Useful Notes / Group of Five Conferences

When a casual fan thinks of the term "college football," one usually thinks of powerhouse programs such as the Alabama Crimson Tide, Georgia Bulldogs, Ohio State Buckeyes, or Michigan Wolverines. Well, this isn't about the top brass of the Power Five Conferences. The Group of Five (G5) conferences are The Un-Favourite of the ten Football Bowl Subdivision^note The highest tier of play in college football, specifically named due to teams' abilities to play in bowl games in late December. conferences, generally considered below the talent of the Power 5, but above the 14 Football Championship Subdivision conferences. Much like their more famous cousins, the G5 is known for its 150 years of history playing American Football on autumn Saturdays^note Mostly, there are also select games on Tuesdays through Fridays. across 30 states. Currently, the G5 consists of the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, and the Sun Belt Conference, alongside the independent programs of UConn and UMass.^note Info on them is viewable HERE.

Also like the Power 5, the Group of 5 is a bit of a flexible term that can be seen as an Artifact Title. For example, before collapse in 2013, the talent of the Big East Conference was of such note that one could make a case of calling it the "Group of 4." Additionally, with the collapse of the Pac-12, there is a noteworthy possibility that the term could change with whatever action Washington State and Oregon State might take with realignment. 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. Below are descriptions of each of the conferences and of the individual programs. 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dissolve and reform, change divisions and conferences, play in games not recognized by the NCAA, have wins officially rescinded due to rule violations, and do other things that make it hard to judge schools' true performance.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. For information on the more famous five FBS college conferences, check out Power Five Conferences. For independent schools and FCS conferences, see Collegiate American Football Conferences. UConn and UMass are also listed on that page, since they're considered Group of 5 but aren't football members of any conference.

"Historic" figures include names mentioned in the program description or who have entries on the Collegiate American Football Names To Know or National Football League Names to Know pages. Individuals who have their own pages on this wiki, such as politicians and entertainers (including pro wrestlers), also qualify. All are listed in order of their careers at their schools.

Group of Five Conferences

American Athletic Conference

^{Click here to see a map of The American's schools.}

Year Established: 2013^note The conference operates under the 1979 charter of the original Big East Conference, but considers its competitive history to have started in 2013; see below.
Current schools: Army (football only), Charlotte, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Memphis, Navy (football only), North Texas, Rice, South Florida, Temple, Tulane, Tulsa, UAB, UTSA^note Wichita State is also a full memeber of The American, but does not have a football program.
Current commissioner: Mike Aresco (retiring on May 31, 2024, with Tim Pernetti taking his place)
Reigning champion: SMU
Website: theamerican.org

The American Athletic Conference (or just AAC or The American to avoid confusion with the ACC) was known as the Big East Conference before 2013. The Big East began life as a basketball conference and is more known for that sport rather than football, but the membership of national title contender Miami and other string programs like Virginia Tech and Boston College made it a power in the '90s and an AQ conference in the BCS era. Then the ACC stole all three teams in 2004-05. The conference rebounded somewhat until the early 2010s: West Virginia left for the Big 12 in 2012; Syracuse (a founding member) and Pittsburgh left for the ACC in 2013, as did non-football member Notre Dame; the next year, Louisville left for the ACC, and Rutgers left for the Big Ten. The seven non-FBS schools also left at that time, buying the "Big East" name (it fits the basketball schools much better than the expanded football footprint).

The handful of teams left over adopted the "American" name, and while they were granted an AQ berth in the last year of the BCS system, they were essentially "relegated" down to the second-tier of FBS, forming the current Power/Group of Five dynamic. However, the conference has done a good job of rebuilding ever since, with their champion frequently sitting as the highest ranked Group of Five team at the end of the season. Temple joined for football in 2012 and all other sports in 2013; Houston, Memphis, SMU, and UCF also joined in '13; and East Carolina, Tulane, and Tulsa joined in '14. Navy joined for football only in '15, allowing the league to launch a football championship game.

UConn left in 2020 to join the reconfigured Big East (with football becoming an FBS independent) and three of the conference's most high-profile programs—Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston—left for the Big 12 in 2023. Shortly after those schools' departure was announced in 2021, The American launched a massive raid of Conference USA (the third by The American or the original Big East), with six of that league's 14 members (Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, UAB, UTSA) making the move in 2023. This brought The American to 14 members in both football (with Navy as a football-only member) and non-football sports (with Wichita State as a full member without football). With SMU leaving for the ACC in 2024, The American enlisted Army (yet another former CUSA member, though only in football) as a new football-only member, joining Navy in that status.

Fun fact: Six of the 14 American Conference teams share their stadiums with pro teams—two in the NFL and four in the current United Football League. Putting this number in perspective, only three other FBS teams share with pro teams, all in the NFL. (Of these teams, only Memphis, which shares with the UFL's Memphis Showboats, doesn't have a description yet.)

The American Teams

Army Black Knights

On, Brave Old Army Team!

Location: West Point, NY
School Established: 1802
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1890–1997, 2005–23), CUSA (1998–2004), American (2024–)
Overall Win Record: 727–545–51 (.569)
Bowl Record: 7–3 (.700)
Colors: Black, gold, and gray
Stadium: Michie Stadium (capacity 38,000)^note pronounced "Mikey"
Current Head Coach: Jeff Monken
Notable Historic Coaches: Earl "Red" Blaik, Paul Dietzel, Lou Saban, Bobby Ross
Notable Historic Players: Robert Neyland, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Earl "Red" Blaik, Felix "Doc" Blanchard, Glenn Davis, Pete Dawkins, Alejandro Villanueva
National Championships: 3 (1944–46)^note 2 unclaimed (1914, 1916)
Conference Championships: 0^note Won 9 Lambert Trophies for "Best Team in the East" as an independent (1944-46, 1948-49, 1953, 1958, 2018, 2020)

The United States Military Academy in West Point is the oldest of the three major academies that train officers for the US military^note There are a total of five federal service academies. The other two, Coast Guard in New London and Merchant Marine in Kings Point, are much smaller and their athletic programs compete in the D-III level New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) alongside schools like MIT and Emerson. and set precedents for many military and civilian American universities that followed. Since the federal government funds all necessary academic operations, TV exposure and money are less of an issue for Army than for most other D-I schools. Also, being able to play a national schedule enables West Point to expose itself to potential cadets throughout the country, making the team a useful recruiting tool for the highly selective academy. The Black Knights used to be a powerhouse in college football in an era where a military career was likely to be more stable and respectable than playing a game for the rest of one's life. Much like the Army the school represents, the program peaked in prestige in the mid-1940s under legendary coach Red Blaik (1941-58), winning three straight national titles, posting multiple undefeated seasons, and producing three Heisman winners in the dominant FB/HB tandem of Doc Blanchard (1945) and Glenn Davis (1946) and future general Pete Dawkins (1958). However, as pro football salaries rocketed into the stratosphere in the '70s, West Point had a difficult time convincing great athletes to come play for them, as potential cadets faced the choice of spending the prime of their athletic potential in service to their country rather than making money and being famous. (Basically, the NFL stopped drafting Army players when the Army stopped drafting high school players.) The school bottomed out with winless seasons in 1973 and 2003 and have lost far more games than they've won since the 1960s, though current coach Jeff Monken (who inherited a program in 2014 that had one winning season in the last 17 years) has finally returned the Black Knights to consistent winning and bowl appearances; the school is tied with Western Kentucky for the best FBS bowl win percentage among teams that have played at least 10 bowls.^note However, WKU's overall bowl record is a shade below Army's; the Hilltoppers went 4–2 in small-college and D-II bowls before joining FBS. Going into the 2024 season, the best record overall among teams that have played 5 or more bowls is Appalachian State's 7–1 (.875).

The "Black Knights" nickname was only officially adopted in 1999, in reference of their black uniforms^note Specifically, their nickname was "The Black Knights of the Hudson".; prior to that, they had just been known as the Cadets, and their mascot is a mule. Army is a member of the Patriot League (see FCS section in the main "Conferences" page) for (most) non-football sports, as is Navy; outside of football, the academy is known for its very competitive lacrosse team, which won eight pre-NCAA national titles. Outside of a relatively brief membership with CUSA, Army has been a football independent through all of its history and is the only service academy that is still unaffiliated. It won't be for long; it is set to join Navy and replace SMU as a football-only American member in 2024.

Back in the 1940s, the rivalry between Army and Notre Dame was arguably the most important in college football, as they claimed the majority of national championships and Heisman winners in that decade; it has greatly cooled in intensity since then. Army seems to have barely noticed, as the only rivalry—and, indeed, the only thing—that really matters to the program is with Navy. Said contest has kept the program in the spotlight for at least one Saturday a year, as the Army-Navy game is traditionally the last of the regular season and the only FBS game played on that week. Even though Army and Navy will soon be united in American Conference football, the game will continue to be played on its traditional date as a nonconference matchup.^note Meaning that should the two academies make the conference title game, they will play in back-to-back weeks. It is typically played at a neutral site, which means relatively few football fans get to see Army home games on TV these days; a shame, considering that the relatively small and asymmetrical Michie Stadium is often considered one of the most beautiful venues in the U.S., located right up against the shores of the Hudson River and nestled in a valley that looks truly breathtaking in the fall (weather permitting).

Charlotte 49ers

Forty! Niners!

Location: Charlotte, NC
School Established: 1946^note As the Charlotte Center of the University of North Carolina; became Charlotte College, a two-year institution, in 1949. Returned to four-year status in 1963, and adopted its current name in 1965, when it became part of the University of North Carolina system.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1946-48)^note Did not field a football program from 1948-2012., FCS Ind. (2013-14), CUSA (2015-22), American (2023-)
Overall Win Record: 45–94 (.324)
Bowl Record: 0–1 (.000)
Colors: Green and white
Stadium: Jerry Richardson Stadium (capacity 15,314)
Current Head Coach: Biff Poggi
Notable Historic Coaches: Brad Lambert, Will Healy
Notable Historic Players:
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 0

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, nestled in the largest city of the Carolinas, has one of the youngest programs in FBS football and is one of the younger schools in general. Established in 1946 as a G.I. Bill campus of the larger University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill^note The University of North Carolina system—which since 1972 has included all of the state's public four-year institutions—wasn't established until 1963. for returning World War II vets, its athletic name of the "49ers" is named for how the school was saved from closure by the city school district in 1949. Their football team was officially refounded in 2013 after a 64-year absence, and since then has posted the worst win-loss record in FBS history. The Niners have played most of their history in Conference USA but were scooped up by The American in 2023 to replace the departures of UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston for the Big 12.

Navy Midshipmen

I believe that we will win!

Location: Annapolis, MD
School Established: 1845
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1879–2014), American (2015–)
Overall Win Record: 738–600–57 (.549)
Bowl Record: 12–11–1 (.521)
Colors: Navy blue and gold
Stadium: Navy–Marine Corps Memorial Stadium (capacity 34,000)
Current Head Coach: Brian Newberry
Notable Historic Coaches: Gil Dobie, George Welsh, Paul Johnson, Ken Niumatololo
Notable Historic Players: Joseph "Bull" Reeves, Ed Sprinkle, Clyde Scott, George Welsh, Frank Gansz, Joe Bellino, Roger Staubach, Napoleon McCallum, Keenan Reynolds, Malcolm Perry
National Championships: 1 (1926)
Conference Championships: 0^note Won five Lambert Trophies for "Best Team in the East" as an independent (1943, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963)

The United States Naval Academy's football team is Exactly What It Says on the Tin; its athletes are all officers-in-training that hold the rank of midshipmen. Like its interservice rival Army, Navy has a very old and decorated football history, in part because one of its multiple stringent requirements for recruits is athletic participation. Navy football used to be a strong program, even winning a national title in 1926, before the allure of pro football careers greatly weakened its recruiting power. The school's performance plummeted in the mid-1960s, shortly after the team produced two Heisman winners, HB Joe Bellino and QB Roger Staubach, who both had to serve in Vietnam before they could begin playing for the NFL. After underperforming for several decades, the program returned to winning in the 21st century, helped by the record-setting rushing offenses of Paul Johnson and Ken Niumatololo, particularly when led by dual-threat QB Keenan Reynolds (2012-15). After well over a century as an independent, Navy joined The American in 2015; however, the program's main priority year in-and-out remains defeating Army in the final game of the season.

A live goat named Bill is used as the team mascot. Bill's been a regular target of kidnappings by Army cadets, who have a slightly higher success rate then many other schools due to the nature of their schooling but face much steeper potential costs, since Bill is technically the property of the most powerful military on Earth. Outside of their fellow military academies, Navy maintains strong rivalries with Notre Dame and nearby Maryland. Navy's non-football sports mainly play in the FCS Patriot League, also home to Army. The chant shown in the caption to the team logo originated at the Academy's prep school, quickly spread to the Academy proper, and has gained wide traction in the US, most notably among supporters of the US men's national soccer team.

Rice Owls

Location: Houston, TX
School Established: 1912^note As "William M. Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art" (short form Rice Institute), became "William Marsh Rice University" in 1960
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1912-14), SWC (1915-96), WAC (1996-2004), CUSA (2005-22), American (2023-)
Overall Win Record: 492-652-32 (.432)
Bowl Record: 7-7 (.500)
Colors: Blue and gray
Stadium: Rice Stadium (capacity 47,000, can be expanded to 59,000, once held 68,000)^note Shared with the UFL's Houston Roughnecks.
Current Head Coach: Mike Bloomgren
Notable Historic Coaches: John Heisman, Jess Neely, Bill Peterson, Todd Graham
Notable Historic Players: Tobin Rote, Billy Howton, King Hill, Frank Ryan, Tommy Kramer, Jarett Dillard
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 8 (7 SWC - 1934, 1937, 1946, 1949, 1953, 1957, 1994; 1 CUSA – 2013)

Rice University is one of the most prestigious private universities in the U.S., but its football team has not been nearly as competitive on the gridiron for several decades. A charter member of the Southwest Conference, the Owls were very competitive in the region for several decades under the long tenure of Hall of Fame coach Jess Neely (1940–66), including being involved in one of the most memorable games in college football history, a defeat of Alabama in which one of the Tide ran off the bench to tackle a Rice player mid-play. However, the small and highly academically selective school (smallest by admissions of any FBS school save for Tulsa) was unable to keep pace with the other powers of the SWC as the sport evolved, and it failed to post a winning season from 1964–91, including going completely winless in '82 and '88. The SWC dissolved shortly after Rice finally broke this streak; the underperforming program was understandably not brought along to the Big 12, and while it has performed relatively better since landing in CUSA, it is still nowhere close to the power it once held. It's one of the six schools that left CUSA in 2023 for The American—ironically, at the same time its crosstown rival Houston left The American for the Big 12.

Despite not being very good at football for a long time, Rice still had major influence on the sport and even American culture in a few respects. Built near the heart of downtown Houston before the city had a big enough population to support a pro sports team, the school at one point had aspirations for being as big a deal in Houston as the Texas Longhorns had become in Austin. In 1950, they built the massive Rice Stadium on-campus, which served as the biggest venue in the city in the decades before the construction of the Astrodome. The stadium famously was where John F. Kennedy delivered his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech, where he compared the challenges of space travel to Rice facing Texas in football, and it even hosted Super Bowl VIII, one of just three college venues to do so. However, the construction of new venues in Houston (including one by UH) and the steep decline of the program has caused the facility to fall into an increased state of disrepair; the upper deck has been off-limits for years, and even then sellouts are rare.

South Florida Bulls

Location: Tampa, FL
School Established: 1956
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1997-2002), CUSA (2003-04), Big East (2005-12), American (2013-)
Overall Win Record: 168-154 (.522)
Bowl Record: 7-4 (.636)
Colors: Green and gold
Stadium: Raymond James Stadium (capacity 65,890)^note Shared with the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Current Head Coach: Alex Golesh
Notable Historic Coaches: Skip Holtz
Notable Historic Players: Bill Gramática
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 0

Like its greatest rival UCF, the University of South Florida (aka USF) has a young football program that saw a rapid rise through the conference ranks thanks in part to its massive growth in student population.^note The university has also greatly bolstered its academic reputation; in 2023, it became a member of the Association of American Universities, an elite organization of top research universities (69 in the US, two in Canada). Founded in 1997 as a Division I-AA program, the school made the leap to I-A in 2001 and soon developed a reputation for upsetting ranked schools; a string of such upsets in 2007 saw the school go all the way to #2 in the mid-season rankings before quickly falling back to Earth. The team has been mostly decent but inconsistent ever since. The Bulls play out of the NFL Buccaneers' stadium, and light up their distinctive mushroom-shaped water tower bright green after every victory. They may not be long for sharing with the Bucs; the USF board has approved a preliminary budget for a new on-campus 35,000-seat stadium that's penciled in for 2026, though the final costs won't be set until some time in 2024, before which time USF can back out without penalty.

Temple Owls

Location: Philadelphia, PA
School Established: 1884^note As a night school based out of Grace Baptist Church; chartered as "The Temple College of Philadelphia" in 1888, accredited and took current name in 1907
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1894-1959, 1970–90, 2005–06),^note Did not play in 1906 or 1918–21 Middle Atlantic Conference (1960–69), Big East (1991–2004, 2012), Mid-American Conference (2007–11), American (2013–)
Overall Win Record: 488–623–52 (.442)
Bowl Record: 3–6 (.333)
Colors: Cherry and white
Stadium: Lincoln Financial Field (capacity: 68,532)^note Shared with the Philadelphia Eagles
Current Head Coach: Rod Carey
Notable Historic Coaches: Pop Warner, Bruce Arians, Matt Rhule
Notable Historic Players: Bill Cosby, Joe Klecko, Paul Palmer, P.J. Walker
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 2 (Middle Atlantic Conference - 1967, American - 2016)

Temple University is an urban school in Philadelphia best known for its basketball program, one of the winningest in the nation that last won a national title in 1938, the year before the NCAA Tournament began. Its football program has been a historic underperformer most known as the last HC stop for Pop Warner and a springboard for a few other coaches to go on to bigger and better things. In many ways, the football program has been a massive hindrance for Temple; it was booted from the Big East in 2004 due to the team's poor performance, was brought back in during the conference's disintegration in 2012, then was forced to join The American rather than the basketball-oriented Big East due to still having the football team few people wanted. The team managed to see a resurgence in the mid-2010s with a few ranked appearances before its coaching staff was mostly drained by other programs. The Owls (named as a reference to the school's history as a night school) have shared the field of the NFL's Eagles since the '70s. Incidentally, Temple is the only full football-playing American Conference member to have never been in Conference USA.^note The same is true for football-only member Navy and non-football full member Wichita State.

Tulane Green Wave

Roll Wave!

Location: New Orleans, LA
School Established: 1834^note As a state school, "Medical College of Louisiana" and later just "University of Louisiana". Closed during the Civil War and was later essentially bought out by Paul Tulane in 1884, becoming one of the few state schools to go private. Since privatization, its formal name has been "Tulane University of Louisiana".
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1893–94, 1966–95), SIAA (1895–1921), SoCon (1922–32), SEC (1933–65), CUSA (1996–2013), American (2014–)
Overall Win Record: 564–674–38 (.457)
Bowl Record: 7–9 (.438)
Colors: Olive green and sky blue
Stadium: Yulman Stadium (30,000 capacity)
Current Head Coach: Jon Sumrall
Notable Historic Coaches: Clark Shaughnessy, Mack Brown, Buddy Teevens, Tommy Bowden, Willie Fritz
Notable Historic Players: Eddie Murray, Shaun King, J.P. Losman
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 10 (1 SIAA – 1920; 4 SoCon – 1925, 1929–31; 3 SEC – 1934, 1939, 1949; 1 CUSA – 1998, 1 American – 2022)

Tulane University is an old urban private school in New Orleans, initially founded as a state school prior to being privatized in the late nineteenth century. Its football program used to be competitive with the big teams in the South, but the administration chose to deemphasize athletics in the mid-1950s, and left the SEC after the 1965 season. Tulane's final school year in the SEC did see the Green Wave integrate the conference, but in baseball instead of football—Stephen Martin walked onto the baseball team in 1966, becoming the first African American to play any SEC sport.^note The first black SEC football and men's basketball players arrived on campus later in 1966, respectively at Kentucky and Vanderbilt. However, under then-current NCAA rules they weren't eligible for varsity sports until 1967–68, and while each school brought in two black players, only one integrated his program. See the Kentucky Wildcats description in the "Power 5" page for more details. The team has been a bottom-feeder since this deemphasis, save for a completely unexpected undefeated run under Tommy Bowden in 1998 that landed him the job in Clemson the next year and an equally unexpected conference championship under Willie Fritz in 2022. The latter season marked arguably the greatest single-season turnaround in college football history, as the Green Wave finished the prior year 2–10 and ended 2022 12–2 after beating USC and its Heisman winner in the Cotton Bowl. The Green Wave made the conference title game again in 2023, but lost to SMU, soon followed by Fritz being hired away by Houston.

Besides that, the school was most notable for its on-campus stadium, a venue that was the birthplace/longtime home of the Sugar Bowl and hosted three Super Bowls and the New Orleans Saints in that team's early years. The aging stadium was condemned in 1974, the year the Saints' Superdome opened; the Wave moved in and played there for decades (except in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans^note Like the Saints, the Green Wave were forced to play elsewhere that year; however, unlike the Saints, which split their home schedule between Baton Rouge and San Antonio after playing their first "home" game in New Jersey, the Green Wave played six "home" games in five different stadiums across Louisiana and one in Alabama) before the Saints' owners helped pay for the construction of a new stadium in 2014; the playing surface is known as Benson Field, after late owner Tom Benson and his widow and current owner Gayle. Their mascot and logo is a literal anthropomorphic green tidal wave with an adorable angry face nicknamed Gumby.

Tulsa Golden Hurricane

Location: Tulsa, OK
School Established: 1892^note ...is the "official" founding date, though unlike most schools that push back their founding dates, they go with a later one—specifically when the "Presbyterian School for Girls", located in Muskogee and founded in 1882, added a college department known as "Henry Kendall College". The school relocated to Tulsa in 1907. In 1918, the Methodist Church sought to open its own McFarlin College in Tulsa, but when it became clear that Tulsa then couldn't support two competing colleges, the Methodists agreed to merge their proposed college into Kendall College in 1920, with the merged school taking the current name.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1895-1913, 1986-95),^note From 1903–07, only played in 1905; also didn't play in 1911. OCC^*Oklahoma Collegiate Conference, which existed from 1929-73 (1914-28), Big Four^*a short-lived Oklahoma-centric league not related to the Big Eight or Big 12 (1929-32), MVC (1935-85), WAC (1996-2004), CUSA (2005-13), American (2014-)
Overall Win Record: 647-534-27 (.547)
Bowl Record: 10-13 (.435)
Colors: Old gold, royal blue, and crimson
Stadium: Skelly Field at H. A. Chapman Stadium (capacity 30,000)
Current Head Coach: Kevin Wilson
Notable Historic Coaches: Francis Schmidt, Glenn Dobbs, John Cooper, Todd Graham
Notable Historic Players: Tommy Thompson, Glenn Dobbs, Hardy Brown, Jerry Rhome, Billy Anderson, Howard Twilley, Bob St. Clair, Jim Finks, Phil McGraw, Drew Pearson, Steve Largent, Dennis Byrd (1980s), Gus Frerotte
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 35 (5 OCC - 1916, 1919-20, 1922, 1925; 3 Big Four - 1929-30, 1932; 25 MVC - 1935-38, 1940-43, 1946-47, 1950-51, 1962, 1965-66, 1973-76, 1980-85; 2 CUSA - 2005, 2012)

The University of Tulsa is probably most notable for having the smallest undergraduate enrollment of any FBS school, with slightly less than 3,200 at last count. Despite that fact, they've become the Quietly Performing Sister Show to their cash cow instate counterparts Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Their peak came in The '40s, when they played in five consecutive New Year's Day bowls and achieved a #4 final ranking in 1942. Their star player in that era, Glenn Dobbs, returned to the school as AD and HC immediately after his pro career and the year after his former team went completely winless; he devised an offense that shattered NCAA passing records in the '60s. The program further served as the launch pad for John Cooper's career in the late '70s and early '80s. They've mostly underperformed since then, though they rode an era of strength in the 2000s to jump to CUSA.

Why is a team on the Oklahoma prairie called the Golden Hurricane? They originally had the more climatologically appropriate nickname of the Golden Tornadoes, but when they found out that Georgia Tech sometimes used that name as well, they switched to a more tropical storm.

UAB Blazers

Location: Birmingham, AL
School Established: 1969^note ...is the "official" founding date, when it became an autonomous university within the newly formed University of Alabama system. However, UAB's roots date to 1936, when the University of Alabama (as in Tuscaloosa) established its "Birmingham Extension Center". In 1966, the BEC became the "University of Alabama College of General Studies"; two months later UA merged the CGS with its medical school, which had moved from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham in 1945, to create the "University of Alabama in Birmingham". The current formal name was adopted in 1984, when the preposition "in" was replaced with "at".
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1991–98), CUSA (1999–2022)^note Did not play in 2015–16., American (2023–)
Overall Win Record: 172–187–2 (.478)
Bowl Record: 3–3 (.500)
Colors: Forest green and old gold
Stadium: Protective Stadium (capacity 47,100)^note Shared with the UFL's Birmingham Stallions.
Current Head Coach: Trent Dilfer
Notable Historic Coaches: Watson Brown, Bill Clark
Notable Historic Players: Roddy White, Sam Hunt
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 2 (CUSA – 2018, 2020)

The University of Alabama at Birmingham is one of the youngest institutions in Division I sports, having only started its athletics program in 1978. When it comes to football, it's most notable for its tumultuous recent history, which saw the program fold, unexpectedly come back to life, and experience even more unexpected success after its return. UAB initially focused on men's basketball and began football on the D-III level in 1991. UAB was one of a group of schools that was forcibly reclassified as I-AA (now FCS) when the NCAA ruled that D-I members had to play all sports at that level (for more details, see the Pioneer Football League in the FCS section). Deciding that if they had to be D-I, they might as well operate fully-funded, they moved to I-A (now FBS) in 1996, the year after they became a CUSA charter member, though they wouldn't play CUSA football until 1999. Up into the 2010s, they were generally mediocre, with only one bowl appearance (a loss to Hawaii in the 2004 Hawaii Bowl).

UAB had one huge factor holding it back: its governance. UAB's president reports to the UA system's governing board... which, historically, has been packed with members that (allegedly) put Tuscaloosa first.^note Among them being one Paul Bryant Jr., as in The Bear's son. The system board opposed UAB adding football in the first place and threatened to shut the program down in 2002. Four years later, it blocked UAB's planned hire of Jimbo Fisher as its new head coach before he went on to great success at other institutions. Still later, it killed a planned project to add new practice turf that a donor had fully funded, and never acted on a plan to build a new practice facility. Some of its members went so far to publicly hint that UAB shouldn't have an athletic program at all. UAB's home of Legion Field was one of the South's most storied stadiums but was increasingly decrepit and was too large for the program, even after the third deck was closed for safety reasons. The system board killed a plan to build a new stadium. All this culminated in a financial review, commissioned in 2013 and published in 2014, that concluded that football was a drain on UAB and should be shut down. The numbers in said report were shady at best and closer to Blatant Lies, but UAB's president nonetheless shut the program down in a move that was widely seen as motivated by in-state politics. This in turn led to a firestorm of criticism in both traditional and social media, along with a massively successful fundraising drive that led to the reinstatement of football shortly thereafter; the Blazers started play again in 2017. See these articles for the whole sordid story; all of them are worth a look.

The return of UAB football has been one of college football's biggest feel-good stories of recent years, with the Blazers qualifying for bowl games in each of the first six seasons since their return (though COVID-19 scrapped their planned 2020 bowl game) and winning CUSA titles in 2018 and 2020. Equally significantly, the political pressure on the UA system board led them to let the Blazers move into a new (and smaller) city-owned stadium on the grounds of the downtown convention center that opened in October 2021. Later that month, UAB was announced as one of the six CUSA members moving to The American in 2023. However, they made their move without the coach responsible for their recent rise—Bill Clark, who came to UAB in 2014 and oversaw their triumphant return from the dead, retired shortly before the 2022 season due to a deteriorating back. Their first season in The American saw the end of their run of bowl appearances.

UTSA Roadrunners

Location: San Antonio, TX
School Established: 1969^note While the school was formally established at that time, it did not start classes until 1973, and only with graduate students. The first undergraduates (juniors and seniors) were not admitted until 1975, and freshmen were not admitted until 1976.
Conference Affiliations: FCS Ind. (2011), WAC (2012), CUSA (2013–22), The American (2023–)
Overall Win Record: 86–75 (.534)
Bowl Record: 1–4 (.200)
Colors: Blue, orange, and white
Stadium: Alamodome (capacity 36,582)^note Capacity of the lower bowl; UTSA normally sells tickets for only that area. If needed, the upper bowl can be used for a total capacity of 65,000. Shared with the UFL's San Antonio Brahmas.
Current Head Coach: Jeff Traylor
Notable Historic Coaches: Larry Coker
Notable Historic Players: Frank Harris
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 2 (CUSA – 2021–22)

The University of Texas at San Antonio makes for an interesting contrast with UAB, given that both schools were (formally) founded in 1969 as secondary campuses of university systems featuring historic football superpowers and left CUSA for The American in 2023. However, unlike UAB, UTSA was founded completely from scratch and has had nothing approaching the tumultuous football history of its Alabama counterpart.

With its location in one of the largest cities of its football-crazed state, and also one with no direct competition from a pro or major-college team,^note the city's only major pro team in any sport is the Spurs it made its first moves toward a program in the late 2000s, eventually starting up in 2011. The early-2010s conference realignment and access to a stadium that had originally been built for pro football opened the door for them to play their first season as an FCS independent, move to the WAC for its second transitional season, and join CUSA when the WAC's football side imploded. The Roadrunners were able to attract Larry Coker of Miami Hurricanes fame as their first HC. Their first-ever game drew 56,743, the highest attendance ever for an NCAA team's first game, and they averaged 35,521 in their first season, also a record for a startup college football team. The Roadrunners soldiered on as a decent but inconsistent team until the arrival of current coach Jeff Traylor and the emergence of future San Antonio icon Frank Harris at QB sparked a rapid ascent, with a breakout 2021 season much like that of Coastal Carolina a year prior but with memes more focused on the mascot than mullets. The Roadrunners headed to The American off consecutive CUSA titles; while they missed out on a title in their first season in their new league, they did manage their first-ever bowl win. Meep meep.

Conference USA

^{Click here to see a map of CUSA's schools in 2024.}

^{Click here to see a map of CUSA's schools in 2025.} Delaware plans to make the FCS-FBS transtion and join CUSA for the 2025 season.

Year Established: 1995
Current schools: FIU^note Florida International, Jacksonville State, Kennesaw State, Liberty, Louisiana Tech, Middle Tennessee, New Mexico State, Sam Houston,^*though its formal name includes "State", it dropped that word from its athletic branding in 2020 UTEP, Western Kentucky
Arriving schools: Delaware (2025)
Current commissioner: Judy MacLeod
Reigning champion: Liberty
Website: conferenceusa.com

Conference USA (or just CUSA; it got rid of its former "C-USA" branding in 2023) is one of the newer conferences, formed in 1995 by a merger of the Metro and Great Midwest Conferences, two non-football leagues; competition began immediately except in football, which started in 1996. They had been gaining some prestige as of late, throwing off the "SEC-Lite" nickname that came from the initially similar geographical footprint with the more prominent conference. However, they were raided by the then-Big East once that conference started losing members to other leagues in the early 2010s. Houston, Memphis, SMU, and UCF all left CUSA in 2013 for what would become The American. East Carolina, Tulane, and Tulsa made the same move in 2014, while Western Kentucky joined CUSA from the Sun Belt at that time. The following year, CUSA senior executive Judy MacLeod was promoted to commissioner, making her the first woman to head an FBS conference. Old Dominion, a former FCS (see below) school, joined CUSA in 2013 and joined the conference's football side in 2014; it became a full FBS member in 2015. Also becoming a full FBS member at that time was Charlotte, which began football in 2013 in the FCS.^note The NCAA requires all newly created D-I football programs to play in the FCS for at least two years, even if the school is already in a FBS conference. As of the 2023 season, probably the highest-profile member is newcomer Liberty. In 2021, the young program of UTSA broke out and earned consecutive conference championships, though it left the conference right after the second championship (see immediately below). Also of note: Old Dominion, which left in 2022, was one of three FBS schools that didn't play in the COVID-affected 2020 season and the only non-independent team among them.

In fall 2021, CUSA was on the brink of collapse due to massive raids by two other conferences. First, The American announced that Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, UAB, and UTSA would move to that league in 2023. Soon after The American's raid, Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss accepted invitations to the Sun Belt Conference and left immediately in 2022. CUSA responded by announcing that then-current FBS independents Liberty and New Mexico State, plus FCS upgraders Jacksonville State and Sam Houston, would join in 2023, with another FCS upgrader, Atlanta-area school Kennesaw State, set to join in 2024. CUSA didn't stop with its raid of the FCS ranks, bringing in a fourth upgrader, Delaware, for 2025.

CUSA Teams

FIU Panthers

Location: Miami, FL
School Established: 1965
Conference Affiliations: FCS Ind. (2002–04), Sun Belt (2005–12), CUSA (2013–)
Overall Win Record: 88–170 (.341)
Bowl Record: 2–3 (.400)
Colors: Blue and gold
Stadium: Riccardo Silva Stadium (capacity 20,000)
Current Head Coach: Mike MacIntyre
Notable Historic Coaches: Mario Cristobal, Butch Davis
Notable Historic Players:
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 1 in Sun Belt (2010)

The Panthers of Florida International University merit a mention on this page as currently the second worst FBS team^note Charlotte currently has the #1 spot. in terms of program win record. The public university in Miami is relatively young itself, and its football program is even younger, only starting play in 2002. They fast-tracked their move to the FBS level in just three years but bottomed out with a winless 2006 season most memorable for a bench-clearing brawl against Miami. The following year, the school hired the first Cuban-American HC in D-I history, Mario Cristobal, reflecting its predominantly Cuban-American student body. Cristobal built the program up to its first winning seasons and a conference championship but was fired after a backslide. The program has been unstable and generally losing ever since, winning just one game across the 2020 and '21 seasons. Their biggest competition is the similarly named and young South Florida-based program at Florida Atlantic.

Jacksonville State Gamecocks

Location: Jacksonville, AL
School Established: 1883^note As Jacksonville State Normal School, then Jacksonville State Teachers College in 1930, Jacksonville State College in 1957, and Jacksonville State University in 1966.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1904–37), SIAA (1938–40), AIC^*Alabama Intercollegiate Conference (1938–49), Ind. (small college, 1950–59), Alabama Collegiate Conference (1960–69), Mid-South/Gulf South (1970–92), Ind. (D-II, 1993–95), SLC (1996–2002), OVC (2003–20), ASUN–WAC^*predecessor to the current FCS United Athletic Conference (2021), ASUN (2022), CUSA (2023–)
Overall Win Record: 564–400–40 (.559)
Bowl Record: 1–0 (1.000)
Colors: Red and white
Stadium: JSU Stadium (capacity 24,000)
Current Head Coach: Rich Rodriguez
Notable Historic Coaches: Charley Pell, Bill Clark
Notable Historic Players:
National Championships: 1 (D-II, 1992)
Conference Championships: 25 (5 Alabama Collegiate – 1962–66; 10 Mid-South/Gulf South – 1970, 1974, 1977–78, 1981–82, 1988–89, 1991–92; 9 OVC - 2003–04, 2011, 2014–18, 2020; 1 ASUN – 2022)

The football team of Jacksonville State University (located in a small town in Alabama, not the much larger city in Florida) has been active for over a century, working its way up through the myriad ranks of college football through decades of mostly good regional football. The Gamecocks reached FBS in 2023, getting into a bowl in its first year thanks to a lack of eligible non-transitioning teams and winning it.

Liberty Flames

Fan the Flames!

Location: Lynchburg, VA
School Established: 1971^note as "Lynchburg Baptist College"; became "Liberty Baptist College" in 1977 and Liberty University in 1985
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (NAIA 1973–80; D-II 1981–87, I-AA 1988–2001, FBS 2018–22), Big South (2002–17), CUSA (2023–)
Overall Win Record: 299–255–4 (.539)
Bowl Record: 3–2 (.600)
Colors: Blue, white, and red
Stadium: Williams Stadium (capacity 25,000)
Current Head Coach: Jamey Chadwell
Notable Historic Coaches: Turner Gill, Hugh Freeze
Notable Historic Players:
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 9 (8 Big South – 2007–10, 2012–14, 2016; 1 CUSA – 2023)

One of the more recent additions to FBS football, and also the youngest university in FBS, Liberty University began its life in 1971 as an offshoot of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, home of divisive pastor Jerry Falwell (Sr.). The school immediately developed a reputation as a Strawman U of the St. Jim Jonestown variety and a headquarters for the evangelical branch of conservative politics. Considerable change did come under Falwell's son and successor as president, Jerry Jr., as the university became somewhat less legalistic and dramatically grew to become the largest university in the Group of Five, and close to the largest in all of FBS... with a caveat. LU's actual on-campus enrollment is around 16,000, but it has an enormous online operation, pushing its total enrollment over 130,000 (second in FBS to Arizona State). However, the younger Falwell's tenure ended in 2020 after a particularly embarrassing sex scandal and allegations of questionable (though not illegal) financial dealings, leaving the school in an awkward spot.

As for football, Falwell Sr. was very outspoken about his grandiose plans for the program when it joined D-I toward the end of The '80s, saying that he intended Liberty to become the "Evangelical Notre Dame", and it got some attention when it hired former Cleveland Browns coach Sam Rutigliano as HC in 1989 (he stayed until 1999). After a slow and steady climb to moderate FCS success (capped by a playoff appearance in 2014), they finally pulled the trigger on their long-expected move to the FBS level by joining the independent ranks in 2018 (after lobbying heavily for an invite from the Sun Belt). The NCAA gave Liberty a waiver from its transition rules, which normally require that a school have an invitation from an FBS conference before starting the transition. 2019 was the Flames' first season as full FBS members, and they won bowls in each of their first three seasons of eligibility, joining Appalachian State as the only other school to have done so. With Conference USA having been raided to within an inch of its life in 2021, Liberty became attractive to that league, and it joined in 2023; the Flames immediately posted their first-ever undefeated regular season, won the conference title game, and picked up the G5 New Year's Six bid (where they were smoked by Oregon).

New Mexico State Aggies

Aggie Up!

Location: Las Cruces, NM
School Established: 1888^note Founded as "Las Cruces College"; became "New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts" (aka New Mexico A&M) the next year before adopting the current name in 1960.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1893–1930, 1962–70, 2013, 2018–22), Border (1931–61), MVC (1971–82), Big West (1983–2000), Sun Belt (2001–04, 2014–17), WAC (2005–12), CUSA (2023–)
Overall Win Record: 456–670–30 (.407)
Bowl Record: 4–1–1 (.750)
Colors: Crimson and white
Stadium: Aggie Memorial Stadium (capacity 30,343)
Current Head Coach: Tony Sanchez
Notable Historic Coaches: Warren B. Woodson, Charley Johnson, Hal Mumme
Notable Historic Players: Charley Johnson
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 4 (2 Border – 1938, 1960; 2 Missouri Valley – 1976, 1978)

New Mexico State University is another example of a school with a strong men's basketball program that struggles to find relevance in football. The undisputed peak of the program came in 1960, when they went undefeated under Hall of Fame coach Warren B. Woodson and QB Charley Johnson.^note The program went undefeated several times before then... in an era where they had truly terrible competition and played half their games against high schools. However, the Aggies (represented in mascot form by a pistol-wielding cowboy) have fallen off hard since Woodson's departure in 1967, with only seven winning seasons and two completely winless ones in that half-century-plus span that saw them struggle to find a steady conference home. They're a frequent member of ESPN's "Bottom 10" as "Whew Mexico State", living mostly in the shadow of New Mexico in their own state and even UTEP (a team bad enough to also frequently appear in the Bottom 10 as "UTEPID") in their immediate region. The Aggies failed to reach a bowl from 1960 to 2017 and even chose not to play in 2020 (though they pieced together two games against FCS teams in spring 2021, making them the only FBS team to play in the spring).

With NMSU's then-current all-sports home of the Western Athletic Conference relaunching FCS football in 2021 with visions of returning the conference to FBS, it was thought that NMSU would stay put in that league. However, with CUSA suddenly depleted after the 2021 realignment shuffle, NMSU became an attractive option (even for UTEP, which had reportedly been reluctant to share a conference with NMSU), so the Aggies moved there in 2023. Despite their overall historic futility, the Aggies entered the 2023 season as the only current FBS team to have never lost in a bowl appearance, and are finally looking like a real football team; in their first year in CUSA, the Aggies posted their first 10-win season since their 1960 peak and competed in the conference title game (but suffered their first-ever bowl loss).

UTEP Miners

Picks Up!

Location: El Paso, TX
School Established: 1913^note As "Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy", then University of Texas Department of M&M in 1918, Texas College of M&M in 1921, Texas Western College in 1948, and UTEP in 1966.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1914–34, 1962–67), Border (1935–61), WAC (1968–2004), CUSA (2005–)
Overall Win Record: 414–635–28 (.397)
Bowl Record: 5–10 (.333)
Colors: Dark blue, orange, and silver
Stadium: Sun Bowl (capacity 46,670)
Current Head Coach: Scotty Walden
Notable Historic Coaches: Mike Price
Notable Historic Players: Don Maynard, Chuck Hughes, Ed Hochuli, Jordan Palmer
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 2 (1 Border – 1956; 1 WAC – 2000)

The University of Texas at El Paso is a unique American university known for its majority Hispanic student population and its distinct Tibetan monastery-inspired architecture. UTEP has played an important role in the history of college sports, most notably for its 1966 basketball team that won a national championship after assembling the first all-Black starting lineup in NCAA history (as dramatized in Glory Road) and for winning 20 national championships in cross country and track and field in the 1970s and '80s. In football, however, UTEP is really only notable for its stadium, the Sun Bowl, which has a very unique location (embedded in mountains overlooking the U.S.-Mexico border) and hosts one of the oldest bowl games. While the Sun Bowl has hosted a number of very memorable games, few of them have involved its home team; the Miners are one of the worst performing teams in the FBS, with completely winless seasons in 1973 and 2017 and far fewer winning seasons than losing ones. The program's historical highlight came in 1985, when the Miners knocked off #7-ranked defending national champion BYU by a score of 23–16, often regarded as one of the biggest upsets in major college history; it was UTEP's only win that year.

Western Kentucky Hilltoppers

Location: Bowling Green, KY
School Established: 1906^note As Western Kentucky State Normal School. The school actually can be traced back to 1876 with the private Glasgow Normal School and Business College (Glasgow being a small town one county over from Bowling Green); 1906 is when it became a public school, and even then went through numerous transformations before settling on the WKU form in 1966.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1913–25, 1942–45), SIAA (1926–42), Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference^*Now known as the River States Conference; no longer sponsors football, and currently an NAIA league. (1946–47), OVC (1948–81, 1999–2000), I-AA Ind. (1982–88), Gateway (2001–06), FCS Ind. (2007), FBS Ind. (2008), Sun Belt (2009–14), CUSA (2015–)
Overall Win Record: 623–431–30 (.589)
Bowl Record: 11–5 (.688)^note FBS: 7–3 (.700)
Colors: Red and white
Stadium: Houchens Industries–L. T. Smith Stadium (23,776 capacity)
Current Head Coach: Tyson Helton
Notable Historic Coaches: Jack Harbaugh, Willie Taggart, Bobby Petrino
Notable Historic Players: Romeo Crennel, Willie Taggart, Rod Smart, Bailey Zappe
National Championships: 1 in FCS (2002)
Conference Championships: 13 (1 SIAA – 1932; 9 OVC – 1952, 1963, 1970–71, 1973, 1975, 1978, 1980, 2000; 1 Gateway – 2002; 2 CUSA – 2015–16)

A longstanding Division I-AA power, Western Kentucky University rose to football prominence during the long tenure of Jack Harbaugh (Jim and John's dad) through the '90s, culminating in an FCS championship in 2002. The Hilltoppers ("Toppers" for short)^note The central campus is atop a hill overlooking the Barren River valley. transitioned to FBS soon after, but after going winless in 2009, they returned to their past by hiring former star QB Willie Taggart to be HC; his success in reviving their prospects launched his brief sojourn into the major college ranks. Nowadays, WKU is known best for two things: its immensely productive offense that spawned FBS record-holding QB Bailey Zappe in 2021, and its odd mascot, an amorphous red blob known only as "Big Red", who has become the center of a lengthy transatlantic legal dispute, with WKU claiming that the Italian TV character Gabibbo is an unauthorized knockoff of Big Red (something Gabibbo's creator has in fact admitted to). The Toppers also entered the 2023 season as the only current CUSA member to have won the conference's championship.

Mid-American Conference

^{Click here to see a map of the MAC's schools in 2024.}

^{Click here to see a map of the MAC's schools in 2025.} UMass plans to abandon their independent status and return to the MAC for the 2025 season.

Year Established: 1946
Current schools: Akron, Ball State, Bowling Green, Buffalo, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Kent State, Miami (OH), Northern Illinois, Ohio, Toledo, Western Michigan
Arriving schools: UMass (2025)
Current commissioner: Jon Steinbrecher
Reigning champion: Miami (OH)
Website: getsomemaction.com

The Mid-American Conference (or MAC), founded in 1947, is one of the two FBS conferences whose full members are all state-supported, and has probably the strangest profile of any FBS conference. On the field, it hasn't accomplished a whole lot over the decades. No MAC school has ever won a national championship, and none have ever finished higher than #10 in the polls (Miami in 1974 and 2003, Marshall in 1999). In any given week, it usually has at least one entry in ESPN's "Bottom 10".^note Among the derisive nicknames the writer gives to MAC teams: Akronmonious, Boiling Green, Buffalo Bulls Not Bills, State of Kent, My Hammy of Ohio. Basically the entire point of the MAC is to be the little brother of the Big Ten, providing their teams (and other big-name teams) with some easy wins each year. But the MAC also has some deep tradition, with a number of notable coaches and players having passed through the conference on their way to greater things. Three MAC teams (Bowling Green, Central Michigan, Northern Illinois) won national championships on the D-II level earlier in their history, and future member UMass has one FCS natty. The MAC was slated to get relegated to Division I-AA in 1982, when all but two of its schools (Central Michigan and Toledo were the exceptions) failed to meet the NCAA's attendance requirement for I-A membership, but the conference successfully lobbied the NCAA to allow them to remain at the top level.

The MAC has had its share of big upsets and glory over the years. 2012 was a breakout year, with several impressive wins against Big Ten teams and conference champion Northern Illinois even playing in the Orange Bowl as the final BCS Buster. They then followed it up in 2016 when Western Michigan was one of only two teams to make it through the regular season undefeated (though it lost its bowl game to Wisconsin). To more devoted college football fans, the MAC is equally known as a land where anything can happen on any night of the week, with regular games between Tuesday and Thursday, leading to the #MACtion meme (the source of its web address). The MAC is the only Group of Five conference to regularly hold its championship game at a neutral site, having played said game at Detroit's Ford Field since 2004. From 1997–2023, the title game featured the winners of its two divisions (East and West), but the divisions were scrapped after the 2023 season.

Despite its reputation for on-field shenanigans, the MAC is also notable for the relative stability of its membership. Although the MAC had two changes in football-only membership during the early-2010s conference realignment cycle,^note Temple to the Big East/American in 2012, and UMass joining MAC football in 2012 and leaving after the 2015 season it was the only FBS conference that did not gain or lose a core (i.e., all-sports) member during that time. It also has yet to have a core membership change in the 2020s, though that will change in 2025. Following the American's and Sun Belt's 2021 raids on CUSA, poaching six and three members respectively, the MAC was rumored to be launching its own raid of the already weakened conference, courting Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky to expand the MAC's footprint southward, but MT decided to stay put, causing the MAC to lose interest in WKU. However, this period of stability will end in 2025, with UMass returning to MAC football and bringing almost all of its other sports along for the ride.^note Before the impending arrival of UMass, the last change to the MAC's core membership was Marshall's departure for Conference USA in 2005.

MAC Teams

Bowling Green Falcons

Location: Bowling Green, OH
School Established: 1910^note Created as part of the same Ohio legislative bill that also created Kent State. It opened in 1914 as Bowling Green State Normal School, became Bowling Green State College in 1929, then BGSU in 1935.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1919-20, 1931-32, 1942-51), Northwest Ohio League (1921-30), Ohio Athletic Conference (1933-41), MAC (1952- )
Overall Win Record: 557–420–52 (.566)
Bowl Record: 5–9 (.357)
Colors: Orange and brown
Stadium: Doyt Perry Stadium (capacity 24,000)
Current Head Coach: Scot Loeffler
Notable Historic Coaches: Don Nehlen, Urban Meyer
Notable Historic Players: Don Nehlen, Bernie Casey, Brian McClure
National Championships: 1 in D-II (1959)^note The NCAA "College Division" didn't conduct playoffs at the time. UPI conducted a "small college" weekly poll, and Bowling Green was voted #1 in the final poll, getting 23 of 33 first place votes. The NCAA recognizes this as a national championship.
Conference Championships: 17 (5 Northwest Ohio - 1921-22, 1925, 1928-29; 12 MAC - 1956, 1959, 1961-62, 1964-65, 1982, 1985, 1991-92, 2013, 2015)

Located 15 miles south of Toledo, Ohio, Bowling Green State University (they prefer "Bowling Green" as their athletic branding, but use BGSU as an abbreviation) is a well-regarded public college, especially famed for its Media Studies program. On the sports side, its signature programs are probably men's ice hockey (winning the national championship in 1984) and women's basketball. Its football team is a fairly consistent winner with several standout periods. Stadium namesake Doyt Perry, a close personal friend of Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler, notched an impressive 77–11–5 record at BGSU from 1955-64, including an undefeated season and the College Division national title in 1959, with that team's star RB Bernie Casey going onto an NFL career and a later stint in Hollywood. Don Nehlen, who played QB for Perry from 1955-57, was the HC from 1968-76 and managed to schedule a number of marquee opponents for non-conference games, pulling off big upsets in the process, most famously against a ranked Purdue squad in 1972. Nehlen's replacement Denny Stolz turned the Falcons into one of the first major college teams to utilize heavy passing and multiple receiver sets, with QB Brian McClure becoming one of the first college players to pass for more than 10,000 yards in a career. More recently, BGSU gave Urban Meyer his first HC job, going 17-6 from 2001-02. They have a heated rivalry with neighboring Toledo, having played their very first varsity game against UT in 1919.

BGSU made two unusual contributions to National Football League history. In 1946, Cleveland Browns founder Paul Brown went to scout BGSU as a possible training camp location for his new team. While the Browns did end up hosting their first few training camps at BGSU, the school's more permanent contribution was the Browns' brown/orange color scheme, which Paul Brown was always quick to credit to BGSU's influence. Later, during the 1987 players strike, the aforementioned Brian McClure joined the Buffalo Bills replacement squad, and was the winning QB in their notorious game against the Giants in which Lawrence Taylor crossed the picket line to suit up against the "scab" players.

Central Michigan Chippewas

Location: Mount Pleasant, MI
School Established: 1892
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1896-1949, 1970-74), Interstate Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (1950-69), MAC (1975- )
Overall Win Record: 647-450-36 (.587)
Bowl Record: 4–9 (.308)
Colors: Maroon and gold
Stadium: Kelly/Shorts Stadium (capacity 30,255)
Current Head Coach: Jim McElwain
Notable Historic Coaches: Roy Kramer, Herb Deromedi, Brian Kelly
Notable Historic Players: Gary Hogeboom, J.J. Watt,^note played one season at tight end before transferring to Wisconsin Dan LeFevour, Antonio Brown, Eric Fisher
National Championships: 1 in D-II (1974)
Conference Championships: 16 (9 IIAC - 1952-56, 1962, 1966-68; 7 MAC - 1978-80, 1990, 1994, 2006-07, 2009)

Located almost exactly in the middle of the Michigan "mitten", Central Michigan University plays the role of Quietly Performing Sister Show to Michigan and Michigan State, having established its own tradition and winning legacy in the shadow of its bigger brothers. Second to Miami among MAC schools in both wins and win percentage, CMU joined the conference in 1975 after winning the D-II national championship the previous season^note under HC Roy Kramer, who would make an even greater impact on college football as SEC commissioner and quickly established itself as a power under Hall of Fame coach Herb Deromedi (1967-77 as an assistant, 1978-93 as HC, 1994-2006 as AD). In 2004, they made the unusual move for an FBS school of hiring an HC from the D-II level by bringing in Brian Kelly from Grand Valley State; he guided them to a conference title in three seasons before departing for numerous high-profile gigs. This laid the groundwork for 2009, where the school program saw its only AP Poll rankings thanks to dynamic dual-threat QB Dan LeFevour and future NFL legend/menace Antonio Brown. The program has not come close to this peak in the decade-plus since.

CMU is one of six schools who have permission from the NCAA to use a Native American nickname, since the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe has formally approved use of the name.^note The other schools with NCAA permission include four who also have tribal approvals for their name—Florida State (Seminoles), Utah (Utes) and the D-II schools Catawba (Indians) and Mississippi College (Choctaws)—plus one school—D-II UNC Pembroke (Braves)—that was originally founded to educate Native Americans, has close ties with the local Lumbee tribe, and successfully convinced the NCAA to give them an exemption.

Eastern Michigan Eagles

Location: Ypsilanti, MI
School Established: 1849^note As Michigan State Normal School, then Michigan State Normal College in 1899 and Eastern Michigan University in 1959
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1891-93, 1895, 1902-19, 1926, 1931-49, 1966-75)^note Did not field a team in 1944 due to WWII, Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (1894, 1896-1901, 1920-25), Michigan Collegiate Conference (1927-30), IIAC (1950-61), Presidents Athletic Conference (1964-65), MAC (1976-)
Overall Win Record: 490-623-47 (.443)
Bowl Record: 2-5 (.286)
Colors: Green and white
Stadium: Rynearson Stadium (capacity 30,200)
Current Head Coach: Chris Creighton
Notable Historic Coaches: Elton Rynearson
Notable Historic Players: George Allen, Maxx Crosby^note While likely future Pro Hall of Famer Antonio Gates first played college sports at EMU, he played basketball instead of football. He left after one season for a California juco before returning to the MAC at Kent State, again for basketball only.
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 10 (2 MIAA - 1896, 1925; 4 MCC - 1927-30; 3 IIAC - 1954-55, 1957; 1 MAC - 1987)

Located in Ypsilanti (the birthplace of Domino's Pizza), just east of Ann Arbor, the massive shadow of the Michigan Wolverines has always loomed large over Eastern Michigan University's football program (their stadiums are a mere 5 miles apart), but it was once a regional power under the Long Runner tenure of stadium namesake Elton Rynearson, who coached the team in various stints from 1917-48 and stayed on as AD until 1963. Most of that tenure was when the school was "Michigan State Normal College"; as EMU, the school has mightily struggled on the gridiron, from a 27-game losing streak from 1980-82 to posting exactly one winning season from 1990 to 2015 (with another winless one in 2009). That latter streak coincidentally (or perhaps not) coincided with the team changing their mascot from "Huron" (a French name for the indigenous people of the region) to the more generic Eagles. Not to mention that in 1984, the MAC presidents voted to expel EMU from the conference less than two months before the football season started. EMU fought the move and the NCAA stepped in to void the presidents' vote. Three years later, EMU won its only MAC title to date, in the process beating all seven schools whose presidents had voted for the expulsion.^note In order of play: Miami, Kent State, Northern Illinois (which had left the MAC after the 1985 season), Ball State, Ohio, Toledo, Bowling Green. The school calls that season "college football's ultimate revenge tour".

The current tenure of coach Chris Creighton, who has had four winning seasons just over .500 since his arrival in Ypsi in 2014, has by comparison been a massive improvement. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Creighton's arrival coincided with EMU becoming one of the few FBS teams to adopt a colored field, a dull gray that has contributed to the stadium's nickname: "The Factory". Fun fact: Both of Eastern Michigan's bowl victories came against San Jose State, 35 years apart.

Kent State Golden Flashes

Location: Kent, OH
School Established: 1910^note As "Ohio State Normal College at Kent"; that lasted a year before switching to Kent State Normal School, then Kent State Normal College in 1915, Kent State College in 1929, and the current name in 1935.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1920-31), OAC (1932–50),^note Did not play in the war years of 1943–45. MAC (1951-)
Overall Win Record: 365-596-28 (.383)
Bowl Record: 1–4 (.200)
Colors: Blue and gold
Stadium: Dix Stadium (capacity 25,319)
Current Head Coach: Kenni Burns
Notable Historic Coaches: Don James
Notable Historic Players: Lou Holtz, Nick Saban, Gary Pinkel, Jack Lambert, Eric Wilkerson, James Harrison, Josh Cribbs, Julian Edelman^note As noted in the Eastern Michigan description, Antonio Gates spent his last two college years at Kent State playing basketball, not football.
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 1 (MAC - 1972)

Kent State University, a former teachers' college located 40 miles from Cleveland, has been a major Butt-Monkey for almost all of its football history; it has just one conference title to its credit, posted four winless seasons in the 1980s and '90s, and has the lowest overall winning percentage of any FBS team that's played more than 50 seasons. It once lost something called the Refrigerator Bowl.^note A bowl for small college teams played in Evansville, Indiana from 1948-56. The school itself is best known for the 1970 incident in which the Ohio National Guard fired on an anti-Vietnam war protest, killing four students (two protesters, two bystanders). And yet: look at that list of notable names above! There's a surprising number of former Golden Flash players who've gone on to greater success in either the NFL or college coaching. They've had just three winning seasons in this century, but the last two were memorable: In 2012 they went 11-3 and made the MAC championship game, losing in double overtime to Northern Illinois. In 2019, they finally won their first bowl game, knocking off Utah State in the Frisco Bowl.

Miami RedHawks

Location: Oxford, OH
School Established: 1809
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1888-1946), MAC (1947-)
Overall Win Record: 724-484-44 (.596)
Bowl Record: 8–7 (.533)
Colors: Red and white
Stadium: Yager Stadium (capacity 24,286)
Current Head Coach: Chuck Martin
Notable Historic Coaches: Sid Gillman, Woody Hayes, Ara Parseghian, Bo Schembechler, Michael Haywood^note Listing only head coaches; Miami assistants who went on to successful coaching careers include Jim Tressel and Sean Payton, to name just two
Notable Historic Players: Earl "Red" Blaik^*played three seasons before transferring to West Point during WWI, Weeb Ewbank, Paul Brown, Ara Parseghian, Paul Dietzel, Bill Arnsparger, Bo Schembechler, Clive Rush, Ed Biles, Brian Pillman, John Harbaugh, Travis Prentice, Ben Roethlisberger, Sean McVay
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 23 (3 OAC – 1916-18, 1921; 3 Buckeye – 1931-32, 1936; 17 MAC – 1948, 1950, 1954-55, 1957-58, 1965-66, 1973-75, 1977, 1986, 2003, 2010, 2019, 2023)

Miami University^note named for the Miami River Valley and the Miami tribal nation that historically calls it home is one of the oldest public universities in the United States and the birthplace of a great many fraternities. It is much less well-known on the national stage than the much younger Florida private school with the similar name, but it has still had a great impact on football history and is the traditional power of the MAC even with far fewer winning seasons than losing ones in the 21st century. While the RedHawks (known as the "Redskins" until 1997) have enjoyed periods of great success, with undefeated seasons in 1908, '21, '55, and '73, their real legacy is on the sideline. Miami proudly calls itself the "Cradle of Coaches" because of the great number of prominent coaches in both college and the NFL who have played and/or coached at the school.^note Of the "historic" figures listed here, exactly one (Ben Roethlisberger) achieved his greatest fame as an NFL player. Travis Prentice had a forgettable NFL career; Brian Pillman had a brief NFL career before making his name in pro wrestling.

And yes, Miami (Ohio) has played Miami (Florida), 4 times (1945, 1946, 1987, 2023), with the Florida team winning all the games (the scores were 54–3 in '87 and 38–3 in '23).

Northern Illinois Huskies

Location: DeKalb, IL
School Established: 1895^note As "Northern Illinois State Normal School", became a Teachers College in 1921 State College in 1955, and University in 1957
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1899-1919, 1925-27, 1966-72, 1986-92, 1996), IIAC (1920-24, 1928-65), Big West (1993-95), MAC (1975-85, 1997-)
Overall Win Record: 611-525-51 (.536)
Bowl Record: 4-11 (.267)
Colors: Cardinal and black
Stadium: Huskie Stadium (capacity 24,000)
Current Head Coach: Thomas Hammock
Notable Historic Coaches: Chick Evans, Howard Fletcher
Notable Historic Players: George Bork, Stacey Robinson, Michael Turner, Sam Hurd, Jordan Lynch
National Championships: 1 in D-II (1963)
Conference Championships: 12 (6 IIAC - 1938, 1944, 1951, 1963-65; 6 MAC - 1983, 2011-12, 2014, 2018, 2021)

Northern Illinois University's football program started out as a regional power under the Long Runner tenure of Chick Evans (HC and AD from 1929-54, AD until 1968) and produced an innovative spread shotgun offense under Howard Fletcher (1956-68) that shattered passing records and won the school the 1963 D-II championship. The Huskies struggled with the move to the major college ranks after Fletcher's retirement and underperformed for decades. A couple of bright spots were a MAC title in 1983 and Jerry Pettibone's HC tenure from 1985-90, when his high-octane wishbone attack guided the Huskies to a 9-2 record in '89, and a record-setting 73-18 upset over a ranked Fresno State squad a year later. But the decision to leave the MAC after the 1985 season hurt the program in the long run, and things had gotten so bad that they bottomed out with a winless 1997 campaign, the same year they returned to the MAC. NIU returned to power in the MAC, with their undefeated 2012 regular season under dynamic dual-threat QB Jordan Lynch making them the conference's only (and the last ever) BCS Buster. Their results in recent years have been the model of inconsistency, going from a winless COVID-impacted season in 2020 to winning the MAC the next year.

Toledo Rockets

Location: Toledo, OH
School Established: 1872^note As Toledo University of Arts & Trades, then Toledo Manual Training School in 1884, Toledo University in 1914, and University of Toledo in 1968
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1917-20, 1948-51), Northwest Ohio League (1921-30), Ohio Athletic Conference (1932-47), MAC (1952-)
Overall Win Record: 581-451-24 (.562)
Bowl Record: 11-10 (.524)
Colors: Blue^note The university used to denote the exact shade as "midnight blue", but more recently switched to "cobalt blue" and gold
Stadium: Glass Bowl (26,248)
Current Head Coach: Jason Candle
Notable Historic Coaches: Nick Saban, Gary Pinkel
Notable Historic Players: Emlen Tunnell,^*played one season before joining the US Coast Guard during WWII; transferred to Iowa after the war Chuck Ealey, Mel Long, Gene Swick, Brett Kern
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 15 (3 Northwest Ohio - 1923, 1927, 1929; 12 MAC - 1967, 1969-71, 1981, 1984, 1990, 1995, 2001, 2004, 2017, 2022)

While Miami Ohio has the MAC's best-looking historical football ledger, the University of Toledo isn't too far behind. After starting their football history with a 145-0 loss to the now-defunct Detroit program^*now Detroit Mercy, the Rockets steadily improved. The program has four AP final poll appearances to its credit and went on a 35-game winning streak from 1969-71 under Hall of Fame QB Chuck Ealey. Nick Saban had his first HC job here, going 9-2 in 1990; he was succeeded by Gary Pinkel, who stayed a little longer before also going on to greater success. Toledo can also boast of having won the first overtime game in FBS history, a 40-37 defeat of Nevada in the 1995 Las Vegas Bowl. Additionally, one cannot mention Toledo without mentioning their dismal 2008 season, where their 3-9 record would be forgotten if not for the fact that one of those wins was the first ever MAC victory over Michigan. The Rockets' mascots are Rocky and Rocksy, whose modern iterations dress like futuristic astronauts (though the original Rocky was an anthropomorphic missile).

Mountain West Conference

^{Click here to see a map of the Mountain West's schools.}

Year Established: 1998
Current schools: Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Hawaii (football only), Nevada, New Mexico, San Diego State, San Jose State, UNLV, Utah State, Wyoming
Current commissioner: Gloria Nevarez
Reigning champion: Boise State
Website: themw.com

Formed in 1999 by a group of 8 disgruntled Western Athletic Conference schools unhappy with the arrangement of the WAC's "super-conference" alignment, the Mountain West Conference (or MW) began the CFP era as arguably the most competitive "Group of Five" conference, though The American has more recently claimed that crown and the Sun Belt is rising fast. Ironically, the MW has absorbed other former WAC schools during the realignment shakeups of the 2000s and 2010s (the most recent being San Jose State and Utah State, joining in 2013). Four of its members^*Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State had been courted by The American after it was raided by the Big 12 in 2021, but all chose to stay put, apparently leading to that conference's raid of CUSA. The MW team most familiar to casual fans outside its region is Boise State. Like the MAC (and also the Sun Belt Conference), all of its full members are public schools—but unlike the other two named leagues, not all of the members are state-supported. It's the only FBS conference with a federal service academy as a full member, namely Air Force.^note The primary home of Army, an FBS independent soon to join the American Conference for football, and established American Conference football member Navy is the FCS Patriot League. With the 2020s realignment stripping the Pac-12 of all but two of its 12 members so far, it's looking more and more likely that the two leftovers, Oregon State and Washington State, will join in the not-too-distant future—possibly under the "Pac-12" brand—though no announcement has been made.

The MW adopted football divisions once it expanded to 12 teams in 2013—Mountain (schools in the Mountain Time Zone) and West (those on Pacific Time—i.e., the California and Nevada schools—plus Hawaii). However, once the NCAA gave FBS conferences full freedom in setting up their title game pairings, the MW announced it would eliminate the divisions in 2023. For that season, it adopted a "2–6" scheduling model, with each team having two permanent opponents and playing 6 other conference games. The 6 non-permanent opponents flip every year, and the format is organized to allow each team to play all of its non-permanent opponents once home and once away in a three-year cycle (not coincidentally, less than the standard length of a college playing career). The championship game will feature the top two teams in the conference standings. In 2024, the MW will be in a scheduling alliance with the "Pac-2" (i.e., Oregon State and Washington State); each MW school will play one game against either of the two remaining Pac schools, giving those schools six guaranteed games. Those games will not count in the MW standings, and the Pac-2 won't be eligible for the MW championship game. This was seen as the first step in an eventual merger of some type between the MW, OSU, and Wazzu.

MW Teams

Air Force Falcons

Location: USAF Academy, CO (just outside Colorado Springs)
School Established: 1954
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1955–79), WAC (1980–98), MW (1999–)
Overall Win Record: 433–342–13 (.558)
Bowl Record: 16–13–1 (.550)
Colors: Blue and silver
Stadium: Falcon Stadium (capacity 46,692)
Current Head Coach: Troy Calhoun
Notable Historic Coaches: Buck Shaw, Bill Parcells, Ken Hatfield, Fisher DeBerry
Notable Historic Players: Brian Billick^*Transferred to BYU after one year when he found out he was too tall to qualify as a fighter pilot. Seriously.
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 3 (WAC – 1985, 1995, 1998)

The youngest of the three major service academies, The United States Air Force Academy began as the Quietly Performing Sister Show to Army and Navy, often succumbing to Every Year They Fizzle Out syndrome, apart from two early standout seasons: 1958 (Cotton Bowl, #6 final poll finish) and 1970 (Sugar Bowl, #11 poll finish). Two major factors kickstarted the rise of Falcon football: the hiring of Ken Hatfield as head coach in 1979, and joining the Western Athletic Conference the next year. While the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy was introduced in 1972 to go to the winner of the series between Army, Navy, and Air Force, the Falcons didn't win it until 1982. Since then, they've won the trophy 20 times, compared to 11 for Navy and 7 for Army in that span of time. Hatfield brought the option offense with him, and the Falcons have run it ever since, even after most college teams abandoned the run-based option for looser passing or spread offenses. The option helps them deal with the stringent requirements for admission to the academy that limit the team's ability to attract top athletes. The discipline, finesse, and proactive nature of the option mesh well with military training, and after Air Force's success with the offense, Army and Navy have generally run it as well. Hatfield quickly catapulted off of his early success to take other high-profile coaching gigs, but since his departure in 1983, the program has only had two head coaches: Hall of Famer Fisher DeBerry, who took the program within one game of playing for a national title in 1985, and Troy Calhoun, who took over in 2007 and has kept the team competitive in the west.

Despite putting up most of its yards on the ground, Air Force lives up to its name in more ways than one. Besides its (living) Falcon mascot, its stadium near Colorado Springs has the second-highest elevation of any FBS venue (6,621 feet), and its cadets live more than 600 feet higher (7,258 feet). They also have one of the longest-standing helmet designs in any level of football, the lightning bolts that have adorned their helmets since the early years of the program, riffing on the frequent use of lightning bolts in fighter pilot insignias dating back to World War II. Fun fact: the Los Angeles Chargers use of bolts on their helmets was directly inspired by Air Force, though the Chargers deliberately used a different design.

Boise State Broncos

Location: Boise, ID
School Established: 1932
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1933-47, 1968-69),^note Began play as a junior college in 1933 and as a four-year school in 1968. No team in the war years of 1942–45. ICAC^*Intermountain Collegiate Athletic Conference, juco conference that lasted from 1936-84 (1948-67), Big Sky^*The Big Sky played D-II football before moving to FCS (then I-AA) upon that group's creation in 1978. (1970-95), Big West (1996-2000), WAC (2001-10), MW (2011-)
Overall Win Record: 491–186–2 (.725)^note Counting all games as a four-year institution; juco record of 200–61–9, FBS record is 271–85 (.761).
Bowl Record: 13–8 (.619)
Colors: Blue and orange
Stadium: Albertsons Stadium (capacity 37,000)
Current Head Coach: Spencer Danielson
Notable Historic Coaches: Chris Petersen
Notable Historic Players: Dave Wilcox^*played during the school's juco era before transferring to Oregon, Ian Johnson, Kellen Moore
National Championships: 1 in NJCAA (1958), 1 in FCS (1980)^note 2 unclaimed FBS championships (2006, 2009)
Conference Championships: 21 (6 Big Sky – 1973–75, 1977, 1980, 1994; 2 Big West – 1999, 2000; 8 WAC – 2002–06, 2008–10; 5 MW – 2012, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2023)^note does not include 15 conference titles as a junior college

The Broncos of Boise State University have been one of the more consistently competitive programs in the nation, often punching well above their weight class. Going into 2024, BSU has the highest winning percentage of any school outside the Power Five, and when only games played as a member of FBS and its predecessors are counted, Boise State actually leads the entire pack by a healthy margin. The Broncos enjoyed great football success as a junior college, winning 15 conference titles (13 in a row) and one national title before becoming a four-year school in the late 1960s. They were regionally competitive until a surge in the early days of FCS, winning that level's national title in 1980. After some ups and downs, including a move to FBS (then I-A) in 1996, they truly emerged in the 21st century as a member of the WAC, with their coming-out party on the national stage being an epic undefeated 2006 season, capped with an overtime win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl fueled by a series of incredible trick plays. The Broncos reached even greater heights from 2008-11 with Kellen Moore at QB, going undefeated again in 2009 and becoming the first FBS team ever to win 50 games in a four-year period (before the CFP) and making Moore the winningest FBS QB ever. Moore's final season was also the Broncos' first in the MW, where they've established themselves as a regular contender and one of the more dangerous Group of Five teams, having not posted a losing record since 1997. While a down year by their standards in 2023 saw them briefly in danger of breaking this streak, leading to their HC being fired, the Broncos ended up winning the MW championship game anyway.

But that probably isn't what you know Boise State for. Since 1986, the Broncos have played their home games at Albertsons Stadium on a vibrant blue artificial turf. Nicknamed "the Surf Turf", "the Smurf Turf", "the Blue Plastic Tundra", or simply "the Blue", the field was the first non-green field in American football and still the most visible. Though not the only program with a colored field, it does hold the trademark, so other schools have to get a license from Boise State if they want to color theirs. Keeping their field unique provides more than just financial benefits; the Broncos have one of the most dominant home field advantages in sports, as its blue uniforms can help to camouflage players. The program didn't lose a regular season home game from 2001-11, which led the NCAA to nearly pass a rule requiring the team wear non-blue uniforms (the school successfully campaigned to knock that down).

Colorado State Rams

Location: Fort Collins, CO
School Established: 1870^note as "Colorado Agricultural College", then as Colorado A&M (1935-57)
Conference Affiliations: CFA (1893-1908), RMAC (1909-37), Skyline (1938-61), Ind. (1962-67), WAC (1968-98), MW (1999-)
Overall Win Record: 541–620–33 (.467)
Bowl Record: 6–11 (.353)
Colors: Green and gold
Stadium: Canvas Stadium (capacity 41,000)
Current Head Coach: Jay Norvell
Notable Historic Coaches: Harry W. Hughes, Earle Bruce, Sonny Lubick
Notable Historic Players: Glenn Morris, Jack Christiansen, Gary Glick, Bubba Baker, Kelly Stouffer, Ryan Stonehouse
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 15 (8 RMAC – 1915–16, 1919-20, 1925, 1927, 1933-34; 1 Skyline – 1955; 3 WAC – 1994-95, 1997; 3 MW – 1999-2000, 2002)

A relatively small program located in northern Colorado, Colorado State University's team has largely struggled through its history, with consecutive winless seasons in 1961-62, another in 1981, plenty more in the pre-modern era, and numerous other poor showings. The program is notable for a) having the same HC in Harry W. Hughes for over three decades (1911-41, '46), who brought them the most regional success and became namesake of their former stadium, b) briefly contending for national rankings under Sonny Lubick (1993-2007), who became namesake of the playing surface of both their former and current stadiums, and c) sporting the same ram horn helmet designs as their NFL counterparts (which they've used since 1973, when newly hired HC Sark Arslanian added to them their previously blank helmets). The school has recently poured tons of money into the program, including building a brand-new stadium in 2017 whose size greatly exceeds the largest crowd that's ever assembled to watch the Rams. The results have so far been... underwhelming.

Fresno State Bulldogs

Location: Fresno, CA
School Established: 1911^note As Fresno State Normal School, then became Fresno State College in 1949, then California State University, Fresno in 1972.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1921, 1951-52), California Coast Conference (1922-24), Far Western Conference (1925-40), California Collegiate Athletic Association (1939-50, 53-68), PCAA/Big West (1969-91), WAC (1992-2012), MW (2013-)
Overall Win Record: 645–445–28 (.589)
Bowl Record: 17–14 (.548)
Colors: Cardinal red, blue and white
Stadium: Valley Children's Stadium, historically known as Bulldog Stadium (capacity 40,727)
Current Head Coach: Jeff Tedford
Notable Historic Coaches: Jim Sweeney, Kalen DeBoer
Notable Historic Players: Henry Ellard, Jeff Tedford, Kevin Sweeney, Lorenzo Neal, Trent Dilfer, David and Derek Carr, Logan Mankins, Davante Adams, DaRon Bland
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 29 (2 California Coast - 1922-23, 4 Far Western - 1930; 1934-35; 1937, 10 CCAA - 1941-42; 1954-56; 1958-61; 1968, 6 PCAA/Big West - 1977; 1982; 1985; 1988-89; 1991, 3 WAC - 1992-93; 1999, 4 MW - 2012-13; 2018; 2022)

The Fresno State Bulldogs football team has long been one of the crown jewels in the reputation of California State University, Fresno.^note The school's sports teams are always called Fresno State, never Cal State Fresno; it's an Artifact Title from its earlier days as Fresno State College. The university markets itself as Fresno State, although the full name does appear on formal documents such as diplomas. Located in Central California's football-loving San Joaquin Valley, the Bulldogs were a small college power on the West Coast through much of their history, before joining D-I in 1969 along with their longtime rivals San Diego State and San Jose State. Former Washington State HC Jim Sweeney launched them to the next level in The '80s. Behind a series of standout QBs and a balanced offense, the Bulldogs won six titles in the old Pacific Coast Athletic Association (later renamed the Big West). A devoted fanbase (called "The Red Wave") formed around the team, leading to the construction of Bulldog Stadium on campus (after previously borrowing the local junior college's stadium for home games), which also became the home of the California Bowl (which matched the champions of the PCAA and the MAC from 1981-91). Their peak year in this era was 1985, when, led by QB Kevin Sweeney (Jim's son), the Bulldogs finished the season as the only unbeaten major college team, with an 11-0-1 record and a #16 finish in the coaches' poll. The Bulldogs are also the last FBS-level team to score over 90 points in a game, in their 94-17 pulverization of New Mexico in '91 (could've been worse, too—they led 66-7 at halftime). This success helped lead to a Western Athletic Conference invite, and they debuted in the WAC with a bang in 1992, sharing the conference title and upsetting USC in the Freedom Bowl. The conference move was a godsend, since many of Fresno's California-based Big West peers (Cal State Fullerton, Long Beach State, Pacific) ended up dropping football in The '90s.

Because of the dwindling number of four-year college football teams in California, Fresno has a huge swath of the California juco system to itself, guaranteeing a strong talent base. After Sweeney's retirement in 1996, a number of good HCs have passed through Fresno, like Pat Hill, Kalen DeBoer and former Bulldog QB star Jeff Tedford, the current HC. But the program has also been dogged by Every Year They Fizzle Out syndrome. A typical Bulldog season will see them upset a Power 5 team early in the year, stall in conference play, then close out things with a loss in a winnable bowl game. They've also been at the center of the infamous "Jeff Tedford Curse", with Bulldog QBs Trent Dilfer and David Carr (the #1 overall pick) being among the biggest NFL draft busts ever. Still, they're respected as a program that almost always manages to find a way to pull off some big wins every year.

The Bulldogs' 2023 home opener against FCS Eastern Washington was of note as the first FBS football game to be broadcast over linear TV exclusively in Spanish.^note Specifically by UniMás in the Fresno and Bakersfield markets. English-language viewers had to go to streaming, with audio being a simulcast of the Bulldogs' (English) radio broadcast.^BackgroundThe San Joaquin Valley has a very large Hispanic population, with the city of Fresno being about 60% Hispanic, and the university's enrollment is majority Hispanic.

Hawaiʻi Rainbow Warriors

Location: Honolulu, HI
School Established: 1907^note as the "College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts of the Territory of Hawaiʻi"; became the University of Hawaiʻi in 1919. With the university having expanded to a statewide system in later decades, the phrase "at Mānoa", reflecting the neighborhood that hosts the campus, was added in 1972.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1909-78),^note Did not play in 1912–14 or 1942–45. Dropped football after the 1960 season but reinstated it in 1962 after a new AD took over. WAC (1979-2011), MW (2012-)
Overall Win Record: 584–492–25 (.542)
Bowl Record: 8–6 (.571)
Colors: Green, black, silver, and white^note Yes, not rainbow.
Stadium: Clarence T. C. Ching Athletics Complex (16,909 capacity)^note Capacity was only 4,106 before a crash expansion to 10,000 in 2021. A further expansion to the then-current FBS minimum of 15,000 started immediately after the 2021 season, and further additions will push it to nearly 17,000 for the 2024 season (just in time for FBS attendance requirements to be abolished).
Current Head Coach: Timmy Chang
Notable Historic Coaches: Clark Shaughnessy, June Jones, Todd Graham
Notable Historic Players: Jesse Sapolu, Ken Niumatalolo, Jason Elam, Nick Rolovich, Timmy Chang, Cole Brennan
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 4 (WAC – 1992, 1999, 2007, 2010)

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's football team has had a proud history as the most prominent athletic representative of its island home. A bit of a novelty for most of its history because of its exotic location, it joined the Western Athletic Conference in 1979 and became competitive under HCs Dick Tomey and Bob Wagner, who led UH to a conference championship in 1992. The program's on-field peak came under the revolutionary passing offense of June Jones in the 2000s that helped QBs Timmy Chang and Cole Brennan break NCAA passing records; the latter helped the Rainbow Warriors (then just the Warriors) join the BCS Buster ranks with an undefeated 2007 regular season (though they also became the first BCS Buster to lose their bowl game, getting blown out by Georgia).

However, the program is most famous for its location and the various logistical challenges it provides. With the island chain sitting nearly 2,400 miles away from the nearest airport in the contiguous United States, the team is often by far the most traveled American athletic program every year despite only playing six or seven away games. The NCAA allows Hawaiʻi and all of its home opponents to play one extra game per season in an attempt to partially offset these expenses.^note  This exception applies to any team that plays a regularly scheduled game in Alaska or Hawaiʻi. However, no other NCAA school in either state has a football program. From 2010–19, games at the only NCAA member in Canada, D-II Simon Fraser University, also counted; it's in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, British Columbia, about a half-hour's drive from the US border. However, they didn't play football in 2020 due to COVID-19 and played all their 2021 and 2022 "home" games in Washington state due to COVID-related border restrictions, before dropping the sport entirely after the 2022 season. Until Hawaiʻi started trying to balance out its home-and-away schedule, it often played as many as 9 home games in a season! That's not to say home games are any easier. Hawaiʻi's 50,000-capacity Aloha Stadium, which had served as the team's home since 1975 (and also hosted the NFL's Pro Bowl from 1979-2008, plus 2010-13 and 2015), has been a major concern for decades due to the architects not properly accounting for the effects of the island's climate; the ocean air led the stadium to rapidly rust, leading to the venue being essentially condemned in 2020 and forcing the team to move home games to its athletic practice field, where UH hastily erected some bleachers. After building up and expanding the on-campus stadium a bit, they'll play home games there at least through the 2027 season, while the current Aloha Stadium is demolished and a new 30,000-seat facility is built on the site (which is set to open in 2028). With all those challenges in mind, the team's successes only stand as more impressive.

Nevada Wolf Pack

Location: Reno, NV
School Established: 1874^note Originally called State College of Nevada. Moved from Elko to Reno in 1881. The school has been officially called University of Nevada, Reno since 1969. The school was branded as Nevada–Reno in athletics up until the move to the FBS level.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1896–1924, 1940–53, 1969–78), Far Western Conference (1925–39, 1954–68), Big Sky (1979–91), Big West (1992–99), WAC (2000–11), MW (2012–)^note Did not play 1906-14 (briefly switched to rugby union), 1918 (WWI), and 1951 (the board of regents dropped the sport, but with community and student support it was reinstated the next year)
Overall Win Record: 577–521–33 (.525)
Bowl Record: 7–12 (.368)
Colors: Navy blue and silver
Stadium: Mackay Stadium (capacity 27,000)
Current Head Coach: Jeff Choate
Notable Historic Coaches: Buck Shaw, Chris Ault
Notable Historic Players: Marion Motley, Horace Gillom, Stan Heath, Bill Afflis, Chris Ault, Charles Mann, Tony and Marty Zendejas, Charles Wright, Trevor Insley, Nate Burleson, Colin Kaepernick
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 14 (3 Far Western – 1932–33, 1939; 4 Big Sky – 1983, 1986, 1990–91; 5 Big West - 1992, 1994–97; 2 WAC - 2005, 2010)

Before the rise of Marshall and Boise State, the University of Nevada, Reno was the gold standard for a team moving up to the I-A/FBS level and gaining success. While they already had a bit of a football tradition (early NFL star Marion Motley was an alum), the hiring of 30-year-old former Wolf Pack QB Chris Ault as head coach in 1976 set the team's rise in motion, as they went from a D-II independent to a national I-AA power to joining I-A in 1992 and winning a conference title in their very first season. Ault retired from coaching (twice!) to focus on his AD duties, but the Wolf Pack hit an Audience-Alienating Era while he was gone. His return to the sidelines in 2004 gave the program a shot in the arm, aided by the launch of the Pistol offense and the arrival of QB Colin Kaepernick, who led them to their standout season in 2010 where they went 13–1 and finished at #11 in the final AP poll. After Ault retired for good in 2013, they've never quite reached the same heights but have performed modestly well. They're also notable for having a two-word singular form nickname (as opposed to the NC State Wolfpack)^note In their early history, they had the much more unique nicknames of "Sagebrushers" and "Desert Wolves". and the odd design of their stadium (the end zone bleachers are squeezed inside the track, with the track going underneath the south end zone stands).

New Mexico Lobos

Location: Albuquerque, NM
School Established: 1889
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1892-1930), Border (1931-50), Skyline (1951-61), WAC (1962-98), MW (1999- )
Overall Win Record: 499–641–31 (.439)
Bowl Record: 4–8–1 (.346)
Colors: Cherry red and silver
Stadium: University Stadium (capacity 39,224)
Current Head Coach: Bronco Mendenhall
Notable Historic Coaches: Marv Levy, Dennis Franchione
Notable Historic Players: Don Perkins, Brian Urlacher, Katie Hnida
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 4 (1 Border – 1938; 3 WAC – 1962-64)

At a school where men's basketball is the main sport, the University of New Mexico's Lobo football team counts as The Determinator for the conference. They have the embarrassing distinction of being the only team who's been in the top level of college football for the entire existence of the AP poll (since 1936) to have never been ranked once, not even when they finished 10–1 in 1982 (they also got snubbed by the bowls that year). Their last conference title came when Lyndon Johnson was President, they've often struggled mightily on the field (with completely winless seasons in 1968 and 1987), yet they still keep plugging away. The last few decades have seen UNM occasionally become competitive, starting with the tenure of HC Dennis Franchione, who recruited future Pro Hall of Famer Brian Urlacher to the team in 1996 and ended the Lobos' 36-year bowl drought in 1997. They're also notable for fielding the first woman to play in an FBS game, placekicker Katie Hnida^*the "H" is silent, who played in a bowl game in 2002 and converted two extra points in a 2003 game.

San Diego State Aztecs

Location: San Diego, CA
School Established: 1897^note as "San Diego Normal School", followed by "San Diego State Teachers College" (after merging with "San Diego Junior College" in 1923), "San Diego State College" (1935), "California State University, San Diego" (1972), and finally the current name (1974).
Conference Affiliations: SCJCC^*Southern California Junior College Conference (1921-24), Ind. (1925, 1968, 1976-77), SCIAA (1926-38), CCAA^*California Collegiate Athletic Association, now D-II and no longer sponsors football (1939-67),^note Did not play in 1943-44. PCAA^*Pacific Coast Athletic Association, now known as the (D-I) Big West Conference, which also no longer sponsors football (1969-75), WAC (1978-98), MW (1999-)
Overall Win Record: 593-446-32 (.569)
Bowl Record: 10-10 (.500)
Colors: Scarlet and black
Stadium: Snapdragon Stadium (capacity 35,000)
Current Head Coach: Sean Lewis
Notable Historic Coaches: Don Coryell
Notable Historic Players: Joe Gibbs, Fred Dryer, Carl Weathers, Dennis Shaw, Isaac Curtis, Herm Edwards, Brian Sipe, Todd Santos, Dan McGwire, Marshall Faulk, Akbar Gbajabiamila, Donnel Pumphrey, Rashaad Penny, Matt Araiza
National Championships: 3 claimed in D-II (1966–68)^note Then known as the NCAA College Division. At the time national champs were selected via wire service rankings; the NCAA didn't establish the D-II national championship until 1973.
Conference Championships: 16 (2 SCIAC – 1936-37; 5 CCAA – 1950-51, 1962, 1966-67; 5 PCAA – 1969-70, 1972-74; 1 WAC – 1986; 3 MW – 2012, 2015-16)^note also 3 as a junior college

San Diego State University's football history was initially forged in the small-college ranks. The Aztecs were generally a mediocre team with occasional flashes of brilliance until future NFL coaching great Don Coryell arrived in 1961. During his 12 seasons, he perfected the high-powered passing offense that he took to the pros, leading the Aztecs to small-college national titles in each of their final three seasons before they moved to what's now NCAA D-I in 1969, generating a huge local following in the process (the 1967 Aztecs averaged 41,030 fans per home game, still an attendance record for a non-D-I team). They were up and down for the next couple of decades after Coryell left in 1972, with a few conference titles, several productive quarterbacks, and Marshall Faulk finishing second in the 1992 Heisman race. They bottomed out by not posting a winning season all through the 2000s, then finally bounced back to bowl eligibility throughout the 2010s.

The Aztecs opened the new Snapdragon Stadium (Aztec Stadium behind the sponsorship) in 2022. After having played on campus in the Aztec Bowl^*some of whose bleachers still stand, but mostly covered up in the 1990s by the university's current basketball arena since 1935, they moved to the Chargers' new stadium in 1967, two years before that venue also became home to MLB's Padres. The Aztecs and Chargers would share that stadium for 50 seasons (1967–2016), the longest co-tenancy between college and pro teams. After the Padres moved to a park of their own and the Chargers returned to Los Angeles, SDSU was the only tenant in an increasingly run-down venue that was far too large for its needs. Not long after the Chargers left, SDSU bought the stadium site and announced plans to redevelop it as a non-contiguous campus expansion parcel, with the 35,000-seat Snapdragon Stadium being the centerpiece of the development. In the meantime, they played in the LA Galaxy's Dignity Health Sports Park nearly two hours' drive away (not counting traffic delays); coincidentally, the Chargers also played at the LA Galaxy's home ground before the opening of SoFi Stadium.^note Interestingly, the Aztecs' relocation to Dignity Health Sports Park had the side effect of basically giving Cal State Dominguez Hills, a D-II school that's never had a football team, a home team for two seasons, since the stadium is actually located on its campus. Also of interest is that the Aztecs' new stadium also hosts a soccer team, namely San Diego Wave FC of the National Women's Soccer League, and will also host the city's MLS team, San Diego FC, when it starts play in 2025. With its location and new stadium, and the impending move of UCLA and USC to the Big Ten, SDSU was heavily linked with a Pac-12 invitation in the first part of 2023. Multiple media reports that June indicated that SDSU had given the MW notice of its intent to leave in 2024, and that the MW was treating SDSU's departure as a done deal. However, on the very day that SDSU's exit fee would have doubled, and with no Pac-12 invite (or, equally important, new Pac-12 media deal) on the horizon, SDSU told the MW it planned to stay for the time being. After hemming, hawing, and lawyering up, the MW and SDSU settled the dispute, with SDSU staying in the conference for the immediate future. Ironically, the Aztecs ended up on their feet—within weeks of that settlement, the Pac-12 imploded, losing eight more schools.^note It later came out that SDSU was literally minutes away from receiving a Pac-12 invite, as was SMU. However, 10 minutes before the Pac-12 suits were set to approve a streaming media deal with Apple TV+, Washington announced it would follow UCLA and USC to the Big Ten. The meeting was canceled, and four other schools announced their departure before the day was over (Oregon to the Big Ten; Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah to the Big 12). A few weeks later, Cal and Stanford bolted for the ACC.

San Diego State's "Aztec Warrior" mascot (adopted in 1925 after experimenting with "Normalites", "Professors", and "Wampus Cats") is one of the few in American college sports that remains based on an indigenous people group; the NCAA did not require the school to change it due to the Aztecs not having a modern day recognized tribe, but that hasn't stopped various student and indigenous groups from protesting its trope-y depiction of Aztec culture.

San Jose State Spartans

Location: San Jose, CA
School Established: 1857^note It's gone through a huge number of names. It was founded as Minns' Evening Normal School, then became California State Normal School and San Jose State Teachers College, then San Jose State College in 1935. In 1972, it was renamed California State University, San Jose, but the campus community hated that rebranding, so it reverted to San Jose State University in 1974, and has remained so since.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1892-1900, 1921, 1925-28, 1935-38, 1950-68), California Coast Conference (1922-24), Far Western Conference (1929-34), California Collegiate Athletic Association (1940-42, 46-49), PCAA/Big West (1969-95), WAC (1996-2012), MW (2013-)
Overall Win Record: 518–539–38 (.490)
Bowl Record: 7–6 (.538)
Colors: Blue and gold
Stadium: CEFCU Stadium, historically known as Spartan Stadium (capacity 21,520)^note Built in 1933, it exapnded from 18,000 to 31,000 seats in 1984, but as part of a major renovation project, the entire east side stand was removed in 2019, reducing capacity by almost 10,000 seats. A new athletic operations center on that side of the stadium opened in 2023, and the next phase will add seats back in, but the exact number hasn't been specified yet.
Current Head Coach: Ken Niumatololo
Notable Historic Coaches: Fielding H. Yost^note one game only as an interim coach in 1900, Jack Elway, John Ralston, Dick Tomey
Notable Historic Players: Willie Heston^note left for Michigan along with Yost, Billy Wilson, Bill Walsh, Dick Vermeil, Art Powell, Ron McBride, Steve DeBerg, Jeff Garcia
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 17 (2 Far Western - 1932; 1934, 6 CCAA - 1939-41; 1946; 1948-49, 8 PCAA/Big West - 1975-76; 1978; 1986-87; 1990-91, 3 WAC - 1992-93; 1999, 1 MW - 2020)

The oldest public university on the West Coast, and the founding campus of the California State University System, San José State University^note The university itself officially uses the acute Spanish accent mark in José but accepts other outlets dropping it. has long been the Quietly Performing Sister Show to Cal and Stanford in San Francisco Bay Area college sports (despite both institutions being younger than SJSU). After sponsoring football for a few years toward the end of the 1800s, they relaunched the program in 1921, becoming a steady if not spectacular winner over the next few decades. The 1941 Spartans had the misfortune of being in Hawaii on the morning of December 7, when the Pearl Harbor attack not only canceled their scheduled game against Hawaii on December 13, but left them stranded on the islands for the next few weeks; the Honolulu police enlisted them to help patrol the beaches. SJSU also gained a "cradle of coaches" reputation. Former Spartans who went onto to coaching greatness included Bill Walsh, Dick Vermeil, and Bob Ladouceur (the coach behind the 151-game winning streak of California's De La Salle High School from 1992–2003).

Their peak came in The '80s, a decade that saw the Spartans earn seven winning seasons and three bowl bids, a string of success begun by HC Jack Elway (John Elway's father). They couldn't sustain that level of achievement in the next decade but still got an invite to the 16-school WAC expansion in 1996, even though (much like Rutgers joining the Big Ten in the future) everyone recognized that SJSU was only invited to give the league access to a Top 5 media market. In the years before joining the WAC, they struggled to hit the I-A attendance requirement (the largest attendance mark for an event at their home stadium is a ZZ Top concert) and their football games were broadcast on the school's student-run radio station. Despite grabbing notable coaches like John Ralston and Dick Tomey in the twilight of their careers, Spartan fans haven't had much to cheer about in the last few decades. Their best recent season came amid the bleak days of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020, winning a conference title and finishing the regular season undefeated.

UNLV Rebels

Location: Las Vegas, NV (though technically in the unincorporated suburb of Paradise)
School Established: 1957^note Originally "University of Nevada, Southern Division", then "Nevada Southern University", then "University of Nevada, Las Vegas" starting in 1969.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1968-81), PCAA/Big West (1982-95), WAC (1996-98), MW (1999-)
Overall Win Record: 259-379-4 (.407)
Bowl Record: 2-3 (.400)
Colors: Scarlet and gray
Stadium: Allegiant Stadium (capacity 65,000)^note For most of the program's existence, it played home games at Sam Boyd Stadium (previously called Las Vegas Stadium and the Silver Bowl), located eight miles from campus, but the move of the NFL's Raiders to Las Vegas allowed UNLV to work out a joint-tenancy deal in their new domed stadium, which is much closer to campus. Part of the agreement stipulates that Sam Boyd, which UNLV owns, can't compete with Allegiant Stadium for the right to host events, and in turn, the Raiders compensate the university for the lost revenue. Currently UNLV gets paid $3 million a year to let Sam Boyd sit empty.
Current Head Coach: Barry Odom
Notable Historic Coaches: John Robinson
Notable Historic Players: Randall Cunningham, Suge Knight, Ickey Woods
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 2 (Big West – 1984, 1994)

Another case of a football team that struggles at a school where basketball is king, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas makes for an interesting contrast with Boise State. Both teams began playing at the four-year level in 1968 and became D-II powers over the next few years. In fact, Tony Knap, the coach who led BSU into the NCAA, left for UNLV in 1976. The Rebels elected to move to the I-A level in 1978 and immediately became competitive, producing a genuine star in QB Randall Cunningham, who led them to a conference title and bowl win in 1984. Things looked bright for UNLV's football future, but with coach Jerry Tarkanian's basketball program already under the NCAA's microscope, the football program was accused of various improprieties, including using ineligible players, plus several players getting into trouble with the law. Many of their wins were forfeited, and the Rebels have never really recovered from these controversies; since 1986, UNLV has had just five winning seasons.^note 1992, 1994, 2000, 2013, 2023. Outside of Cunningham and Cincinnati Bengals one-season wonder Ickey Woods, their two most famous ex-players are better-known for non-football endeavors: SportsCenter anchor Kenny Mayne was a backup QB, and Death Row Records mogul Suge Knight played nose guard for two seasons. The move to the newly arrived Raiders' Allegiant Stadium has given Rebel faithful some hope that they can start attracting better talent, and the Rebels made the MW championship game in 2023.

If you're wondering- yes, the "Rebel" moniker is a reference to the Confederate States of America, invented back when UNLV was Nevada Southern in contrast to their rivals in Reno. Adding to the irony/controversy around this mascot, Nevada was given statehood during The American Civil War to help keep Lincoln in power and defeat said rebels. Another layer of irony for all that is the fact that UNLV won the first-ever matchup between Black head coaches at the I-A/FBS level, when, under coach Wayne Nunnely, they defeated Ohio, coached by Cleve Bryant, 26-18 in 1988.^note The "I-A/FBS" qualifier matters here, since in 1977, the year before the I-A/I-AA split, the SWAC (see FCS conferences below) moved up to D-I as a conference, so technically their conference games were the first Black coaching matchups at the major college level.

Utah State Aggies

Location: Logan, UT
School Established: 1888^note as the Agricultural College of Utah. Later renamed to Utah State Agricultural College and finally Utah State University of Agriculture and Applied Science in 1957, but the school rarely uses anything but the first three words of the name.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1892-1913, 1962-77, 2001-02), RMAC (1916-37), Skyline (1938-61), Big West (1978-2000), Sun Belt (2003-04), WAC (2005-12), MW (2013-)
Overall Win Record: 582-569-31 (.505)
Bowl Record: 6-12 (.333)
Colors: Aggie blue (basically navy blue) and white
Stadium: Maverik Stadium (capacity 25,513)^note "Maverik" is not a misspelling; it's a regional chain of convenience stores.
Current Head Coach: Blake Anderson
Notable Historic Coaches: Dick Romney, John Ralston
Notable Historic Players: LaVell Edwards, Merlin and Phil Olsen, Jim Turner, Anthony Calvillo, Bobby Wagner
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 13 (3 RMAC – 1921, 1935-36; 3 Skyline – 1946, 1960-61; 5 PCAA/Big West – 1978-79, 1993, 1996-97; 2 MW – 2012, 2021)

Located about a 90-minute drive from Salt Lake City in an isolated dairy-farming valley, Utah State University has alternated between great success and mediocrity over its history. Under the three-decade tenure of Hall of Fame coach Dick Romney (a distant relative of current Utah senator Mitt Romney), the Aggies challenged Utah for football supremacy in the Beehive State in the years before World War II (1919-48, with BYU football as an afterthought in those years). The program peaked in 1961 when it finished with a #10 ranking led by star DT (and future NFL great, sportscaster, and actor) Merlin Olsen, who the school later named their playing surface after. However, the school's exclusion from the newly-created WAC in 1962 hobbled the program, and BYU's rise to football prominence (ironically led by former Aggie player LaVell Edwards) made USU the odd one out in the state, leading to it constantly bouncing around conferences. The most notable player from that era was QB Anthony Calvillo, who went on to a 20-year CFL career in which he set a North American pro record for passing yards (now held by Tom Brady). However, the program resurged in the 2010s, with three more Top 25 finishes (2012, 2018, 2021) and two conference championships.

Wyoming Cowboys

Location: Laramie, WY
School Established: 1886
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1893–1904), CFA (1905–08), RMAC (1909–37), Skyline (1938–61), WAC (1962–98), MW (1999–)
Overall Win Record: 565–599–28 (.486)
Bowl Record: 9–9 (.500)
Colors: Brown and gold
Stadium: War Memorial Stadium (capacity 30,181)
Current Head Coach: Jay Sawvel
Notable Historic Coaches: Bowden Wyatt, Bob Devaney, Pat Dye, Dennis Erickson, Joe Tiller
Notable Historic Players: Marv Levy, Jim Kiick, Conrad Dobler, Jay Novacek, Marcus Harris, Josh Allen
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 14 (7 Skyline – 1949–50, 1956, 1958–61; 7 WAC – 1966–68, 1976, 1987–88, 1993)

The University of Wyoming's football team is the ultimate in local market domination: it's the only public four-year college in the state (and was the only four-year school period until the founding of Wyoming Catholic College in 2005). However, since the state just happens to be the smallest one in the union in population, the Cowboys have never been a major powerhouse. They were one of the worst teams in the nation in the early 20th century but became a regional power in The '50s (posting undefeated seasons in '50 and '56) and The '60s, peaking with a #5 finish and Sugar Bowl appearance in 1967. However, two years later, the program took a huge hit over the "Black 14" incident, in which 14 African-American players were kicked off the team after announcing their plan to wear black armbands in a game against BYU in protest of the LDS Church's (since disavowed) anti-black doctrines and practices. That episode caused Wyoming no end of recruiting problems for years, and they've fluctuated wildly ever since. Those glory years also highlighted another big issue for the school: they've never been able to hold onto any of the multiple good coaches who pass through town. Bowden Wyatt started their turnaround before leaping to jobs at Arkansas and Tennessee; Bob Devaney lasted five years, then went to neighboring Nebraska and launched the meteoric rise of the Cornhuskers. Pat Dye and Dennis Erickson likewise only lasted one year before moving on to high-profile jobs. To give you an idea of how bad the musical chairs game is in Laramie, Craig Bohl's 10-year stint (2014–23) was the longest in team history (which dates back to 1893).

Their 103–0 defeat of Northern Colorado in 1949 holds the record for the most points in a single game by a major college team since the end of World War II. Their home field at War Memorial Stadium has the highest elevation of any major college field, sitting at 7,220 feet above sea level.^note The highest stadium in any division is the Mountaineer Bowl at D-II Western Colorado University, at 7,750 feet. As noted above, Air Force's cadets live at a slightly higher elevation than Wyoming's stadium, but the Falcons play several hundred feet below.

Sun Belt Conference

^{Click here to see a map of the Sun Belt's schools.}

Year Established: 1976
Current schools: Appalachian State, Arkansas State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, James Madison, Louisiana, Louisiana-Monroe, Marshall, Old Dominion, South Alabama, Southern Miss, Texas State, Troy
Current commissioner: Keith Gill
Reigning champion: Troy
Website: sunbeltsports.org

The Sun Belt Conference, or SBC, was formed in 1976 and quickly established itself as a formidable mid-major basketball conference (its games were an early staple of live ESPN programming), but it only started sponsoring football in 2001, making it the runt among the current FBS conferences for several years. If you've ever heard of any of these schools (and didn't attend any of them), it's likely because (1) these are the teams typically scheduled to get slaughtered on the road to some of the traditional powerhouses (usually the geographically overlapping SEC) or (2) you saw We Are Marshall. Its current lineup is sort of an all-star team of schools who'd been powerhouses at college football's lower levels before deciding to move up to the big time; 9 of its 14 teams won FCS or D-II national championships earlier in their history (many with multiple titles).

Typically, when a team from a power conference is scheduling its homecoming game, this is one place where it looks, as most SBC teams didn't get winning records and even today very few SBC players go on to the pros. However, the conference has grown the beard significantly in recent years, and the underdogs now frequently punch above their weight class. In Week 2 of the 2022 season, App State and Marshall both took down top-10 teams on the road (respectively Texas A&M and Notre Dame), and Georgia Southern went into Nebraska and stuck the final dagger into Scott Frost's disappointing tenure as the Huskers' HC. Nowadays, it's affectionately called the "Fun Belt".^note Originally, "Fun Belt" was more a joking pejorative. But since the joining of frequent FBS millstone Appalachian State and the rise of Coastal Carolina, the nickname has lost any sense of irony, and is usually applied with complete sincerity.

For several years, the main conference power was Troy. More recently, Arkansas State won at least a share of the conference title 5 times in a 6-season stretch under four different head coaches.^note During this streak, each of the Red Wolves' first three title-winning coaches left after a single season to move to a higher-profile FBS job. Former FCS power Appalachian State has been dominant since its 2014 entry, earned in part due to its infamous victory over #5 ranked Michigan (see below for more details). Fellow former FCS power Georgia Southern (also below) also started strong, winning the conference title outright in their first FBS season in 2014, but had two off years in 2016 and 2017 before resurging again. The Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns quietly rose to contention at the turn of this decade, posting three straight 10-win seasons. And in 2020, Coastal Carolina, previously best known for its teal field, came out of nowhere to draw national attention with an unbeaten regular season. 2023 saw 12 of the conference's 14 teams qualify for bowl games (including the entire East Division), the second-highest total in history (after the SEC's 13 bowl-eligible teams in 2021).^note Seven of the 12 did so with a 6-6 record, and James Madison, still officially in transition from FCS, only became eligible because there weren't enough total bowl-eligible FBS teams.

Like every other FBS conference (except, for the longest time, the MAC), the Fun Belt has gone through significant churn in the post-2010 college football landscape. One notable change that didn't involve football came in 2012 when non-football Denver, then the SBC's only private school, left. This made the SBC the other FBS league whose full members are all state-supported, a status it maintains today. The first changes that affected football came in 2013, when CUSA raided the SBC in order to replenish its numbers after having been raided by the Big East/American. FIU, Florida Atlantic, Middle Tennessee, and North Texas all left at that time. The next year saw Western Kentucky leave to join CUSA; App State and Georgia Southern join from the Southern Conference; and Idaho and New Mexico State, which had been left stranded to become independents when the football side of the WAC disintegrated in 2012, become football-only members (in the early 2000s, Idaho had been a football-only member and New Mexico State an all-sports member). However, Idaho and NMSU found themselves stranded again when the Sun Belt bounced them from its football league after the 2017 season. At the time Coastal was announced as a future member, their arrival would have allowed the conference to stage a conference championship game, but only if it didn't lose any football members (read: boot out Idaho and New Mexico State). However, in 2016, a Big 12 proposal to allow all FBS conferences to stage football championship games, even if they have fewer than 12 members, was approved by the commissioners of the FBS leagues. Subsequently, the conference unanimously voted to hold a conference title game starting in 2018 (the same year Coastal became bowl-eligible). In 2017, the conference announced that the 10 football-playing schools would be divided into two divisions of five teams. Before the SBC's 2022 expansion, South Alabama played in the West Division for football despite playing in the East in all other SBC sports split into two divisions.

As noted in the CUSA folder, the SBC launched its own raid of that league, poaching Marshall, Old Dominion, and Southern Miss. James Madison made the jump to FBS and joined as well. All divisional sports (including football) adopted a new dividing line along the Alabama–Georgia border. It's now the only FBS conference that uses a divisional setup in football, with the last remaining holdouts (Big Ten, MAC, and SEC) scrapping their divisions in 2024. The SBC had two non-football members before its most recent expansion in Little Rock^note Arkansas–Little Rock and UT Arlington. Both schools have considered reviving their respective football programs in recent years. Little Rock's feasibility study in 2019 had recommended against doing so, at least for now. With the conference adding four football members, they saw the writing on the wall and amicably left in 2022, with Little Rock joining the Ohio Valley Conference and UT Arlington returning to the Western Athletic Conference, where it had been a member in the 2012–13 school year.

Outside of football, the Fun Belt has become a homestead for Power 5 universities whose conferences don't host men's soccer. This includes Kentucky and South Carolina from the SEC, and West Virginia and UCF from the Big 12.

The SBC is also notable as the first FBS conference to hire an African-American commissioner, namely Keith Gill in 2019. Gill was followed a few months later by Kevin Warren of the Big Ten Conference.

Sun Belt Teams

Appalachian State Mountaineers

Hi-Hi-Yikas!

Location: Boone, NC
School Established: 1899^note As Watauga Academy; became Appalachian Training School for Teachers in 1903, Appalachian State Normal School in 1925, Appalachian State Teachers College in 1929, and Appalachian State University in 1967.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1928-30, 1968-71), North State/Conference Carolinas (1931-67),^note Did not play in the war years of 1943-44. SoCon (1972-2013), Sun Belt (2014-)
Overall Win Record: 663–357–28 (.646)
Bowl Record: 7–1 (.875)
Colors: Black and gold
Stadium: Kidd Brewer Stadium (aka "The Rock"; capacity 30,000)
Current Head Coach: Shawn Clark
Notable Historic Coaches: Beattie Feathers, Mack Brown, Jerry Moore
Notable Historic Players: Armanti Edwards
National Championships: 3 in FCS (2005–07)
Conference Championships: 22 (6 North State – 1931, 1937, 1939, 1948, 1950, 1954; 12 SoCon – 1986-87, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2005–10, 2012; 4 Sun Belt – 2016–19)

Nestled in the mountains of western North Carolina^*About 3300 ft/1016 m elevation; the nearest D-I school at a higher elevation is Air Force, a bit under 1300 miles/2100 km as the crow flies., Appalachian State University is a mid-sized former teachers college best known for going into Michigan in 2007 and beating the then fifth-ranked Wolverines, becoming the first FCS team ever to defeat a ranked FBS team. (It's happened four more times since.)^note JMU beating #13 Virginia Tech in 2010, Eastern Washington beating #25 Oregon State in 2013, North Dakota State over #13 Iowa in 2016, and Montana beating #20 Washington in 2021. However, App State's success goes well beyond one game.

While the Mountaineers (also affectionately "Apps") enjoyed periods of success in the small-college ranks and the early years of I-AA/FCS^note Their stadium is named after the coach of their 1937 season, in which their defense didn't surrender a single point during the regular season., they truly emerged as a national power at that level under Jerry Moore. During his 24 seasons, App State won 10 SoCon titles and peaked with three straight FCS titles in 2005–07, becoming the first school since the '40s to claim three straight national titles in D-I or its predecessors. After Moore retired at the end of 2012, the Mountaineers began a transition to FBS in 2013 and joined the Sun Belt Conference the next year. They started slow but won their last 6 games in 2014 and won at least 9 in each of the next seven seasons, a run that included shared conference titles in 2016 and 2017 plus wins in the first two Sun Belt championship games. Much like Arkansas State earlier in the decade, they saw both of the coaches who led them to title game wins immediately scooped up by more prominent FBS programs. The Apps also won bowl games in each of their first six seasons after completing their FBS transition (2015–20), a record as yet unmatched by any transitioning school. The next-longest streak of this type is Liberty's three from 2019–21.

Coastal Carolina Chanticleers

Location: Conway, SC
School Established: 1954^note as a junior college; it didn't become a four-year institution until 1973
Conference Affiliations: Big South (2003-15), Sun Belt (2016-)^*FCS independent and non-football Sun Belt member in 2016
Overall Win Record: 166–89 (.651)
Bowl Record: 2–2 (.500)
Colors: Teal, bronze, and black
Stadium: Brooks Stadium (21,000 capacity)
Current Head Coach: Tim Beck
Notable Historic Coaches: Joe Moglia
Notable Historic Players: Grayson McCall
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 8 (7 Big South – 2004–06, 2010, 2012–14; 1 Sun Belt – 2020^*shared with Louisiana when the championship game was called off due to COVID-19)

Coastal Carolina University, located just a hop, skip, and jump from the tourist mecca of Myrtle Beach, started its life as a junior college in the 1950s, became a two-year extension of the University of South Carolina in 1960, and expanded into a four-year school in the 1970s before separating from USC (with that school's blessing) in 1993. However, football didn't start up until 2003. The Chanticleers (affectionately known as the "Chants", with the rooster a cheeky play on the Gamecocks the school spun off from) soon emerged as a strong contender in the FCS Big South Conference, and the program grew even more in the 2010s under Joe Moglia, a former CEO of discount brokerage TD Ameritrade who oversaw Coastal's move to FBS and the Sun Belt Conference after the 2015 season. After spending 2016 as an FCS independent and non-football Sun Belt member, the Chanticleers joined Sun Belt football in 2017.

After joining the FBS, Coastal struggled and was known by college football fans only for the teal-colored field it adopted in 2015 (or maybe the unusual background of its now-retired HC), only to come out of nowhere in 2020 and draw national attention with an unbeaten regular season, complete with more mullets than an '80s rock concert and locker-room celebrations right out of WWE. That season also featured a matchup against then-unbeaten BYU scheduled on two days' notice, which featured a Down to the Last Play finish and earned enough national media attention that it got its own Wikipedia page. The Chants claimed their first bowl win the next year and have remained a force in—and in some ways the face of—the Fun Belt.

Georgia Southern Eagles

Location: Statesboro, GA
School Established: 1906^note as "First District Agricultural & Mechanical School"; retooled as a teachers college in 1924 as "Georgia Normal School". After several more name and mission changes, it became Georgia Southern University in 1990.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1924-41, 1984-91)^*Played at club level from 1981–1983., SoCon (1992-2013), Sun Belt (2014-)
Overall Win Record: 419-254-10 (.621)
Bowl Record: 3-3 (.500)
FCS Playoff Record: 45-13 (.776)
Colors: Blue and white
Stadium: Allen E. Paulson Stadium (25,000 capacity)
Current Head Coach: Clay Helton
Notable Historic Coaches: Erk Russell, Paul Johnson, Willie Fritz
Notable Historic Players: Tracy Ham, Rob Bironas, Younghoe Koo
National Championships: 6 in FCS (1985-86, 1989-90, 1999-2000)
Conference Championships: 11 (10 SoCon – 1993, 1997–2002, 2004, 2011–12; 1 Sun Belt – 2014)

Based in Statesboro, a small rural city about an hour west of Savannah (immortalized in song by blues legend Blind Willie McTell and famously covered by The Allman Brothers Band), Georgia Southern University started as an agricultural and mechanical school, then evolved into a teachers' college, a four-year college, and eventually a university by 1990, becoming the largest university in Georgia south of Atlanta. The football team was suspended for World War II and laid dormant for four decades before being resurrected as a club team in 1981, moving to varsity status in 1984. Erk Russell, longtime defensive coordinator under Vince Dooley at Georgia, was hired as HC. Russell led one of the fastest ascents in college football history, winning their first of six FCS championships in just their second varsity season (and fourth overall), despite having No Budget during the early years of the Eagles' modern era. Some of the team's traditions stem from this, such as their arrival on yellow school buses that were purchased surplus for $1 each from the local K-12 school system. Others were created by Russell himself, such as "Beautiful Eagle Creek", a drainage ditch near the team's practice fields whose waters serve as a Good Luck Charm, and the phrase "One more time", which was coined after the Eagles won back-to-back FCS championships; the phrase is chanted by Eagles fans after every kickoff. The colorful, beloved Russell carried over another tradition from his UGA days: headbutting his helmeted players bare-headed, often to the point of drawing blood; after Russell's death in 2006, a bronze bust of him was placed at the players' entrance at Paulson Stadium ("The Prettiest Little Stadium in America"), and the players headbutt the bust before taking the field. In Russell's final season with the Eagles, he led the team to a 15-0 record en route to their third FCS championship, the first D-I team to do so in the 20th century. Despite Erk Russell's achievements with both Georgia Southern and UGA, he has not been enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame, since Russell was a head coach for only eight seasons and the HOF requires ten seasons experience for head coaches to be considered for induction.

After years of being very comfortable with its niche in the FCS ranks, Southern joined its SoCon rival App State in starting the jump to FBS in 2013 and moving to the Sun Belt the following year. The Eagles immediately won the conference title. Georgia Southern is also known for a spicy rivalry with another in-state school and fellow Sun Belt member, Georgia State; both schools have roots as teachers' colleges and share the same "GSU" initialism, though Southern chooses to use just "GS" in its athletic branding, as reflected in its athletic web address. Both of Southern's main rivalries have nicknames that play off Georgia and Georgia Tech's "Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate"—the rivalry with Georgia State is "Modern Day Hate", and the App State rivalry is "Deeper Than Hate".

Georgia State Panthers

Location: Atlanta, GA
School Established: 1913^note Founded as a evening extension of Georgia Tech; became an extension campus of the University of Georgia in 1947. Became an autonomous four-year institution in 1955 as "Georgia State College of Business Administration"; the last three words were dropped in 1961 and "College" was replaced by "University" in 1969.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (2010-11), CAA (2012), Sun Belt (2013-)
Overall Win Record: 61–106 (.365)
Bowl Record: 4-2 (.667)
Colors: Blue and white
Stadium: Center Parc Stadium (25,000 capacity)
Current Head Coach: Dell McGee
Notable Historic Coaches:
Notable Historic Players:
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 0

Based in the heart of downtown Atlanta and the largest public university in Georgia by enrollment, Georgia State University had long been considered a commuter school (having spent its first four decades as an extension campus of either Georgia Tech or UGA) and only attempted to shed that label near the end of the 20th century. As one of the newest college football programs in existence, the Panthers lack a rich football history; in the Panthers' first two Sun Belt seasons, the team went 1-23, with that lone win coming against an FCS program by one point. In 2017, following the closure and subsequent demolition of the Georgia Dome and Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves vacating Turner Field in favor of Truist Park in Cobb County, Georgia State acquired the former MLB ballpark (also the former main stadium for the 1996 Summer Olympics) and renovated it for football.

As mentioned earlier, Georgia State has an intense in-state rivalry with Georgia Southern; while the football rivalry only started with the Eagles' move to the FBS in 2014, the two schools' rivalry goes back as far as the 1970s in other sports, primarily men's basketball, and were previously conference mates in the conference now known as the ASUN.

James Madison Dukes

Location: Harrisonburg, VA
School Established: 1908^note as the "State Normal and Industrial School for Women"; after a couple of name changes in between, became "Madison College" in 1938. Went coed in 1946 and became James Madison University in 1976.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (D-III, 1972–73), VCAA^*Virginia Collegiate Athletic Association, a D-III league that operated from 1972–75 and a de facto predecessor of the current D-III Old Dominion Athletic Conference (1974–75), Ind. (D-II 1976, D-III 1977–79, I-AA 1980–92), Yankee (1993–96), A-10 (1997–2006), CAA (2007–21),^note For football purposes, the Yankee Conference, Atlantic 10, and CAA Football are effectively the same league. Sun Belt (2022–)
Overall Win Record: 369–225–4 (.620)
Bowl Record: 0–1 (.000)
FCS Playoff Record: 24–16 (.600)
Colors: Purple and gold
Stadium: Bridgeforth Stadium (24,877 capacity)
Current Head Coach: Bob Chesney
Notable Historic Coaches:
Notable Historic Players: Charles Haley, Scott Norwood
National Championships: 2 in FCS (2004, 2016)
Conference Championships: 10 (1 VCAA – 1975; 9 A-10/CAA – 1999, 2004, 2008, 2015–17, 2019–21)

One of the newest members of FBS, James Madison University is a mid-sized public school located in the heart of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. It got a late start to football largely because it spent its first 38 years as a women's college. JMU finally started up football in 1972 in the NCAA College Division, moving to D-III once the NCAA split that division. They later moved to D-II for a year, returned to D-III, then jumped up to I-AA in the '80s. JMU was generally viewed as a basketball school in its early history, and the Dukes' football program was mostly middling until emerging as a power in the 21st century, claiming FCS titles in 2004 and 2016 (notably ending North Dakota State's five-year FCS title streak in the latter season). JMU had higher aspirations, openly seeking an FBS upgrade for years until finally making the jump in 2022. By the time of this move, James Madison had the highest football revenue of any FCS program, and its athletic budget was the largest in the SBC when it joined. JMU was intended to join the SBC in 2023, but when the all-sports CAA^note As noted in the FCS section of the main "Conferences" page, the CAA football league, branded as CAA Football, is technically separate from the all-sports CAA. banned them from participating in its conference championships, the NCAA permitted JMU and the SBC to accelerate the move to 2022. This made the Dukes the second program, after UCF, to have played at all four levels of NCAA football. Notably, the Dukes jumped to a 5–0 start and made the AP Top 25, becoming the first team ever to be nationally ranked in its first FBS season (though that status only lasted a week after a close loss to Georgia Southern, and the conditions of their accelerated promotion meant they couldn't play in a bowl). Though counted as FBS in 2022, the NCAA did not allow JMU to play in a bowl in its second transitional year in 2023 despite a 10–0 start... until the NCAA's hand was forced by there not being enough eligible teams to fill all of the available bowl slots. As for the "Dukes" nickname, it has nothing to do with the noble title—it comes from the university's second president, Samuel Page Duke, whose 30-year tenure included the transition to coeducation. JMU's mascot is Duke Dog, a student in a bulldog costume with a crowned head.

Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns

Location: Lafayette, LA
School Established: 1898^note As Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute, then Southwestern Louisiana Institute of Liberal and Technical Learning in 1921, University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1960, and University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 1998
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1901-47, 1982-92, 1996-2000), Gulf States (1948-70), Southland (1971-81), Big West (1993-95), Sun Belt (2001-)
Overall Win Record: 565-577-34 (.495)
Bowl Record: 5-4 (.556)
Colors: Vermilion and white^note The school officially labels it as "Evangeline white", in honor of the heroine of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie.
Stadium: Cajun Field (41,264 capacity)
Current Head Coach: Michael Desormeaux
Notable Historic Coaches: Mark Hudspeth
Notable Historic Players: Brian Mitchell, Jake Delhomme, Charles Tillman, Brett Baer
National Championships: 0
Conference Championships: 10 (4 Gulf States - 1952, 1965, 1968, 1970; 2 Big West - 1993-94; 4 Sun Belt - 2005, 2013,^note Officially vacated due to NCAA violations 2020-21)

Located in the largest city in Acadiana, the region of south central Louisiana where the majority of the state's Cajun and Creole populations live, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has always played second fiddle to Louisiana State University, and that very much extends to football. However, the appropriately named Ragin' Cajuns have fought very hard to shake that reputation (and not just by campaigning for decades to be referred to as simply "Louisiana" rather than "Southwestern Louisiana" or "Louisiana–Lafayette"). The school rose to become a Sun Belt power starting in the early 2010s (though they had to vacate many of their early-decade wins due to NCAA violations). Also, for the record—the Cajuns beat the Florida Gators in calling their home stadium "The Swamp" by several decades.^note However, the nickname was originally applied to a different stadium from the one they now occupy, and the Cajuns only started calling their current stadium "The Swamp" a year before Steve Spurrier christened the Gators' stadium as such. Also of note is that the Cajuns are the only Division I team that plays below sea level.^note Although the area around the stadium is about 35 feet above sea level, the playing field is set into a natural bowl and lies 2 feet below sea level. If you're wondering about Tulane, the campus lies in a part of New Orleans that's slightly above sea level.

Marshall Thundering Herd

We Are Marshall!

Location: Huntington, WV
School Established: 1837^note As Marshall Academy, then College in 1858, State Normal School of Marshall College in 1967, College again in 1938, and University in 1962
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1895–1925, 1969–75), WVIAC^*West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, a now-defunct league that last played in D-II in 2012. The D-II Mountain East Conference is its successor in all but name (and charter). (1925–33, 1939–48), Buckeye (1933–39), OVC (1948–52), MAC (1953–69, 1997–2005), SoCon (1977–97), CUSA (2005–21), Sun Belt (2022–)
Overall Win Record: 629–570–47 (.524)
Bowl Record: 13–7 (.650)
Colors: Kelly green and white
Stadium: Joan C. Edwards Stadium (capacity 38,227)
Current Head Coach: Charles Huff
Notable Historic Coaches: Jack Lengyel
Notable Historic Players: Frank Gatski, Troy Brown, Randy Moss, Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich, Rakeem Cato
National Championships: 2 in FCS (1992, 1996)
Conference Championships: 13 (3 WVIAC – 1925, 1928, 1931; 1 Buckeye – 1937; 3 SoCon – 1988, 1994, 1996; 5 MAC – 1997–2000, 2002; 1 CUSA – 2014)

Marshall University, a medium-sized public school not far from where West Virginia meets Ohio and Kentucky, is one of the few schools at its level with a significant place in popular culture, mostly because of a tragedy in 1970. While the team was returning from a game at East Carolina, their chartered plane crashed on its landing approach, killing all on board. The film We Are Marshall, named for the university's traditional rallying cry, is a somewhat fictionalized version of the team's rebuilding in the aftermath of the crash.

On the field, the Herd played mostly in regional conferences until joining the MAC in 1954, only to be kicked out in 1969 after multiple NCAA rules violations. They joined the Southern Conference in 1977, returning to competition in the '80s and eventually becoming a dominant I-AA/FCS program in the '90s; in their last six seasons at that level (1991–96), they made the playoff semifinals every year and won two national titles. Their last I-AA season, featuring future NFL stars Chad Pennington and Randy Moss, was one of the most dominant in history at that level; not only did they go unbeaten, but none of their opponents got any closer than two TDs. The Herd then returned to the MAC, winning the conference title in each of their first four seasons back (as well as five in six seasons) before (voluntarily) moving to Conference USA in 2005. Marshall has since settled in as a frequent threat for conference honors, though obviously not the national power they were in their final years in FCS. Most recently, Marshall became part of the mass exodus from CUSA, moving to the Sun Belt along with Southern Miss and ODU in 2022. In the process, they joined the conference of their most historic rival, fellow Appalachian overperformer App State (West Virginia barely plays and has never lost to the Herd in football).^note Though they do play in other sports. Funnily, WVU beat Marshall in men's soccer in the same (COVID-affected) 2020–21 season in which Marshall won the national title. At the same time Marshall joined the SBC, WVU moved men's soccer into that league.

Southern Miss Golden Eagles

Location: Hattiesburg, MS
School Established: 1910^note As Mississippi Normal College; became Mississippi State Teachers College in 1924, Mississippi Southern College in 1940, University in 1962
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1912–30, 1942–47, 1952–95), SIAA (1931–41), Gulf States (1948–51), CUSA (1996–2021), Sun Belt (2022–)
Overall Win Record: 617–462–27 (.570)
Bowl Record: 12–13 (.480)
Colors: Gold and black
Stadium: M.M. Roberts Stadium (aka "The Rock") (capacity 36,000)
Current Head Coach: Will Hall
Notable Historic Coaches: Thad "Pie" Vann, Bobby Colins, Jeff Bower
Notable Historic Players: Ray Guy, Jeff Bower, Hanford Dixon, Reggie Collier, Brett Favre
National Championships: 2 in the NCAA College Division^note predecessor to Division II (1958, 1962)
Conference Championships: 8 (3 Gulf States – 1948, 1950–51; 5 CUSA – 1996–97, 1999, 2003, 2011)

While the University of Southern Mississippi plays third fiddle in its state to SEC teams Ole Miss and Mississippi State in terms of popularity, it actually outperforms both programs in terms of its historic win percentage. Its team was a regional power in the mid 20th century under Hall of Fame coach Thad "Pie" Vann, who led the team to two College Division national championships as an independent during his long winning tenure (1949-68). Former QB Jeff Bower helped build the team into consistent winners during his tenure (1991-2007) and led their transition to CUSA, where they remained a strong competitor... until 2012, where the Golden Eagles suffered one of the steepest dropoffs in major college history, going from winning 12 games and their conference to going completely winless after a coaching change (the entire coaching staff was fired). The program has mostly rebounded since then and left CUSA for the Sun Belt in 2022.

Despite its general success on the football field, the university has long been dogged by off-field controversies. A lot of this understandably has to do with the ugly history of racism in the region; USM strongly held out from integration and used Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, who went on to become Grand Wizard of the first KKK, as its mascot for decades before changing its nickname from "the Southerners" to the Golden Eagles in 1974. The school has tried to distance itself from that history (though its stadium is still named after an ardent segregationist). In more recent years, the school has instead been more associated with the misuse of state welfare funds to support the school's non-football athletic programs, a scandal that involved big name alumni like the state governor and Southern Miss' most famous football player, Pro Hall of Famer Brett Favre.

Troy Trojans

Cry "Havoc!", and let slip the dogs of war!

Location: Troy, AL
School Established: 1887^note As Troy Normal School, then Troy Teachers College in 1929, Troy State College in 1957, Troy State University in 1967, and Troy University in 2006.
Conference Affiliations: Ind. (1909-37, 1991-95, 2001-03), Alabama Intercollegiate (1938-59), Alabama Collegiate (1960-69), Gulf South (1970-90), Southland (1996-2000), Sun Belt (2004-)^note No team 1913-20, then 1929 due to the Great Depression
Overall Win Record: 577-429-28 (.572)
Bowl Record: 6-4 (.600)
Colors: Cardinal, silver, and black
Stadium: Veterans Memorial Stadium (capacity 30,470)
Current Head Coach: Gerad Parker
Notable Historic Coaches: Larry Blakeney
Notable Historic Players: DeMarcus Ware, Windham Rotunda, Carlton Martial
National Championships: 3 (NAIA - 1968, D-II - 1984, 1987)
Conference Championships: 23 (3 Alabama Intercollegiate – 1939, 1941–42; 3 Alabama Collegiate – 1967–69; 6 Gulf South – 1971, 1973, 1976, 1984, 1986–87; 3 Southland – 1996, 1999–2000; 8 Sun Belt – 2006–10, 2017, 2022–23)

Another Alabama school that has long played second fiddle to Alabama's bigger schools (to the point that its team used to be named the "Red Wave" rather than the Crimson Tide), Troy University has a long football history. In the back half of the 20th century, it began steadily rising up through the lower division ranks until making the jump to the big leagues in the 21st century under coach Larry Blakeney (who coached the Trojans from 1991–2014). The Trojans continued to perform well in the FBS, dominating the Sun Belt in its early years. Fans are known for reciting the "Havoc!" speech from Julius Caesar (which has nothing to do with Troy, of course; cue joke about Alabama education).