NCAA Division I independent schools

As of the current 2020 college football season, there are seven NCAA Division I FBS independent schools.

Notes

In the 2020–21 season (mostly moved from fall 2020 due to COVID-19), three schools will play as FCS independents—Dixie State, Presbyterian, and Tarleton State. Dixie State announced in January 2019 that it would begin a transition from Division II to the non-football Western Athletic Conference in July 2020, with the football program becoming an FCS independent at that time.[6] Presbyterian announced in 2017 that it had started a transition to non-scholarship FCS football. The Blue Hose played their final season of Big South Conference football in 2019, and will play the 2020–21 season as an independent before joining the Pioneer Football League, a football-only conference made up entirely of non-scholarship FCS programs, in 2021. Presbyterian will remain a full non-football Big South member.[7] Tarleton State announced in 2019 that it would join the WAC alongside Dixie State and also play football as an FCS independent.[8]

Robert Morris left the football-sponsoring Northeast Conference for the non-football Horizon League in July 2020, and had originally planned to play the 2020 season as an independent and then join Big South football.[9] However, after the Big South moved its fall 2020 football season to spring 2021, with two of its football members playing in fall 2020 and a third not playing at all in 2020–21, the conference brought Robert Morris into its football league ahead of schedule. The Colonials will be eligible for the Big South title.[10]

The only school that had played as an FCS independent in 2019, North Dakota, joins the Missouri Valley Football Conference in 2020. North Dakota left the Big Sky Conference in 2018 to join the non-football Summit League, but agreed to honor existing contracts to play Big Sky members in football, and thus played a full Big Sky football schedule as an FCS independent in 2018 and 2019. While North Dakota was not listed in conference standings, their games against Big Sky football members counted fully in conference standings.[11]

There are currently two NCAA Division I independents in men's ice hockey—Arizona State University and Long Island University (LIU).

Arizona State moved up from club hockey in the ACHA to full varsity status. The Sun Devils began playing a full Division I schedule in 2016–17, and expected to be in a hockey conference for 2017–18, but no conference move has yet materialized. With the 2020–21 season dramatically impacted by COVID-19, ASU entered into a scheduling agreement with the Big Ten Conference for that season, with the Sun Devils playing a road-only schedule of four games against each of the seven Big Ten hockey members.[14]

LIU announced in late April 2020 that it would launch varsity men's hockey for the 2020–21 season. The Sharks have yet to announce a conference home, but are playing their first season as a scheduling partner of Atlantic Hockey.[15]

No women's ice hockey teams played as independents at the National Collegiate level, the de facto equivalent to Division I in that sport, in the 2019–20 season.

Five schools—Franklin Pierce, Post, Sacred Heart, Saint Anselm, and Saint Michael's—competed as independents in the 2018–19 season, all participating in the nascent New England Women's Hockey Alliance (NEWHA), which had originally been established in 2017 as a scheduling alliance among all of the then-current National Collegiate independents. The NEWHA initially included six schools, but Holy Cross left after the inaugural 2017–18 NEWHA season to join Hockey East. The NEWHA officially organized as a conference in advance of the 2018–19 season,[18] but was not officially recognized by the NCAA as a Division I league until the 2019–20 season, by which time the newly launched LIU program had joined to return the conference membership to six.[19]

There is one men's soccer independent in the 2020 season, Chicago State University, a full member of the Western Athletic Conference which announced in late June 2020 that it would add the sport effective immediately. Because this announcement took place less than three months before the 2020 season had originally been scheduled to begin, Chicago State could not play a WAC schedule in that season.[20] Due to COVID-19 issues, the NCAA announced that no championships would be held in fall sports in 2020; it has since announced plans to hold championships in those sports in spring 2021.

Two schools were independents in the most recently completed 2019 women's soccer season. The most recent departure from the independent ranks was Hampton University, which joined the Big South Conference, which sponsors women's soccer, in 2018.[21]