This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/passwordisguest on 2023-08-22 00:21:55.
Greetings From /r/FCS!
With all of the realignment and interest in finding Division I football that harks back to a simpler pre-Fox/ESPN super division era, we’ve noticed an uptick in interest in what the FCS has to offer. But most of us who follow college football, even many fans of FCS teams, likely don’t know that much about the lower subdivision. And that’s a problem we want to help fix!
This offseason we’ve been running a series detailing each FCS conference and their members heading into the 2023 season. This is the last posting in that series, a conversation about the subdivision as a whole.
Following this intro will be a bit of information about the FCS and how it got to its current state. There will also be tables listing the current and former conferences, and in those tables are links to each conferences’ “Get to Know the FCS” posting. In those posts you will find a history and breakdown of each conference, as well as some basic information about each team (including their head coaches, records, playoff history, rivals, etc).
Please feel free to visit each and learn a bit about a great part of Division I football. Until the threads ultimately get time-locked, you’re encouraged to comment with any information you may think is relevant to a conference or team, ask questions, highlight traditions, etc.
Thanks, and enjoy the coming FCS season!
Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) Background
The Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) is a subdivision of Division I football created by the NCAA in 1978, under the original “I-AA” (as compared to I-A for what is now the FBS). Although people still use it informally, the I-AA naming convention was officially dropped by the NCAA in 2006 in favor of the current FCS designation.
While there are many similarities between the FBS and FCS, given they’re both part of the same division, there are also two major differences.
The first is regarding scholarships; FCS teams are limited to the equivalent of 63 full scholarships, spread across a maximum of 85 players. Despite being able to offer up to 63 scholarships, not every FCS conference offers to that level. Both the Ivy League and Pioneer Football League prohibit members from offering scholarship to football players, while the Northeast Conference (NEC) limits their members to 45 athletic scholarships (although, other equivalent aid can be provide up the FCS limit). The only other conference to limit scholarship is the Patriot League, which originally prevented members from offering scholarship, but now allows the equivalent of a total of 60 scholarship equivalents. The Patriot League also prohibits the ability for athletes to red-shirt. Georgetown is the lone member of the Patriot League to still not offer any scholarships.
The second difference is in the nature of the season and determination of a national champion. FCS teams usually play an 11 game regular season schedule which ends the week before Thanksgiving. The exceptions to this are the Ivy League, who plays a ten game schedule, and the SWAC which holds a 12th conference championship game in December. But heading into Thanksgiving, instead of a bowl system and paltry 4-team playoff, the FCS holds an NCAA sanctioned 24-team playoff to determine its national champion. As such, a team can play as many as 16 games in a season.
History
Upon inception in 1978, the I-AA playoff was a familiar-to-FBS-fans 4 teams large for the first two seasons, expanding to 8 in 1981.
In 1982 the subdivision saw its first major growth after the NCAA—in a move not explicitly but clearly aimed at the Ivy League—set new regulations for I-A membership that forced the reclassification of multiple programs. Under the rules, any team that failed to meet specified criteria for Division l-A membership was required to reclassify to the I-AA subdivision. The criteria were:
- Must sponsor at least eight varsity sports, including football
- Must play at least 60 percent of their games against Division I-A members
- Must average more than 17,000 paid attendance at home games for the past four years, or play in a stadium that contains at least 30,000 seats and have averaged 17,000 paid home attendance for at least one of the past four years
The move was forced by the College Football Association, a special-interest group of 61 of the country’s most powerful teams, that was seeking a greater hand in shaping policy on network television contracts. Prior to the NCAA’s vote, the CFA schools had threatened to break from the traditional arrangement, going so far as to have began negotiating a contract of their own independent of the NCAA.
These were rules that half the Ivy League could not meet, and the conference chose as a group to all move down to I-AA. Overall, the rule relegated a total of 36 teams from I-A down to I-AA in the 1982 season, growing the subdivision to 86 teams. The rule would continue to contribute to shift in a number of programs over the next few years.
With this increase in member teams came a growth in the playoff bracket size, seeing a move to 16 teams from 1986-2009.
The other major sea change in the subdivision would come after a 1991 rule adopted by the NCAA requiring athletic programs to maintain all of their sports at the same division level by the 1993 season. As such, many Division I programs with football teams at the Division II and Division III levels were forced to upgrade their programs to the Division I-AA level. This would lead to a number of teams coming up as independents to later join various conferences, as well as contributed to the formation of a number of new conferences, including the American West Conference, MAAC Football League, the Pioneer Football League, and later the Northeast Conference.
For more subdivision information, another great set of resources (updated through 2020) are this database from /u/FearTheFCS of every FCS team since the subdivision was created in 1978 and this list of every game between and FCS and FBS. These may seem simple enough things to assemble, but there is no single other place to find this in one place. The NCAA doesn’t even have records that maintain consistency to the same degree.
We already noted that in 2006 the NCAA formerly dropped the I-AA designation in favor of Football Championship Subdivision. But despite this, it wouldn’t be until 2013 and an expansion to a 24 team bracket that every conference in the subdivision who wished to send their champion would actually be provided with an autobid. Until that point (including after the expansion from 16 teams to 20 teams in 2010), the Pioneer League had never been given a bid despite having multiple teams end the season ranked in the Top 25.
The FCS playoffs as we know them today are a 24 team bracket which culminates in a championship game in Frisco, Texas. In this bracket, the top 8 teams are seeded and given first round byes (although in coming years it’s expected that the NCAA will be expanding the seeding to the top 16 teams). These teams are not necessarily the winners of their conferences, as seeds are open to anyone independent of autobid status.
For all intents, the highest seeded team is guaranteed home field through the playoffs until Frisco. The first two rounds of the tournament are regional in nature, emphasizing location over competitiveness. So two non-seeded teams located close to one and other will be matched up in the first round (with an intent on avoiding rematches), with that bracket then also aligned to regionally matchup the winner (no matter which team) as best as possible with a given seeded team for round 2. Then by the quarterfinals the tournament evolves, by nature of the seeds, into a more standard seeded tournament approach.
Current Conferences
For the upcoming 2023 season there will be 128(ish) teams competing in the FCS. I say “ish” because one team, Kennesaw State, is in their first year of FBS transition and is arguably neither FCS nor truly FBS right now.
The other 127 of these teams will be playing in one of 13 “conferences”, with the word being used loosely because of a pair of partnerships (the Big South-OVC and the UAC) that are actually two conferences each competing under one banner, although unofficially as far as the NCAA recognizes.
| Conference | First Year of Football | 2023 Membership Count | I-AA/FCS Championships | Conference Write-Up |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Big Sky | 1963 | 12 | 6 | Get to Know the Big Sky |
| Big South-OVC | 2023 | 10 | 2 (ish)* | Get to Know the Big South-OVC |
| CAA | 2007 | 15 (16 in 2024) | 3 | Get to Know the CAA |
| FCS Independents | 1978 | 1(ish) (0 in 2024) | 7 | Get to Know the FCS Independents |
| Ivy League | 1954 | 8 | 0 | [Get to Know the Ivy League](old.reddit.com/r/…/get_to_know_the_fcs_2023_ivy_… |
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