NCAA Division I independent schools

As of the current 2021 college football season, there are seven NCAA Division I FBS independent schools. Three of these schools will join FBS conferences in the near future.

Notes

As of the 2021 season, no schools play as FCS independents.

Three schools had played as such in the 2020–21 season (mostly moved from fall 2020 due to COVID-19)—Dixie State, Presbyterian, and Tarleton. Dixie State announced in January 2019 that it would begin a transition from Division II to the then non-football Western Athletic Conference in July 2020, with the football program becoming an FCS independent at that time.[8] 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 played the 2020–21 season as an independent in a scheduling agreement with the Pioneer Football League,[9] a football-only conference made up entirely of non-scholarship FCS programs that it fully joined in July 2021. Presbyterian remains a full non-football Big South member.[10] Tarleton announced in 2019 that it would join the WAC alongside Dixie State and also play football as an FCS independent.[11]

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.[12] 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 were eligible for the Big South title.[13]

All three of the 2020–21 independents became members of football conferences in the fall 2021 season. The WAC reinstated its football league in fall 2021 as an FCS league, coinciding with the arrival of four Texas FCS schools from the Southland Conference.[14] The first season of WAC FCS football is officially a partnership with the ASUN Conference, a non-football conference that plans to launch its own FCS league in 2022. Three schools that joined the ASUN in July 2021 are competing alongside WAC members. Dixie State and Tarleton have guaranteed games against alliance members, but their games will not count in alliance standings (although both are included in the separate WAC league table).[15] As mentioned above, Presbyterian fully joined the Pioneer League in July 2021.

The only school that had played as an FCS independent in 2019, North Dakota, joined 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, its games against Big Sky football members counted fully in conference standings.[16]

There are currently three NCAA Division I independents in men's ice hockey—the University of Alaska Fairbanks (branded athletically as simply "Alaska"), Arizona State University, and Long Island University (LIU).

Alaska became a men's independent after the 2020–21 season due to the demise of its former league, the men's side of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (the WCHA remains in operation as a women-only league). The seven Midwestern members of the men's WCHA left to reestablish the Central Collegiate Hockey Association without the WCHA's three geographic outliers—Alaska, its sister campus in Anchorage, and Alabama–Huntsville. Of these three schools, Alaska was the only one that did not drop hockey.[19]

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.[20]

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 played their first season as a scheduling partner of Atlantic Hockey.[21]

No women's ice hockey teams have played as independents at the National Collegiate level, the de facto equivalent to Division I in that sport, since the 2018–19 season. In that season, five schools—Franklin Pierce, Post, Sacred Heart, Saint Anselm, and Saint Michael's—competed as independents, 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,[24] 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.[25]

No teams are playing as independents in the upcoming 2022 season. Four schools had planned to play the 2021 season as such, and three did so despite COVID-19 issues. Hampton chose not to play due to pandemic concerns.[26]

All four schools joined lacrosse conferences for the 2022 season and beyond. Cleveland State, Robert Morris, and Utah joined the new men's lacrosse league of the ASUN Conference,[27] and Hampton joined Southern Conference men's lacrosse.[28]

There have been no independent teams in Division I women's lacrosse since the 2018 season (2017–18 school year). The only independent team in that season was East Carolina, which played its first season of varsity lacrosse as such before its all-sports league, the American Athletic Conference, launched a women's lacrosse league for 2019.

The next school to compete as an independent will be Xavier, which will play its inaugural season of 2023 as such before beginning full conference play in its full-time home of the Big East Conference in 2024.[29]

Future independent

There was 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.[30] Due to COVID-19 issues, the NCAA announced that no championships would be held in fall sports in 2020; it eventually moved championships in those sports to spring 2021.

Chicago State joined WAC men's soccer for the fall 2021 season, its last before leaving the WAC in July 2022.[31]

For a brief time in spring 2021, there was a possibility of two schools becoming independents. The Sun Belt Conference had six men's soccer members in the 2019 season, with full members Appalachian State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia Southern, and Georgia State joined by associate members Central Arkansas and Howard. However, by the time NCAA men's soccer fully resumed in February 2021, three of these schools had either already departed or announced plans to leave. Appalachian State dropped men's soccer entirely due to COVID-19 issues;[32] Howard (which chose not to play in 2020–21 due to COVID-19) announced that men's soccer would join the Northeast Conference in July 2021;[33] and Central Arkansas announced that it would become a full member of the ASUN Conference, which sponsors men's soccer.[34]

Shortly after the resumption of NCAA soccer, Coastal Carolina announced it would move men's soccer to Conference USA.[35] The last two Sun Belt men's soccer members, Georgia Southern and Georgia State, were unveiled in late May 2021 as new single-sport members of the Mid-American Conference, leaving no men's soccer independents for the 2021 fall season.[36] After Marshall was formally introduced as an incoming Sun Belt member later in November, however, the conference also announced that it would reinstate men's soccer for the 2023 season once the other new member James Madison arrived and the returning Old Dominion rejoined.[37]

Two schools are independents in the current 2021 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.[38]