, and soon got an invite from the D-I non-football Summit League. With the Summit's backing, St. Thomas successfully obtained a waiver of an NCAA rule that would have effectively barred them from a direct move to D-I. The Tommies joined the Pioneer League for football, going through a five-year transition process instead of the four used for moves from D-II.^note At the time St. Thomas got its waiver, a D-III to D-I transition would have taken 12 years, but the NCAA had been preparing to vote on a proposal to shorten such a transition to five. The NCAA decided to punt on that legislation and give St. Thomas the planned five-year time frame.

Southern Conference (SoCon)

Current schools: Chattanooga, The Citadel, East Tennessee State, Furman, Mercer, Samford, VMI^note Virginia Military Institute, Western Carolina, Wofford
Current commissioner: Michael Cross
Reigning champion: Furman
Website: soconsports.com

Founded in 1921, the Southern Conference (or simply SoCon) is probably most notable for having spawned two of the current FBS power conferences, the SEC and ACC. The conference remained at the major college level until 1982, when all of its schools were relegated to I-AA by the NCAA. For many years, it was at the very top of the FCS ladder, but conference realignment took a major toll, with three members leaving in 2014. Appalachian State and Georgia Southern, with nine FCS championships between them, left for FBS and the Sun Belt; Elon stayed in FCS but left for the CAA. At the same time, Mercer and VMI (the latter a former member) joined for all sports including football, while East Tennessee State (also a former member) rejoined for non-football sports. ETSU resurrected its dormant football program in 2015, playing that season as an FCS independent before joining SoCon football in 2016. Of note, Appalachian State made history in 2007 when they upset a #5-ranked Michigan and became the first non-transitional^note Cincinnati beat Penn State in 1983 but was only in I-AA for that year, having been dropped from I-A against its wishes; the Bearcats (and several other teams, mainly in the Mid-American Conference) returned to I-A the next year FCS team to defeat a ranked FBS team. The SoCon has only one non-football member, UNC Greensboro.

Southland Conference (SLC)

Current schools: Houston Christian^*formerly Houston Baptist, changed its name in 2022, Incarnate Word, Lamar, McNeese^*its formal name includes "State", but it no longer uses that word in its athletic branding, Nicholls^*ditto, Northwestern State, Southeastern Louisiana, Texas A&M–Commerce
Arriving schools: UTRGV^*Texas–Rio Grande Valley (2025)
Current commissioner: Chris Grant
Reigning champion: Nicholls
Website: southland.org

Founded in 1963, the Southland Conference (or SLC) was a strong lower level conference in its early years (then-league member Louisiana Tech won the initial NCAA D-II championship in 1973), before moving to the major college level in 1975. The Independence Bowl began in 1976 as a postseason home for the Southland's champion. In 1982, the league moved to I-AA after most of its members failed to meet the requirements for I-A membership (McNeese did meet the requirements but voluntarily reclassified with the rest of the conference). Long considered one of the top FCS leagues, five schools left following the spring 2021 season. One of the departing schools, Sam Houston, won the FCS title on its way out. Another one of the departing schools, Lamar, decided that its destination of the WAC wasn't as good of a fit as it thought; it originally planned to return to the SLC in 2023, but wound up returning for 2022. More recently, UTRGV, which had announced that it would add football in 2025 (after a practice season in 2024) as a member of the United Athletic Conference (see below), changed its plans, joining the SLC as a full member in 2024 with football to follow the next year.

The SLC has two full non-football members in New Orleans and Texas A&M–Corpus Christi, with UTRGV becoming a third for 2024–25 only. It added D-II upgrader Texas A&M–Commerce in 2022, and its football future was further secured when Incarnate Word, which had announced a move to the Western Athletic Conference and its newly reestablished football league, backed out of that move and stayed in the SLC. As noted above, the SLC and OVC entered into a scheduling partnership, though it didn't keep the OVC from announcing its plans to merge its football league with that of the Big South. The SLC had announced plans to adopt a new name in the near future, but took a half-step away from them, unveiling a new logo in 2023 but keeping its name.

Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC)

Current schools: Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Alcorn State, Arkansas–Pine Bluff, Bethune–Cookman, Florida A&M, Grambling State, Jackson State, Mississippi Valley State, Prairie View A&M, Southern, Texas Southern
Current commissioner: Charles McClelland
Reigning champion: Florida A&M
Website: swac.org

The oldest FCS conference, the Southwestern Athletic Conference (or SWAC) was founded in 1920. Like the MEAC, it consists entirely of HBCUs, and most of the HBCUs that casual fans are aware of (Grambling, Jackson State, Alcorn State, Prairie View) are in this conference. It was the first HBCU conference to play at the major college level, when it upgraded as a group in 1977, the year before D-I was split into I-A and I-AA (and they went I-AA). It's used an East–West divisional setup since 1999, with the divisional winners playing in a championship game. It has a longer-standing policy of not sending its champion to the FCS playoffs than its HBCU sister conference, effectively giving it up in The '90s, though, as with the MEAC, a non-champion is still eligible for an at-large bid (and Florida A&M received one in 2021). There are three reasons why the SWAC rejects an automatic bid: three conference schools have tradition-steeped (and lucrative) rivalry games on Thanksgiving weekend that conflict with the first round of the playoffs^* Alabama State has its Turkey Day Classic on Thanksgiving Day—traditionally against D-II Tuskegee—while Grambling and Southern play each other in the Bayou Classic in New Orleans on Saturday; the SWAC championship game and the Celebration Bowl are big moneymakers; and the SWAC is winless in 20 playoff games (Florida A&M's playoff wins predate their conference membership). The SWAC is the home of the first college football HC to win 400 games (Grambling's Eddie Robinson) and the longest losing streak in the sport's history (Prairie View A&M's 80-game skid from 1989-98).

As noted above, Bethune–Cookman and Florida A&M joined in July 2021. Both were placed in the East Division, with Alcorn State switching to the West.^*Depending on your sense of geography, either the Mississippi River or the Louisiana–Mississippi border is the de facto dividing line. One or two schools are on the "wrong" side of the aforementioned lines, but not by much. Alcorn, the westernmost of the Mississippi schools, is on the wrong side of both lines, but is less than 5 miles from the river. Southern is west of the state line; while it's on the wrong side of the river, its campus is on the river in Baton Rouge. Florida A&M is the only HBCU to win an FCS national championship (the initial 1978 I-AA title).

United Athletic Conference (UAC)

Current schools: Abilene Christian, Austin Peay, Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky, North Alabama, Southern Utah, Stephen F. Austin,^*also with "State" in its formal name but dropped that word from its athletic branding long before McNeese, Nicholls, Sam Houston, or Tarleton did Tarleton^*yet another school that has dropped "State" from its athletic branding, Utah Tech^*Officially adopted that name on July 1, 2022. Located in St. George, the largest city in what's called "Utah's Dixie", so named because its earliest white settlers were Mormon converts from the Deep South. The school had "Dixie" in its name for over a century as it evolved from a church academy to a public junior college and finally a four-year university. It entered the NCAA as the Dixie State Rebels in 2006, a name that confused most people who didn't know the region's history, and the Confederate connotations of that branding led the school to first change its nickname (to the Red Storm, then after a few years, the Trailblazers), then finally its name. Ironically, its instate (non-football) conference rival Utah Valley was once called Utah Technical College., West Georgia
Current commissioners: Jeff Bacon & Brian Thornton^note Both titled as "Executive Director". They're respectively commissioners of the UAC's partner conferences, the Atlantic Sun and WAC.
Reigning champion: Austin Peay
Website: uacfootball.com

The United Athletic Conference is the newest FCS conference, created in December 2022 by the announcement that the ASUN Conference (or Atlantic Sun) and Western Athletic Conference (WAC) would merge their football leagues. The league used the placeholder name of "ASUN–WAC Football Conference" before unveiling its new name in April 2023. The ASUN initially contributed Austin Peay, Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky, and North Alabama, with the WAC contributing schools from Texas and Utah, namely Abilene Christian, Southern Utah, Stephen F. Austin, Tarleton, and Utah Tech. Due to scheduling commitments, the UAC played only a 6-game schedule in 2023. It was set to move to a full round-robin in 2024, but that was before D-II upgrader West Georgia was announced as joining in that season.^note A 9-game conference schedule is viable for FBS programs, which have 12-game regular seasons, but FCS programs are limited to 11 games in most seasons. It would have added another member when UTRGV (a WAC member through 2023–24) added football in 2025, but that school will leave for the Southland Conference in 2024. While media reports indicated that the new football conference planned to move en masse to FBS in the near future, neither conference mentioned an FBS move. In any event, stay tuned.

The ASUN was founded as the Trans America Athletic Conference in 1978, changed its name to the Atlantic Sun Conference in 2001, adopted the ASUN branding in 2016, and went back to "Atlantic Sun" in 2023 (though it still uses "ASUN" as its abbreviation). Regardless of brand name, the conference did not begin football competition until 2022. For a few years, the ASUN had a football alliance with the Big South, but replaced it in 2021 with an alliance with the WAC that eventually became the UAC.

As of the 2024 season, seven ASUN members aren't in the UAC; for now, no member of either partner conference is required to add football or change its football status. Florida Gulf Coast, Jacksonville, Lipscomb, North Florida, and D-II upgrader Queens^note Formally Queens University of Charlotte; not to be confused with Queens College in the NYC borough of that name, which stayed in D-II. don't play football at all. Stetson plays non-scholarship football in the Pioneer League. Bellarmine added football in 2022 but plays sprint football, a variant played under standard college rules but with an upper limit of 178 lb (81 kg) for player weight. The next school to join the ASUN, West Georgia, does sponsor (full-sized) football and thus will become a UAC member, reuniting with its former D-II Gulf South Conference mates Central Arkansas and North Alabama.

As for the WAC, it started in 1962 with six schools in the intermountain West and over time expanded and flourished as a major conference until an ill-advised expansion to 16 members in 1996 started two decades of turmoil. Eight schools left in 1999 to form the Mountain West Conference, and further instability eventually saw the WAC lose all but two of its football schools during the early-2010s realignment cycle, leading the FBS conference to drop football after the 2012 season, then reinstate it in the FCS level in 2021 after the 2020 arrivals of Tarleton and Utah Tech (then Dixie State), both D-II upgraders with football. Five FCS schools joined the league as all-sports members in 2022 (four Southland members out of Texas and one from the Big Sky), at which time WAC football returned. When the Southland responded by kicking out its departing members (the so-called "Texas Four"), the WAC in turn pushed the arrival of those schools, as well as the return of football, forward to 2021. They solved the numbers problem for playoff qualification by bringing incoming ASUN members Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky, and Jacksonville State in as football members, originally intended for that season only, in what was officially called the "ASUN–WAC (or WAC–ASUN) Challenge". However, they only got their automatic bid after successfully lobbying the NCAA for a rules change that accommodated the new alliance. With Sam Houston starting an FBS transition in 2022 ahead of its 2023 departure for C-USA, dropping the WAC to 5 playoff-eligible schools, the WAC and ASUN renewed that alliance for 2022. The WAC's playoff-eligible lineup dropped to 4 when Incarnate Word, which had planned to join from the SLC, backed out of that move and stayed put, and then to 3 when Lamar pushed its planned 2023 return to the SLC forward a year. All this led the ASUN and WAC to formally merge their football leagues.

The WAC currently has five non-football members in California Baptist, Grand Canyon, Seattle, UTRGV, and Utah Valley. While Chicago State left the WAC in 2022, the conference welcomed two schools at that time. Southern Utah is a full member with football, while UT Arlington (which had been in the WAC for one year in the 2010s) returned as a non-football member. As noted above, UTRGV is now set to leave for the Southland Conference.

The UAC boasts another oddly-colored football field in that of Central Arkansas, with purple and gray sections alternating every 5 yards.

FCS Independents

There will be two FCS independents in the 2024 season—Merrimack and Sacred Heart, both of which left the NEC for the non-football MAAC. The only FCS indy in 2023, Kennesaw State, joins Conference USA for 2024 and beyond. Delaware will play one final season in CAA Football, though without playoff eligibility, before following KSU to CUSA in 2025.

Notable Defunct Programs

Chicago Maroons

Chicago Maroons

Location: Chicago, IL
School Established: 1890
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1892-95), Big Ten (1896-1939), D-III Ind. (1969-72), Midwest Collegiate Athletic Conference^note Predecessor to UChicago's current football home of the Midwest Conference; merged with a parallel women's sports league in 1994 to create today's MWC. (1976–87), University Athletic Association^note A conference made up of almost all the D-III schools that are regarded as top tier research universities; besides Chicago, the other members are Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western Reserve, Emory, NYU, Rochester and Washington U. of St. Louis, plus Johns Hopkins until it left in 2001. It's basically the Big Ten of D-III, fielding national powers in most sports (especially men's and women's basketball), but since only 5 of the 8 schools play the sport (Brandeis, Emory and NYU don't), football was always a bit of an afterthought for the league, so it finally stopped sponsoring football in 2016, and the five teams compete as associate members in other conferences: Chicago in the Midwest, Carnegie and Case in the Presidents' Athletic Conference, Washington in the College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin (CCIW) and Rochester in the Liberty League. (1988–2016), Southern Athletic Association (2015–16), Midwest Conference (2017–)
Overall Win Record: 416–368–34 (.529)
Bowl Record: N/A
Colors: Maroon and white
Stadium: New Stagg Field (capacity 1,650)^note The Maroons had a few temporary homes in their early years, and were the first college football team have an indoor home venue when they played some games in an equestrian arena in the 1890s, with bark laid down instead of turf. The original Stagg Field, originally Marshall Field, opened in 1893 and eventually expanded up to a capacity of 50,000. It was demolished in 1957 and a library now sits on the old location, while the New Stagg Field was built a few blocks away in The '60s, initially used for track & field before the football program was reinstated.
Current Head Coach: Todd Gilchrist
Notable Historic Coaches: Amos Alonzo Stagg, Clark Shaughnessy
Notable Historic Players: Clarence Herschberger, Herbert "Fritz" Crisler, Jay Berwanger
National Championships: 2 (1905, 1913)
Conference Championships: 12 (7 Big 10, 5 UAA)

The University of Chicago is easily the most successful football program to no longer play at the Division 1 level. A founding member of the Big Ten Conference in 1896 under legendary head coach Amos Alonzo Stagg (who coached there for 41 years), they were considered the first "western" school to be capable of competing with the elites of the Ivy League around the turn of the 20th century. They had the first All-American to come from a non-Ivy League school (Clarence Herschberger), won national titles in 1905 and 1913, and had the first ever Heisman Trophy winner (Jay Berwanger) in 1935.

The end of the line for Chicago as a football power came when Robert Maynard Hutchins became the university's president in 1929. Hutchins believed that universities should be squarely focused on classical education, and had disdain for things he regarded as distractions to pure academics, like vocational majors, activities, fraternities and sororities, and especially athletics. Hutchins forced Stagg to retire against his will, then squeezed the football program by eliminating athletic scholarships, refusing to establish a physical education major, and forcing the team to forego spring practices by changing the academic calendar. After years of struggle under this de-emphasis of athletics, the school finally dropped its football team entirely following the 1939 season, clearing the way for their now-vacant stadium to be used as the site for the world's first ever artificial nuclear reactor. Chicago was the most successful defunct program in NCAA football history... for about 22 years. In 1963, the university brought football back first as a club sport, then as a D-III program. They've never come close to their heights of the early 20th century, but did have a run of success in the University Athletic Association conference in the '90s-'00s including five conference titles.

Carlisle Indian School

Carlise Indian School

Location: Carlisle, PA
School Established: 1879
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1893-1917)
Overall Win Record: 173–92–13 (.646)
Bowl Record: N/A
Colors: Red, white, and gold
Stadium: Indian Field/Parade Grounds at Carlisle Barracks (no permanent seating)
Current Head Coach: N/A
Notable Historic Coaches: Glen "Pop" Warner, George Washington Woodruff, Bemus Pearce
Notable Historic Players: Bemus Pearce, Hawley Pearce, Jim Thorpe
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: N/A

The United States Indian Industrial School, often shortened to its hometown of "Carlisle Indian School", was one of many Native American "boarding schools" established in the country around that time for the purpose of assimilating natives into American society. Based out of the then-decommissioned Carlisle Barracks, the Carlisle Indians football program established in 1893 and quickly became one of the top football programs in the country, regularly competing with (and often defeating) the elites of the Ivy Leagues as well as the US Military Acadamy (now the Army Black Knights, who Carlisle famously routed in 1912 with Dwight D. Eisenhower on the field).

They found some initial success, but they didn't reach true dominance until the arrival of innovative head coach Glen "Pop" Warner in 1899. Led by six future hall of famers including all-world athlete Jim Thorpe^note The sheer breadth of his accomplishments is well-covered on the NFL Names To Know page, but at minimum Olympic Gold Medalist and charter member of both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame are worth noting here., Carlisle was labeled "the most dynamic" football team of the early 20th century, inventing and popularizing a number of "trick" plays that have since become mainstream (the fake handoff, the "hidden ball" play on kick returns, etc.) while relying more on speed and quickness than most other elite programs who prized power and physicality.

They were also known for their willingness to travel to distant away games, much moreso than the other "powerhouse" schools of the northeast in that era. They traveled as far south as Georgia, west as San Francisco, and even played in Canada (1912 against a team of Canadian all-stars, trouncing them 49-7). They played another "Indian School" (Haskell from Lawrence, KS^note which still exists as Haskell Indian Nations University, which is a member of the NAIA for athletics, and revived their football team from 1990 to 2015) in 1904 in St. Louis following that year's Summer Olympics during the St. Louis World's Fair. Their 1906 trip to Vanderbilt, where they lost 4-0, is often seen as putting southern football on the map. Meanwhile, their upset of heavily favored Harvard in 1911 is considered among the biggest upsets in the sport's history.

Unfortunately, the Native Americans at the school faced unpleasant and outright racist conditions. Their native languages, customs, and dress were banned while they were forced into "militaristic regimentation" and there were accounts of native women being forced to marry white men. A 1914 congressional investigation addressed the conditions and found that athletics played an outsized role at the school, leading to the dismissal of Pop Warner (ironically one of the biggest supporters of the students at the school). When the US entered World War I in 1917, the Carlisle Barracks were reestablished by the Federal War Department and the school permanently closed.

Still, the school's football legacy lives on. Their overall winning percentage of .646 is the best by any defunct program in college football history (and for comparison, would rank 13th among current FBS programs). They likewise have the most All-Americans (17) and Hall of Famers (6) by any defunct team.