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Current season, competition or edition: 2025 NCAA Division I FCS football season | |
 | |
| Sport | American football |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1978 |
| First season | 1978; 47 years ago |
| Organising body | NCAA |
| Division | 1 |
| No. of teams | 129 |
| Country | United States |
| Most recent champion(s) | North Dakota State (2024) |
| Most titles | North Dakota State (10 titles) |
| Official website | ncaa.com/football/fcs |
TheNCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly known asDivision I-AA, is the second-highest level ofcollege football in the United States, after theFootball Bowl Subdivision (FBS). Sponsored by theNational Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the FCS level comprises129 teams in 13 conferences as of the2024 season. The FCS designation is relevant only for football; members of the subdivision compete inNCAA Division I in all other sports.
From 1906 to 1955, the NCAA had no divisional structure for member schools. Prior to the 1956 college football season, NCAA schools were organized into an upperUniversity Division and lowerCollege Division. In the summer of1973, the University Division becameDivision I, but by 1976, there was a desire to further separate the major football programs from those that were less financially successful, while allowing their other sports to compete at the top level.[1]
Division I-AA was created in January 1978, whenDivision I was subdivided intoDivision I-A and Division I-AA for football only.[2] The initial criteria for a program's admittance to I-A included (1) scheduling 60% of its games against other I-A teams, and either (2) having a 30,000-seat stadium and an average attendance of 17,000 for one year in the last four, or (3) drawing an average of 17,000 over the last four years. Division I football schools satisfying #1 and either #2 or #3 also had to maintain eight sports overall. Schools failing to meet either #2 or #3 could still qualify for I-A if they maintained twelve sports overall.[3] (NOTE: the NCAA, at the time, governed male sports only; women's teams did not count toward these totals). Of 144 schools participating in Division I football in the 1977 season, 79 were expected to qualify for I-A, with the remaining 65 relegated to I-AA.[3]
But because the NCAA allowed four years for criteria #2 and #3 to be met, just eight schools (seven from theSouthwestern Athletic Conference, a league ofHBCUs that had just moved to Division I in 1977) opted for Division I-AA for the 1978 season. Meanwhile, another 35 reclassified fromDivision II to Division I-AA, including four entire conferences. Thus, at least initially, the creation of Division I-AA appeared to backfire; rather than serve as a home for the smaller or less competitive football programs of Division I, it created a pathway for football-playing Division II schools to join Division I without the burden of funding a major football program. Division I-AA still had just 50 members when the four-year deadline set in January 1978 expired, forcing 41 schools that did not meet I-A criteria to reclassify to I-AA.[4] Some successfully appealed the decision, including eight members of theMid-American Conference along withCincinnati, a football independent at the time.[5] Thus I-AA membership hit an early peak of 91 in 1982, before settling down into the 80-90 range for the next several years.
The next big increase in Division I-AA membership came after the January 1991 NCAA convention voted to require an athletic program to maintain all of its sports at the same divisional level by the 1993 season.[6] In order to comply, 28 Division I schools with football programs at the Division II and Division III levels were forced to upgrade their teams to the Division I level, and all of them (at least initially) chose Division I-AA as their new football home. At the same time, the number of football scholarships allowed in I-AA was reduced from the original 70 to 63, effective in 1994; it has remained at that number ever since. With the new additions, membership in I-AA hit a new high of 118 in 1993.
The subdivision stabilized thereafter, maintaining at least 120 members from 1997 onward. Membership peaked at 130 in 2022 before settling at the current 129.
NCAA Division I-A and NCAA Division I-AA were renamed as NCAA Division I FBS and NCAA Division I FCS prior to the 2006 season.
The FCS has held a post-season playoff to award an NCAA-sanctionednational championship since its inception in 1978. The size of the playoff bracket has increased from 4 teams in 1978 to 24 teams in the 2020 season. This makes the FCS the highest level of college football with an NCAA-sanctioned national championship.
As of the 2024 football season, there are 13 Division I FCS football conferences:
