NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision alignment history information

This article depicts the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision Alignment History—specifically, all schools that have competed in the lower tier of NCAA Division I college football since Division I football was split into two subdivisions in 1978. This includes schools competing in:

• Division I-AA from 1978 through 2005
• Division I FCS since 2006

Teams in bold italics are now in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS); those in plain italics either play football in lower divisions or not at all. Teams followed by an asterisk (*) dropped football.

Dates reflect when a team began play in I-AA/FCS, not when it became eligible for postseason play.

As of the upcoming 2024 season, two schools are transitioning from FCS to FBS. Kennesaw State started its transition in 2023, playing that season as an FCS independent without playoff eligibility before joining Conference USA (CUSA) in 2024. Delaware will start its own transition in 2024, playing that season in CAA Football without playoff eligibility before following Kennesaw State to CUSA in 2025.

The most recent schools to complete transitions will do so in advance of the 2024 season. Jacksonville State, James Madison, and Sam Houston all began FBS transitions in 2022, with Jacksonville State and Sam Houston joining CUSA and James Madison joining the Sun Belt Conference. Uniquely, James Madison was counted as an FBS member for scheduling purposes in the first season of its transition in 2022 due to meeting FBS scheduling requirements. Nonetheless, it was still ineligible for bowls in 2023, but would eventually receive a bowl invitation when not enough non-transitional programs qualified for bowl bids. Jacksonville State also received a bowl bid in 2023 for the same reason.

Idaho downgraded its football team from FBS to FCS, and rejoined its all-sports home of the Big Sky Conference as a football member in July 2018. Also in July 2018, North Alabama started a transition from NCAA Division II, joining the Atlantic Sun Conference (then known as the ASUN Conference) for non-football sports at that time, with the football team playing as an FCS independent in 2018 before joining the Big South Conference in 2019.

Two teams joined the FCS ranks in 2020—Dixie State, now known as Utah Tech, and Tarleton. Both schools started transitions to Division I, with the football teams becoming FCS independents while all other sports joined the non-football Western Athletic Conference. The WAC reinstated football at the FCS level for the fall 2021 season, coinciding with the arrival of four schools from the Southland Conference. UTRGV, currently a full WAC member without football, initially announced it would start an FCS football program no later than 2024, but made that an exhibition season before full varsity play in 2025.

The next school to join FCS was St. Thomas, which joined the non-football Summit League and the Pioneer Football League in 2021 as part of an unprecedented transition directly from Division III to Division I. A year later, three other schools joined FCS as part of transitions from Division II, namely Lindenwood, Stonehill, and Texas A&M–Commerce. Augustana University, a South Dakota D-II school not to be confused with the D-III Augustana College in Illinois, announced plans to transition to D-I, but was turned down by the Summit League.

Most recently, Mercyhurst and West Georgia announced it would start their own transitions from D-II to FCS in 2024.

School names reflect those in current use, not necessarily those used by a school when it competed in I-AA/FCS. Specifically, these schools were known by different names throughout their entire tenures in Division I-AA/FCS:

• Louisiana–Monroe — Northeast Louisiana
• Troy — Troy State
• UConn — Connecticut
  • In the case of UConn, "Connecticut" was the official athletic name, but "UConn" was in wide use alongside "Connecticut" before becoming the university's sole athletic brand in 2013.
• UT Arlington — Texas–Arlington
• West Texas A&M — West Texas State
• Winston-Salem State — Winston-Salem

Alignments are current for the upcoming 2024 season.