NCAA Division I

For football only, Division I was further subdivided in 1978 into Division I-A (the principal football schools), Division I-AA (the other schools with football teams), and Division I (those schools not sponsoring football).[11][12] In 2006, Division I-A and I-AA were renamed "Football Bowl Subdivision" (FBS) and "Football Championship Subdivision" (FCS), respectively.

FBS teams are allowed a maximum of 85 players receiving athletically based aid per year, with each player on scholarship receiving a full scholarship. FCS teams have the same 85-player limit as FBS teams, but are allowed to give aid equivalent to only 63 full scholarships. FCS teams are allowed to award partial scholarships, a practice technically allowed but essentially never used at the FBS level. FBS teams also have to meet minimum game attendance requirements (average 15,000 people in actual or paid attendance per home game), while FCS teams do not need to meet minimum attendance requirements.

Another difference is postseason play. Since 1978, FCS teams have played in an NCAA-sanctioned bracket tournament culminating in a title game, the NCAA Division I Football Championship, to determine a national champion. Meanwhile, FBS teams play in bowl games, with various polls ranking teams after the conclusion of these games, yielding a Consensus National Champion annually since 1950. Starting with the 2014 postseason, a four-team College Football Playoff has been contested, replacing a one-game championship format that had started during the 1992 postseason with the Bowl Coalition. Even so, Division I FBS football remains the only NCAA sport in which a yearly champion is not determined by an NCAA-sanctioned championship event.

FBS conferences must meet a more stringent set of requirements for NCAA recognition than other conferences:[21]

• A total of at least eight active FBS members.
• To be counted toward this total, a school must participate in conference play in at least six men's and eight women's sports, including men's and women's basketball, football, and at least two other women's team sports.
  • Each school may count one men's and one women's sport not sponsored by its primary conference toward the above limits, as long as that sport competes in another Division I conference. The men's and women's sports so counted need not be the same sport.

(** "Power Five" conferences with guaranteed berths in the "access bowls" associated with the College Football Playoff)

(*** "Group of Five" conferences)

Notes

Notes

Sports are ranked according to total possible scholarships (number of teams x number of scholarships per team). Scholarship numbers for head-count sports are indicated without a decimal point. Numbers for equivalency sports are indicated with a decimal point, with a trailing zero if needed.

Notes:

The NCAA officially classifies the men's championships in volleyball and water polo as "National Collegiate" championships, that being the designation for championships that are open to members of more than one NCAA division. The ice hockey championship, however, is styled as a "Division I" championship because of the previous existence of a separate Division II championship in that sport.

• Football — D-I football programs are divided into FBS and FCS. The 128 FBS programs can award financial aid to as many as 85 players, with each player able to receive up to a full scholarship. The 124 FCS programs can award up to the equivalent of 63 full scholarships, divided among no more than 85 individuals. Some FCS conferences restrict scholarships to a lower level or prohibit scholarships altogether.
• Soccer — The Big 12 and the SEC are the only two major traditional D-I conferences that do not sponsor soccer. Several other D-I conferences also do not sponsor the sport—the Big Sky, MEAC, Mountain West, Ohio Valley, Southland, and SWAC.
• Ice Hockey — Almost all D-I ice hockey programs are in the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, or the Colorado Front Range. Only one D-I all-sports conference, the Big Ten, sponsors a men's hockey league. All other conferences operate as hockey-specific leagues. Of the 61 teams that will compete in D-I hockey in 2020–21, 23 are otherwise classified as either D-II or D-III; a number of schools from D-II play in D-I ice hockey as the NCAA no longer sponsors a championship in D-II and many have traditional/cultural fan bases that support ice hockey, and the D-III schools were "grandfathered" in to D-I through their having sponsored hockey prior to the creation of D-III.
• Lacrosse — The vast majority of D-I lacrosse programs are from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. There are only three D-I programs west of the Mississippi—Air Force and Denver on the Colorado Front Range, and Utah.
• Volleyball — Of the traditional D-I conferences, only the Big West sponsors men's volleyball, and it did not do so until the 2017–18 school year. Two of the other three major volleyball conferences, defined here as leagues that include full Division I members, are volleyball-specific conferences; the third is the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, a multi-sport conference that does not sponsor football or basketball. In addition to the D-I schools, 32 D-II schools will compete in the National Collegiate division in 2020–21; nine of these are members of Conference Carolinas, the first all-sports league outside Division III to sponsor the sport, and the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference will start play in 2020–21 with six newly launched teams.
• Water Polo — The number of D-I schools sponsoring men's water polo has declined from 35 in 1987/88 to 22 in 2010/11.[23] No school outside of California has ever made the finals of the championship, and all champions since 1998 have come from one of the four California-based Pac-12 schools.

The following table lists the men's individual DI sports with at least 1,000 participating athletes. Sports are ranked by number of athletes.

DI college wrestling has lost almost half of its programs since 1982.[25]

Notes:

• As in the men's table above, sports are ranked in order of total possible scholarships. Numbers for head-count sports are indicated without a decimal point; those for equivalency sports are indicated with a decimal point, with a trailing zero if needed.
• Women's soccer is the fastest growing NCAA D-I women's team sport over a prolonged period, increasing from 22 teams in 1981/82 to 315 teams in 2010/11.[27] However, in recent years, the fastest-growing has been beach volleyball, which went from 14 Division I teams in 2011–12 to 55 in 2016–17.
• ^† = In the 2016–17 school year, rugby is classified by the NCAA as an "emerging sport" for women. Beach volleyball, which had previously been an "emerging sport" under the name of "sand volleyball",[28] became an official NCAA championship sport in 2015–16.[29]
• * = The number of scholarships are partially linked for (indoor) volleyball and beach volleyball. Schools that field both indoor and beach volleyball teams are allowed 6.0 full scholarship equivalents specifically for beach volleyball as of 2016–17, with the further limitations that (1) no player receiving aid for beach volleyball can be on the indoor volleyball roster and (2) a maximum of 14 individuals can receive aid in beach volleyball. If a school fields only a beach volleyball team, it is allowed 8.0 full scholarship equivalents for that sport, also distributed among no more than 14 individuals.

The following table lists the women's individual DI sports with at least 1,000 participating athletes. Sports are ranked by number of athletes.

The NCAA also has rules specifying the sport in which multi-sport athletes are to be counted, with the basic rules being:[54]

• Anyone who participates in football is counted in that sport, even if he does not receive financial aid from the football program. An exception exists for players at non-scholarship FCS programs who receive aid in another sport.[55]
• Participants in basketball are counted in that sport, unless they also play football.
• Participants in men's ice hockey are counted in that sport, unless they also play football or basketball.
• Participants in both men's swimming and diving and men's water polo are counted in swimming and diving, unless they count in football or basketball.
• Participants in women's (indoor) volleyball are counted in that sport unless they also play basketball.
• All other multi-sport athletes are counted in whichever sport the school chooses.

Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the top level of college football. Schools in Division I FBS compete in post-season bowl games, with the champions of five conferences, along with the highest-ranked champion of the other five conferences, receiving automatic bids to the access bowls.

FBS schools are limited to a total of 85 football players receiving financial assistance.[60] For competitive reasons, a student receiving partial scholarship counts fully against the total of 85. Nearly all FBS schools that are not on NCAA probation give 85 full scholarships.

As of the 2019 college football season, there will be 130 full members of Division I FBS. The most recent school to become a full FBS member is Liberty University, which made the transition from FCS in 2017 and 2018.

Since the 2016 season, all FBS conferences have been allowed to conduct a championship game that does not count against the limit of 12 regular-season contests. Under the current rules, such a game can be held either (1) between the winners of each of two divisions, with each team having played a full round-robin schedule within its division, or (2) between the conference's top two teams after a full round-robin conference schedule.[61] Previously, "exempt" championship games could only be held between the divisional winners of conferences that had at least 12 football teams and split into divisions.[62][63] The prize is normally a specific bowl game bid for which the conference has a tie-in.

Some conferences have numbers in their names but this often has no relation to the number of member institutions in the conference. The Big Ten Conference did not formally adopt the "Big Ten" name until 1987, but unofficially used that name when it had 10 members from 1917 to 1946, and again from 1949 forward. However, it has continued to use the name even after it expanded to 11 members with the addition of Penn State in 1990, 12 with the addition of Nebraska in 2011, and 14 with the arrival of Maryland and Rutgers in 2014. The Big 12 Conference was established in 1996 with 12 members, but continues to use that name even after a number of departures and a few replacements left the conference with 10 members. On the other hand, the Pac-12 Conference has used names (official or unofficial) that have reflected the number of members since its current charter was established in 1959. The conference unofficially used "Big Five" (1959–62), "Big Six" (1962–64), and "Pacific-8" (1964–68) before officially adopting the "Pacific-8" name. The name duly changed to "Pacific-10" in 1978 with the addition of Arizona and Arizona State, and "Pac-12" (instead of "Pacific-12") in 2011 when Colorado and Utah joined. Conferences also tend to ignore their regional names when adding new schools. For example, the Pac-8/10/12 retained its "Pacific" moniker even though its four newest members (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah) are located in the inland West, and the original Big East kept its name even after adding schools (either in all sports or for football only) located in areas traditionally considered to be in the Midwest (Cincinnati, DePaul, Marquette, Notre Dame), Upper South (Louisville, Memphis) and Southwest (Houston, SMU). The non-football conference that assumed the Big East name when the original Big East split in 2013 is another example of this phenomenon, as half of its 10 inaugural schools (Butler, Creighton, DePaul, Marquette, Xavier) are traditionally regarded as being Midwestern.

(** "Big Five" or "Power Five" conferences with guaranteed berths in the "access bowls" associated with the College Football Playoff)

(*** "Group of Five" conferences)

Notes

The Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly known as Division I-AA, consists of 124 teams as of the 2018 season; three programs are independent, while the remaining 121 teams are structured into 13 conferences.[64] The "I-AA" designation was dropped by the NCAA in 2006, although it is still informally and commonly used. FCS teams are limited to 63 players on scholarship (compared to 85 for FBS teams) and usually play an 11-game schedule (compared to 12 games for FBS teams).[65] The FCS determines its national champion through an NCAA-sanctioned single-elimination bracket tournament, culminating in a title game, the NCAA Division I Football Championship.[66] As of the 2018 season, the tournament begins with 24 teams; 10 conference champions that received automatic bids, and 14 teams selected at-large by a selection committee.[67]

The postseason tournament traditionally begins on Thanksgiving weekend in late November. When I-AA was formed 43 years ago in 1978,[11] the playoffs included just four teams for its first three seasons, doubling to eight teams for one season in 1981.[68] From 1982 to 1985, there was a 12-team tournament; this expanded to 16 teams in 1986. The playoffs expanded to 20 teams starting in 2010, then grew to 24 teams in 2013. Since the 2010 season, the title game is held in early January at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas. From 1997 through 2009, the title game was played in December in Chattanooga, Tennessee, preceded by five seasons in Huntington, West Virginia.[69]

The Football Championship Subdivision includes several conferences which do not participate in the eponymous post-season championship tournament.

The Ivy League was reclassified to I-AA (FCS) following the 1981 season,[70] and plays a strict ten-game schedule. Although it qualifies for an automatic bid, the Ivy League has not played any postseason games at all since becoming a conference for the 1956 NCAA University Division football season, citing academic concerns. (The last college which is now an Ivy League member to play in a bowl game was Columbia in the 1934 Rose Bowl.)

The Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) has its own championship game in mid-December between the champions of its East and West divisions. Also, three of its member schools traditionally do not finish their regular seasons until Thanksgiving weekend. Grambling State and Southern play each other in the Bayou Classic, and Alabama State plays Tuskegee (of Division II) in the Turkey Day Classic. SWAC teams are eligible to accept at-large bids if their schedule is not in conflict. The last SWAC team to participate in the I-AA playoffs was Jackson State in 1997; the SWAC never achieved success in the tournament, going winless in 19 games in twenty years (1978–97). It had greater success outside the conference while in Division II and the preceding College Division.

From 2006 through 2009, the Pioneer Football League and Northeast Conference champions played in the Gridiron Classic. If a league champion was invited to the national championship playoff as an at-large bid (something the Pioneer league, at least, never received), the second-place team would play in the Gridiron Classic. That game was scrapped after the 2009 season when its four-year contract ran out; this coincided with the NCAA's announcement that the Northeast Conference would get an automatic bid to the tournament starting in 2010. The Big South Conference also received an automatic bid in the same season. The Pioneer Football League earned an automatic bid beginning in 2013.

The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) began abstaining from the playoffs with the 2015 season. Like the SWAC, its members are eligible for at-large bids, and the two conferences have faced off in the Celebration Bowl as an alternative postseason game since the 2015 season.

Schools in a transition period after joining the FCS from a lower division (or from the NAIA) are also ineligible for the playoffs.

Division I FCS schools are currently restricted to giving financial assistance amounting to 63 full scholarships. As FCS football is an "equivalency" sport (as opposed to the "head-count" status of FBS football), Championship Subdivision schools may divide their allotment into partial scholarships. However, FCS schools may only have 85 players receiving any sort of athletic financial aid for football—the same numeric limit as FBS schools. Because of competitive forces, however, a substantial number of players in Championship Subdivision programs are on full scholarships. Another difference is that FCS schools no longer have a limit on the number of new players that can be provided with financial aid in a given season, while FBS schools are limited to 25 such additions per season. Finally, FCS schools are limited to 95 individuals participating in preseason practices, as opposed to 105 at FBS schools (the three service academies that play FBS football are exempt from preseason practice player limits by NCAA rule).

A few Championship Subdivision conferences are composed of schools that offer no athletic scholarships at all, most notably the Ivy League and the Pioneer Football League (PFL), a football-only conference. The Ivy League allows no athletic scholarships at all, while the PFL consists of schools that offer scholarships in other sports but choose not to take on the expense of a scholarship football program. The Northeast Conference also sponsored non-scholarship football, but began offering a maximum of 30 full scholarship equivalents in 2006, which grew to 40 in 2011 after a later vote of the league's school presidents and athletic directors and has since increased to 45.[71] The Patriot League only began awarding football scholarships in the 2013 season, with the first scholarships awarded only to incoming freshmen. Before the conference began its transition to scholarship football, athletes receiving scholarships in other sports were ineligible to play football for member schools. Since the completion of the transition with the 2016 season, member schools have been allowed up to 60 full scholarship equivalents.[72]

Notes

Several Bowl Subdivision and Championship Subdivision conferences have member institutions that do not compete in football. Such schools are sometimes unofficially referred to as I-AAA.[73]

The following non-football conferences have full members that sponsor football:

• The America East Conference has four football-sponsoring schools, all of which play in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA)—Albany, Maine, New Hampshire, and Stony Brook.
• The Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN) also has four football-sponsoring members:
  • Kennesaw State has played in the Big South Conference since 2015, and North Alabama, which joined the ASUN from NCAA Division II in 2018 and played that season as an FCS independent, joined Big South football in 2019.
  • Liberty, which also joined the ASUN in 2018, completed an FBS transition at the end of the 2018 season and is now an FBS independent.
  • Stetson plays in the Pioneer Football League (PFL).
  • The ASUN will add football in the near future, most likely in 2022. Kennesaw State and North Alabama will be joined by Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky, and Jacksonville State, all three of which are joining the ASUN in July 2021.[74][75]
• The Atlantic 10 Conference has seven football-sponsoring members:
  • Davidson and Dayton play in the PFL.
  • Duquesne plays in the Northeast Conference (NEC).
  • Fordham plays in the Patriot League.
  • Rhode Island and Richmond play in the CAA.
  • UMass plays FBS football as an independent.
• The current Big East Conference has four football-sponsoring schools. Three play in FCS—Butler in the PFL, Georgetown in the Patriot League, and Villanova in the CAA. The fourth, UConn, plays as an FBS independent.
• Three Big West Conference members have football programs. UC Davis and Cal Poly play FCS football in the Big Sky Conference, and Hawaiʻi plays FBS football in the Mountain West Conference.
• The Horizon League has two football schools. Robert Morris plays Big South football and Youngstown State plays in the Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC).
• The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) has two football schools. Marist plays in the PFL, and Monmouth plays in the Big South.
• The Missouri Valley Conference has seven football schools—Drake, Illinois State, Indiana State, Missouri State, Northern Iowa, Southern Illinois and Valparaiso. Drake and Valparaiso play in the PFL, while the others compete in the MVFC (a separate legal entity from the MVC, despite the similar name).
• The Summit League has five football schools, and will add a sixth such school in 2021. All current football schools play in the MVFC—North Dakota, North Dakota State, South Dakota, South Dakota State and Western Illinois. St. Thomas of Minnesota, which will join the Summit from Division III in July 2021, will play in the PFL.
• The West Coast Conference has two football schools in BYU and San Diego, which respectively play football as an FBS independent and a PFL member.
• The Western Athletic Conference has three football schools. New Mexico State plays as an FBS independent,[76] and 2020 arrivals Dixie State and Tarleton State play as FCS independents. The WAC will reinstate football at the FCS level in July 2021, with Dixie State and Tarleton State joined by new arrivals Abilene Christian, Lamar, Sam Houston State, and Stephen F. Austin. Central Arkansas, Eastern Kentucky, and Jacksonville State will be football-only members in the fall 2021 season and join the ASUN football league when it launches in 2022. Southern Utah will join for all sports, including football, in 2022.[77][78][79] Additionally, full WAC member UTRGV plans to start an FCS football program no later than 2024.[80]

The following Division I conferences do not sponsor football. These conferences still compete in Division I for all sports that they sponsor.

Notes

Of these, the three that most recently sponsored football were the Atlantic 10, MAAC, and WAC. The A-10 football league dissolved in 2006 with its members going to the Colonial Athletic Association. In addition, four A-10 schools (Dayton, Fordham, Duquesne, and Massachusetts) play football in a conference other than the new CAA, which still includes two full-time A-10 members (Rhode Island and Richmond). The MAAC stopped sponsoring football in 2007, after most of its members gradually stopped fielding teams. The only pre-2007 MAAC member that still sponsors football is Marist; Monmouth became the second full MAAC member with football upon its arrival in 2013. Marist plays in the Pioneer Football League, while Monmouth spent the 2013 season as an FCS independent before moving its football program into the Big South. The WAC dropped football at the end of the 2012 season, after a near-complete membership turnover that saw the conference stripped of all but two of its football-sponsoring members. The two remaining football-sponsoring schools, Idaho and New Mexico State, played the 2013 season as FBS independents before becoming football-only members of the Sun Belt Conference in 2014. Both left Sun Belt football in 2018, with Idaho downgrading to FCS status and adding football to its all-sports Big Sky Conference membership and New Mexico State becoming an FBS independent. The WAC added two more football-sponsoring schools with the 2020 arrival of Dixie State and Tarleton State from Division II; both schools planned to be FCS independents for the foreseeable future. In January 2021, the WAC announced it would reinstate football at the FCS level in July of that year, coinciding with the arrival of four new full members with FCS football.

Notes