NCAA Division I

NCAA Division I

NCAA Division I (D-I) is the top level of college sports in the United States, managed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. It includes schools with large budgets, good facilities, and many athletic scholarships. These schools compete at the highest level of college sports.

In the past, this level was called the University Division. In 1973, it was renamed Division I. The other levels became Division II and Division III.

For college football, D-I schools are split into groups. The Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) has more scholarships and used to need more fans at games. The Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) decides its champion through a tournament.

In 2020–21, there were 357 schools in Division I. Some play football in the FBS, some in the FCS, and others don’t have football teams at all. Schools can move up to Division I if they are accepted by a conference and can show they can afford it.

Finances

Division I athletic programs made a lot of money in the 2009–10 school year. Men's teams made more money than women's teams. Football and men's basketball often bring in the most money and are called "revenue sports".

Between 2008 and 2012, many teams were dropped in Division I. Sports like men's tennis, gymnastics, and wrestling were affected the most.

In the Football Bowl Subdivision, about half of football and men's basketball teams made more money than they spent. But in the Football Championship Subdivision, only a small number of teams made extra money.

In 2012, a small part of athletic budgets went to equipment, uniforms, and supplies for male athletes.

In 2014, there was a discussion about whether student athletes should be paid. It was decided that student-athletes could receive free unlimited meals and snacks. The NCAA said this was to help students get proper nutrition.

Football conferences

Division I conferences must follow some rules. They need at least seven schools that play many sports, including men’s and women’s basketball. These conferences must offer at least 12 sports in total.

For men, there must be at least six sports. Men's basketball is required, and at least seven schools must have it. If a conference does not include football, it must have at least two other men’s team sports besides basketball.

For women, there must also be at least six sports. Women's basketball is required, with at least seven schools offering it. There must be at least two other women’s team sports, and five other women’s sports must be offered by at least six schools, with at least two of these being team sports.

FBS conferences

FBS conferences have stricter rules. They need at least eight schools. Each school must play at least six men’s and eight women’s sports, including basketball, football, and at least two other women’s team sports.

† "Power Four" conferences that had guaranteed berths in the New Year's Six, the bowl games associated with the College Football Playoff, before the playoff's 2024 expansion to 12 teams
‡ "Group of Six" conferences

See also: List of NCAA Division I FBS football programs

FCS conferences

See also: List of NCAA Division I FCS football programs

Sports

Men's team sports

Notes:

The NCAA calls the men's volleyball and water polo championships "National Collegiate" because they include schools from more than one NCAA division. The ice hockey championship is called a "Division I" championship because there used to be a separate championship for Division II.

• Football — D-I football programs are split into FBS and FCS. After a legal case called House v. NCAA was settled, scholarship limits in all D-I sports were replaced by roster limits. The settlement mainly affected certain powerful conferences, but other schools could choose to follow the new rules, and most did. The Ivy League chose not to change and keeps its non-scholarship status.
• Soccer — Starting with the 2026 NCAA soccer season, four of the 10 FBS conferences will not have men's soccer: the Big 12, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, and the SEC. Several other D-I conferences also do not have men's soccer. The Mountain West Conference will start sponsoring men's soccer in 2026. The Western Athletic Conference will stop sponsoring men's soccer after becoming the United Athletic Conference in July 2026.
• Ice hockey — Most D-I ice hockey programs are in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, or Colorado Front Range. Only the Big Ten sponsors men's hockey for all its members. Other conferences are just for hockey.
• Lacrosse — Most D-I lacrosse programs are in the Northeast, Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic. Only four D-I programs are not in the Eastern Time Zone: Air Force and Denver on the Colorado Front Range, Marquette in Milwaukee, and Utah.
• Volleyball — Among traditional D-I conferences, only the Big West Conference and NEC have men's volleyball. Two other volleyball conferences only focus on volleyball, and the third is the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, which has many sports but not football or basketball. In addition to D-I schools, 44 D-II schools also competed in the National Collegiate division in 2025–26. Four D-II conferences have men's volleyball: Conference Carolinas, the East Coast Conference, the Great Lakes Valley Conference, and the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
• Water polo — The number of D-I schools with men's water polo went from 35 in 1987/88 to 22 in 2010/11, but then increased to 29 in 2025–26.

Men's individual sports

The following table shows the men's individual D-I sports with at least 1,000 athletes. Sports are listed by the number of athletes.

Women's team sports

Notes

• Women's sports were also affected by the House settlement, with roster limits starting in 2025–26.
• Women's soccer has been the fastest-growing NCAA D-I women's team sport for a long time. Recently, beach volleyball has grown even faster.
• Since 2016–17, rugby is called an "emerging sport" for women by the NCAA.
• Two women's sports will have their first official NCAA championships in 2026–27—acrobatics & tumbling and stunt.

Women's individual sports

The following table shows the women's individual D-I sports with at least 1,000 athletes. Sports are listed by the number of athletes.

Broadcasting and revenue

NCAA Division I schools have special deals to show their popular sports, like football and men's basketball, on TV and cable channels. These deals can bring in a lot of money, especially for the biggest schools.

For example, the Big Ten group signed a deal in 2016 that pays them a lot of money over six years.

The NCAA also has TV deals, such as one for the men's basketball championship tournament, known as March Madness.

For the 2023–24 year, the groups that made the most money were:

1. Big 10
2. SEC
3. Big 12
4. ACC
5. Pac-12

Scholarship and roster limits by sport

Old rules pre-July 1, 2025

Before July 1, 2025, the NCAA had rules about how much money schools could give to students in each sport. They split sports into two groups.

In some sports, there was a limit on how many students could get money. In other sports, there was a limit on how much total money could be given out, but schools could choose how many students to give it to.

New rules since July 1, 2025

After a legal case in 2024, the rules changed. Starting in 2025–26, instead of limits on money, there are limits on how many players can be on a team in each sport. This applies to certain big conferences and schools that chose to follow these new rules.

Players who were already on teams before 2025–26 and still wanted to play were allowed to stay without counting toward these new limits.

Football subdivisions

Subdivisions in Division I exist only in football. In all other sports, all Division I conferences are the same. The subdivisions were recently named to show the different levels of football.

As of the 2023 season, the main differences between Bowl Subdivision and Championship Subdivision schools are scholarship rules and the NCAA championship in the latter subdivision. FBS attendance rules were removed in 2023. In their place, Division I added new rules for athletic funding. Starting in 2027–28, FBS schools must fund at least 210 full scholarships across all sports, spend at least $6 million on athletic scholarships each year, and provide at least 90% of allowed scholarships across 16 sports, including football.

Football Bowl Subdivision

See also: College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS and List of NCAA Division I FBS football bowl records

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

Before the House settlement, FBS schools could only give financial help to 85 football players. Now, the House settlement changed this to a limit of 105 players on the team.

As of the 2026 college football season, there are 136 full members of Division I FBS, plus two schools that are joining FBS for scheduling. The newest full FBS members are Delaware and Missouri State, which will finish moving from FCS before the 2026 season. The next schools to become full FBS members are North Dakota State and Sacramento State, which will join the Mountain West Conference and Mid-American Conference in 2026 and become full FBS members in 2028.

Since the 2016 season, all FBS conferences can hold a championship game that does not count toward the 12 regular-season game limit. Conferences can choose who plays in their championship games.

Some conferences have numbers in their names, but this does not always match the number of schools in the conference.

Conferences

** – "Big Four" or "Power Four" conferences that had guaranteed spots in the "access bowls" before the College Football Playoff grew to 12 teams in 2024
*** – "Group of Six" conferences

See also: List of NCAA Division I FBS football programs

Football Championship Subdivision

See also: NCAA Division I Football Championship and List of NCAA Division I FCS football programs

The Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly known as Division I-AA, has 130 teams as of the 2022 season, all in one of 14 conferences. The "I-AA" name was dropped by the NCAA in 2006 but is still used sometimes. FCS teams can give financial help to up to 63 players (compared to 85 for FBS teams) and, through 2025, usually play 11 games (compared to 12 for FBS teams). The FCS regular season will grow to 12 games in 2026. The FCS finds its national champion through an NCAA tournament with a single-elimination bracket tournament, ending in a title game, the NCAA Division I Football Championship. Since 2018, the tournament starts with 24 teams: 10 conference champions who get automatic bids, and 14 teams chosen at-large by a committee.

The tournament usually starts on Thanksgiving weekend in late November.

Scholarships

Division I FCS schools can give financial help worth up to 63 full scholarships. FCS schools can split scholarships into smaller amounts. However, FCS schools can only have 85 players getting any athletic financial help for football—the same limit as FBS schools. Some Championship Subdivision conferences have schools that do not give any athletic scholarships, like the Ivy League and the Pioneer Football League (PFL).

Conferences

See also: List of NCAA Division I FCS football programs

Division I non-football schools

Some Bowl Subdivision and Championship Subdivision conferences have schools that do not play football. These schools are sometimes called I-AAA.

The following non-football conferences have schools that do play football:

• The America East Conference has four football schools: Albany, Bryant, Maine, and New Hampshire. All play in CAA Football, the separate football league of the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA).
• The Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN) has seven schools with football, with an eighth joining in July 2026.
• The Atlantic 10 Conference has six schools with football.
• The current Big East Conference has four schools with football.
• Three Big West Conference schools have football.
• The Horizon League has two football schools.
• The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) has three football schools.
• The Missouri Valley Conference has seven football schools:
• The Summit League has five football schools, three of which play in the MVFC: North Dakota, South Dakota, and South Dakota State.
• The West Coast Conference's (WCC) only football school, San Diego, plays in the PFL.
• The Western Athletic Conference has four football schools, all of which played in the UAC in 2025:

The following Division I conferences do not have football.

Conferences

See also: List of NCAA Division I non-football programs

Division I in ice hockey

Main article: College ice hockey

See also: List of NCAA Division I ice hockey programs

Some sports, like ice hockey and men's volleyball, have different conference setups.

Ice hockey is mostly played by schools in colder, northern parts of the country. It has its own special conference structure. These conferences include teams from different Division I conferences, and sometimes even schools from Division II and Division III.

For many years, a school’s ice hockey conference had little to do with the conference it belonged to for other sports. One example is that before 2013, the Hockey East men’s conference included schools from several different conferences, including one from the D-II Northeast-10 Conference. The Division II championship for ice hockey was stopped in 1999.

The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference stopped sponsoring ice hockey in 2003, and its remaining members formed Atlantic Hockey.

Starting with the 2013–14 season, there was a big change in Division I men’s hockey. The Big Ten Conference began sponsoring ice hockey, and some schools left the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) and the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) to join. Six other schools also left to form the new National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC).

Women’s hockey wasn’t affected much by these changes. The Big Ten only has a few schools with women’s hockey teams, so only small changes happened in College Hockey America during 2010–14.

Another change happened after the 2020–21 season, when seven men’s teams left the WCHA to restart the CCHA.

Conferences

Accurate for the most recent 2025–26 season.

Classification debate

In the early 2000s, some people talked about whether schools could have one special sports team in Division I while their other teams were in lower divisions. This was important for hockey because there was no Division II championship, and some schools had teams in Division II or III.

In 2004, leaders from many schools made new rules. Schools can give money to help students who play in one men's and one women's Division I sport. Other schools can have one men's and one women's sport in Division I, but they can't give money to those players unless all their teams follow Division I rules. Schools in Divisions II and III can play in Division I for sports that don't have a championship for their division, but only some can give money to help those players.

Some schools were allowed to keep their special teams even after the new rules. These include:

• Clarkson University – men's and women's ice hockey
• Colorado College – men's ice hockey, women's soccer
• Johns Hopkins University – men's and women's lacrosse
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – men's ice hockey (women's ice hockey moved up to Division I in 2005)
• St. Lawrence University – men's and women's ice hockey