NCAA Division I independent schools

Notes

Notes

As of the current 2023 college football season, four NCAA Division I FBS schools are football independents. The ranks of FBS independents will drop by one following the conclusion of the current season, when Army will depart to join the American Athletic Conference as a an affiliate for football.

Notes

As of the 2023 season, one school, Kennesaw State, plays as an FCS independent. This will be its only season as such, as it will join Conference USA in 2024 as part of its transition to FBS.

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

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—the two Alaska schools, along with Alabama–Huntsville. Of these three schools, Alaska was the only one that did not initially drop hockey.[10]

Alaska-Anchorage's hockey program was suspended in 2020 by the University of Alaska System due to a reduction in state funding, along with the skiing and gymnastics programs. The 2020–21 season was set to be its last, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they did not end up playing that season either. The Alaska Board of Regents told the hockey program they would be reinstated if they were able to collect 3 million dollars in donations and fundraising, so the team was on hiatus for both the 2020–21 and 2021–22 season while its future was uncertain. Ultimately, the money was raised, and the Seawolves were reinstated for the 2022–23 season, but due to the WCHAs aforementioned disbanding, they resumed play as an independent alongside the Nanooks.

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 materialized for several years. 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.[11] On July 5, 2023, it was announced that the Sun Devils would join the National Collegiate Hockey Conference for the 2024–25 season and beyond.[12]

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.[13]

In 2021–22, Lindenwood fielded two separate men's club teams, each playing at a different level of the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA), which governs the sport at club level. On March 23, 2022, Lindenwood announced that it would launch a Division I men's varsity program starting in the 2022–23 season, while maintaining its ACHA program. This announcement came shortly after the school announced it was starting a transition from Division II to Division I in July 2022, joining the non-hockey Ohio Valley Conference.[14]

On April 5, 2022, Stonehill, then a member of the D-II Northeast-10 Conference (NE-10), announced it was joining the Northeast Conference (which also does not sponsor ice hockey) that July, starting its own transition to D-I. Before this announcement, Stonehill had been one of seven NE-10 members that played men's ice hockey under Division II regulations, despite the NCAA not sponsoring a championship event at that level. (All other D-II schools with varsity men's ice hockey play under D-I regulations.)[15]

Neither Lindenwood nor Stonehill has announced a conference home for its men's hockey program.

The most recent departure from the independent ranks was Delaware State, who joined the Northeast Conference as an affiliate in women's soccer in 2023.[18]

One school is competing as an independent in the 2024 season. Le Moyne College started a transition from Division II in July 2023 as a new member of the Northeast Conference (NEC), which sponsors all of Le Moyne's current sports except men's lacrosse.[19] However, the NEC will resume sponsorship of the sport for the 2025 season, and Le Moyne will begin competition there after the conclusion of this season.[20]

Men's volleyball has a truncated divisional structure in which members of both Division I and Division II compete under identical scholarship limits for a single national championship. Nine men's volleyball programs play as independents; all are D-II members.

Two schools left the independent ranks after the 2023 season. American International became a single-sport member of the East Coast Conference, which added men's volleyball for the 2024 season,[21] and Queens joined the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association.[22]

Beach volleyball, currently a women-only sport at the NCAA level, holds a single national championship open to members of all three NCAA divisions. The following programs competed as independents in the 2023 season (2022–23 school year).

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]

The three most recent schools to add women's ice hockey had confirmed conference homes before starting or resuming play. Stonehill started varsity play in the 2022–23 season as the newest playing member of the NEWHA.[26] Assumption joined the NEWHA for administrative purposes alongside Stonehill, but did not start NEWHA play until launching its new team in 2023–24.[27] Robert Morris, which had dropped the sport after the 2020–21 season due to COVID-19 impacts, resumed play in 2023–24, returning to its previous conference of College Hockey America.[28]

In the 2023 season (2022–23 school year), four schools competed as independents—full independent Hartford, plus San Diego State, UC Davis, and Xavier.

San Diego State and UC Davis became independents after the 2021 season when their former women's lacrosse home of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation shut down its league due to a lack of sponsoring members. Both joined the Pac-12 Conference for women's lacrosse after the 2023 season.[29] Xavier started varsity play in 2023, and will begin full conference play in its full-time home of the Big East Conference in 2024.[30]

Two women's lacrosse schools left lacrosse-sponsoring conferences after the 2023 season to join non-sponsoring conferences—Cincinnati from the American Athletic Conference to the Big 12 Conference, and Liberty from the ASUN Conference to Conference USA. Both remained in their former conferences as associate members.[31][32]

In addition to full independent Hartford, one school was independent in the most recently completed 2022 men's soccer season: the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW). It had initially announced its departure from the Southland Conference (SLC) for the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), where it had previously housed men's soccer. However, days before its move to the WAC would have taken effect, UIW opted to remain in the SLC.[33] The WAC removed UIW from its men's soccer schedule, although it never formally announced that move.[34] After spending the 2022 season as an independent, Incarnate Word was announced as a member of the Ohio Valley Conference for that league's first year sponsoring men's soccer in 2023.[35]

No men's swimming & diving programs are independents in the 2022–23 season. The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), which left the Horizon League for the non-sponsoring Missouri Valley Conference (MVC), joined all of the other MVC men's swimming & diving programs in the Mid-American Conference.[36] Queens University of Charlotte moved from NCAA Division II to the ASUN Conference, which also does not sponsor that sport. However, the ASUN is a member of the partnership that created the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association, a league originally established solely for swimming & diving whose scope later expanded to include beach volleyball. Queens accordingly joined that conference.

The only full independent, Chicago State University, does not sponsor swimming & diving for either sex.

As in the case of men's swimming & diving, no women's programs in that sport are competing as independents in 2022–23. Three programs left conferences that sponsored women's swimming & diving for the non-sponsoring Sun Belt Conference (SBC) in July 2022, but all found conference homes for 2022–23. Before leaving the Colonial Athletic Association for the SBC, James Madison University was also a member of the Eastern College Athletic Conference for that sport; its ECAC team title in 2021–22 was its fifth straight.[37] With the ECAC being a separate legal entity from the CAA (or any other NCAA conference), it can be presumed that JMU will remain an ECAC member for 2022–23. Marshall University, which left Conference USA (C-USA), joined the Missouri Valley Conference as an associate member for the 2022–23 season.[38] Old Dominion University joined the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association, already home to its men's swimming & diving program.

All three of the above programs will move that sport to the SBC once that conference adds women's swimming & diving in 2023–24.