FBS independents

Association	NCAA
Founded	1978; 47 years ago (1978)
Sports fielded	1 men's: 1
Division	Division I
Subdivision	FBS
No. of teams	2
Region	Eastern United States Midwestern United States
Official website	ncaa.com/independents

National Collegiate Athletic Association Football Bowl Subdivision independent schools are four-year institutions whosefootball programs are not part of anNCAA-affiliatedconference. This means that FBS independents are not required to schedule each other for competition like conference schools do.

There are fewer independent schools than in years past; many independent schools join, or attempt to join, established conferences. The main reasons to join a conference are to gain a share of television revenue and access tobowl games that agree to take teams from certain conferences, and to help deal with otherwise potentially difficult challenges in scheduling opponents to play throughout the season.

All Division I FBS independents are eligible for theCollege Football Playoff (CFP), and are currently eligible to receive a bye to the quarterfinals of the playoff after automatic bids for the top ranked conference champions were removed following the 2024 season.

Independents historically had eligibility for the so-called "access bowls" (theNew Year's Six bowls that issue at-large bids:Cotton,Peach, andFiesta), if they were chosen by the CFP selection committee.Notre Dame also had a potential tie-in with theOrange Bowl, along with other bowls via its affiliation with theAtlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Historically, Notre Dame had similar agreements with its previous conference, theBig East.

The ranks of football independents increased by one starting with the 2011 season with the announcement thatBYU would leave theMountain West Conference (MW) to become a football independent starting with that season.^[1] The ranks increased by two in 2013 when theWestern Athletic Conference (WAC) dropped football andNew Mexico State andIdaho did not have a conference for football.^[2] The ranks of football independents decreased by two in 2014 with the return of Idaho and New Mexico State as football-only members of theSun Belt Conference (SBC)^[3] and decreased by one more in 2015 with Navy joining theAmerican Athletic Conference (The American) as a football-only member.^[4][5][6]UMass became an FBS independent in 2016.^[7] Two further teams joined the ranks of FBS independents for the 2018 season: New Mexico State, whose membership in the Sun Belt Conference was not extended beyond the 2017 season,^[8] andLiberty, which transitioned from theBig South Conference of theFootball Championship Subdivision in 2018.^[9] TheUConn Huskies became an FBS independent team in 2020.^[10]

The most recent changes to the independent ranks came in 2023 when BYU joined theBig 12 Conference,^[11] and Liberty and New Mexico State joinedConference USA. A year later, Army joined Navy as a football-only member of The American.^[12] In 2025,UMass became a full member of theMid-American Conference.^[13]

In recent years, most independent FBS schools have joined a conference for two primary reasons: a guaranteed share of television and bowl revenues and ease of scheduling.

In addition it may be possible that a new school leaves, is forced out from a conference, or has reclassified themselves from a different NCAA division and are not able to join a new conference immediately after entering the FBS thus forcing them to be an independent school.

Notre Dame unsuccessfully attempted on three occasions to join an athletic conference in the early 20th century, including theBig Ten in 1926 but was turned down in part due toanti-Catholicism.^[18] Notre Dame is now one of the most prominent programs in the country. Because of its national popularity built over several decades, Notre Dame was the only independent program to be part of theBowl Championship Series coalition and its guaranteed payout. These factors help make Notre Dame one of the most financially valuable football programs in the country, thus negating the need for Notre Dame to secure revenue by joining a conference.^[19][20]

Previously, Notre Dame had filled its annual schedule without needing conference games to do so. It had longstanding rivalries with many different programs around the country, many under long-term contracts, including annual rivalry games withUSC,Navy,^[18]Michigan,Stanford,Michigan State,Boston College,Purdue, andPitt. All Notre Dame home games and most away games are on national television, so other teams have a large financial incentive to schedule the university. Nonetheless, Notre Dame joined the ACC in 2013 for all sports except football and men's ice hockey (the only other ACC member with a men's ice hockey varsity team isBoston College, which played alongside Notre Dame inHockey East until 2017 when Notre Dame switched to the Big Ten). As part of this agreement, Notre Dame plays five of its football games each season against ACC members. This arrangement required Notre Dame to eliminate or reduce the frequency of several rivalries: the Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue series were canceled (with a renewal of the latter in 2024), while Boston College and Pitt, ACC members themselves, now play Notre Dame every three or four years. On the other hand, the move has allowed Notre Dame to resume old rivalries with ACC members Georgia Tech and Miami, while still scheduling Big Ten opponents from time to time. Due to many historic rivalries with ACC teams, most fans remain unaware of this, as scheduling changes turned out to be small.

In 2020, after several non-ACC games were canceled due to theCOVID-19 pandemic, Notre Dame opted to play a full ACC football schedule for just the 2020 season. The Irish were eligible for the conference championship game (which they lost toClemson) and the conference's automatic bowl bids. Notre Dame's football program returned to independence in 2021, with its schedule including the usual five games against ACC schools.^[21]

TheUniversity of Connecticut was a founding member of theoriginal Big East Conference in 1979, but that conferencesplit along football lines in 2013. As noted previously, Notre Dame remained an FBS independent but placed its other sports in the ACC, andPittsburgh andSyracuse followed Notre Dame into the ACC, also joining ACC football. The seven members without FBS football teams left to form a new non-footballBig East Conference, while the remaining FBS schools (among them UConn) joined with several new members to reorganize the Big East corporate entity as theAmerican Athletic Conference (which would loseLouisville to the ACC andRutgers to the Big Ten a year later).

In the years after the split, UConn's flagshipmen's andwomen's basketball programs faced significant issues.Jim Calhoun, the coach who had largely built the UConn men into a national powerhouse, had retired after the 2011–12 season. While his successorKevin Ollie had led the Huskies toa national title inthe first season after the split, the team faded noticeably in later seasons, and Ollie was fired after the 2017–18 season amid an NCAA investigation.^[22] Ollie's final season saw UConn men's attendance reach its lowest level in 30 years. The women faced a severe lack of competition in The American. In their seven seasons in that league, the Huskies went unbeaten in conference play, both in the regular season and the conference tournament,^[23][24] with all but two of their 139 conference wins being by double-digit margins.^[25]

The Huskies received and accepted an invitation to join the reconfigured Big East in 2019, with a July 2020 entry date. Due to the Big East not sponsoring football, UConn was willing to stay in The American as a football-only member. After leaving the conference in all other sports, the American Athletic Conference was unwilling to allow UConn to remain as a football-only member, leading to UConn's independence in football beginning in 2020.^[10] Ironically, the football program's poor record in recent seasons may make it easier to find FBS opponents to fill out the schedule.^[26]

UConn opted not to field a team in 2020 due to theCOVID-19 pandemic and the resulting disruption to college football schedules. Specifically, as many other programs moved to conference-only schedules due to the pandemic, several of UConn's scheduled matches were canceled, and the program's status as an independent made it very difficult to schedule replacement games.^[27]

Since 1991,Notre Dame home games have aired onNBC, and since 2021, are also simulcast onNBCUniversal's streaming service,Peacock. In February 1990, Notre Dame broke away from theCollege Football Association, which Notre Dame was a part of since 1976, and signed a 5-year contract worth $38 million with NBC that began in 1991.^[28] The last regular season Notre Dame home game to be televised outside of NBC was againstPenn State onESPN in1990.

One Notre Dame home game exclusively streams on Peacock since 2021, which was a home opener againstToledo. Previously, some Fighting Irish home games aired on the now-defunctNBCSN, and in 2020, which Notre Dame was a temporary football member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, the home opener againstSouth Florida aired onUSA Network. A portion of the game againstClemson aired on USA Network due toNBC News' coverage ofJoe Biden's victory speech, before returning to NBC for the remainder of the game. Some home games can be moved toCNBC in case of an overrun intoBig Ten Saturday Night, similar toFox Business occasionally being an overflow channel for someFox College Football telecasts in the event of programming conflicts.

Since 2021,UConn home games have aired onCBS Sports Network.^[29] The deal between CBS and UConn was made in 2020, initially only including four home games, with all home games televised from 2021 to 2023, but their season was cancelled due to theCOVID-19 pandemic, therefore starting in 2021 againstHoly Cross, and the final season being in 2024, although it has been confirmed home games will continue to air on CBS Sports Network in 2025. No home game has aired on the CBS network during their deal.

In 2022, UConn's home opener againstCentral Connecticut was televised onThe CW affiliateWCCT-TV and streaming onWTIC-TV's streaming app, FOX61+.^[30] The following year, UConn's athletic department announced a partnership withHartford-licensedCBS affiliateWFSB and sister independent station WWAX-LD. The 2023 home finale againstSacred Heart and the 2024 home opener againstMerrimack were televised on WFSB, and streaming for free on UConn's streaming service, UConn+.^[31]

The following is an incomplete list of teams which have been Division I-A (FBS) Independents since the formation of Division I-A in 1978. School names reflect those in current use by their athletic programs, which may not reflect names used when those schools were independents. Conference alignments reflect those in place for the2025 season.

• NCAA Division I FCS independent schools
• NCAA Division I independent schools
• NCAA Division II independent schools
• NCAA Division III independent schools
• NAIA independent schools

• Official website

• NCAA Division I FBS football independents
• 1978 establishments in the United States
• NCAA conferences
• Sports organizations established in 1978

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata