NCAA Division I independent schools
NCAA Division I independent schools are four-year institutions that compete in college athletics at the NCAA Division I level, but do not belong to an established athletic conference for a particular sport. These schools may however still compete as members of an athletic conference in other sports. A school may also be fully independent, and not belong to any athletic conference for any sport at all. The reason for independent status varies among institutions, but it is frequently because the school's primary athletic conference does not sponsor a particular sport.
Full independents
[edit]No schools are competing as full independents for the 2024–25 season. The most recent full independent, Chicago State, joined the Northeast Conference (NEC) after the conclusion of the 2023–24 season.[1]
Recent independents
[edit]| Institution | Location | Founded | Affiliation | Enrollment | Nickname | Joined | Left | Colors | Current conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago State University | Chicago, Illinois | 1867 | Public (TMCF) |
2,620[2] | Cougars | 1984; 2006; 2022 |
1993; 2009; 2024 |
Northeast (NEC) | |
| University of Hartford | West Hartford, Connecticut | 1877 | Nonsectarian | 6,792 | Hawks | 2022 | 2023 | Conference of New England (CNE)[a] | |
| New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) |
Newark, New Jersey | 1881 | Public | 11,901 | Highlanders | 2006; 2013 |
2008; 2015 |
America East |
- Notes
- ^ Currently an NCAA Division III athletic conference.
Baseball
[edit]One school will be competing as an independent in baseball for the 2025 season (2024–25 academic year). Oregon State announced that they would be competing as a baseball independent after their home conference, the Pac-12, collapsed following the 2023–24 season.[3]
| Institution | Founded | Nickname | First season | Location | Type | Enrollment | Primary conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oregon State University | 1868 | Beavers | 1907 | Corvallis, Oregon | Public | 37,121 | West Coast Conference[a] |
- ^ Oregon State is technically one of the two remaining members of the Pac-12 Conference beyond the 2023–24 school year, but is housing most of its non-football sports in the West Coast Conference through 2025–26, after which time the Pac-12 will resume operation with at least six confirmed new members.
Bowling
[edit]Bowling, like beach volleyball, is currently a women-only sport at the NCAA level that holds a single national championship open to all NCAA members. As of 2024–25 season, eight bowling programs compete as independents.
| Institution | Team | Location | Founded | Type | Enrollment | Primary conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baldwin Wallace University | Yellow Jackets | Berea, Ohio | 1845 | Private | 2,592 | OAC (Division III) |
| Dominican University | Stars | River Forest, Illinois | 1901 | Private | 3,066 | NACC (Division III) |
| Mount St. Mary's University | Mountaineers | Emmitsburg, Maryland[a] | 1808 | Private | 1,889 | MAAC (Division I) |
| University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Nebraska) | Cornhuskers | Lincoln, Nebraska | 1869 | Public | 25,260 | Big Ten (Division I) |
| Wartburg College | Knights | Waverly, Iowa | 1852 | Private | 1,563 | ARC (Division III) |
| University of Wisconsin–Whitewater | Warhawks | Whitewater, Wisconsin | 1868 | Public | 11,722 | WIAC (Division III) |
| Wittenberg University | Tigers | Springfield, Ohio | 1845 | Private | 1,326 | NCAC (Division III) |
| Wright State University | Raiders | Fairborn, Ohio[b] | 1967 | Public | 10,264 | Horizon (Division I) |
- ^ The Mount St. Mary's campus has an Emmitsburg mailing address, but is located in unincorporated Frederick County.
- ^ Mailing address is Dayton.
Field hockey
[edit]One school is a Division I independent in the current 2024 field hockey season. Queens University of Charlotte began a transition from NCAA Division II to Division I in July of 2022, joining the Atlantic Sun Conference.[4] (Another school that started the same transition in 2022, Stonehill, joined the field hockey-sponsoring Northeast Conference.[5]) However, the ASUN does not sponsor field hockey, and Queens has yet to announce a future field hockey affiliation for its program.
| Institution | Team | Location | Founded | Type | Enrollment | Primary conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Queens University of Charlotte | Royals | Charlotte, North Carolina | 1857 | Private | 1,740 | Atlantic Sun Conference |
Football
[edit]Football Bowl Subdivision
[edit]As of the current 2024 college football season, three NCAA Division I FBS schools are football independents. The ranks of FBS independents dropped by one when Army departed to join the American Athletic Conference as an affiliate for football. UMass will become a full member of the Mid-American Conference in 2025.
| Institution | Founded | Nickname | First season | Location | Type | Enrollment | Primary conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of Notre Dame | 1842 | Fighting Irish | 1887 | Notre Dame, Indiana | Private | 12,179 | Atlantic Coast Conference [a] |
| University of Connecticut (UConn) | 1881 | Huskies | 1896 | Storrs, Connecticut[b] | Public | 32,257 | Big East Conference |
| University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) | 1863 | Minutemen | 1879 | Amherst, Massachusetts[c] | Public | 29,269 | Atlantic 10 Conference |
- Notes
- ^ Notre Dame remains officially an independent football team, and is not a member of the ACC in any capacity for football. However, as part of the agreement to join the ACC in other sports, Notre Dame agreed to schedule 5 games per year against ACC opponents.[6]
- ^ While the UConn campus is in Storrs, the Huskies play home games in East Hartford, Connecticut.
- ^ The core of the UMass campus is in Amherst, but the Minutemen's on-campus stadium is in the adjacent town of Hadley, Massachusetts.
Football Championship Subdivision
[edit]As of the 2024 season, two schools, Merrimack and Sacred Heart, are playing as FCS independents. Both left the football-sponsoring Northeast Conference for the non-football Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference at the end of the 2023–24 school year.
| Institution | Founded | Nickname | First season | Location | Type | Enrollment | Primary conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Merrimack College | 1947 | Warriors | 1996 | North Andover, Massachusetts | Private | 3,726 | Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference |
| Sacred Heart University | 1963 | Pioneers | 1991 | Fairfield, Connecticut | 5,974 |
Ice hockey
[edit]Men
[edit]There are currently five NCAA Division I independents in men's ice hockey—the University of Alaska Fairbanks (branded athletically as simply "Alaska"), the University of Alaska Anchorage, 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.[7]
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.
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.[8]
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.[9]
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.)[10]
Neither Lindenwood nor Stonehill has announced a conference home for its men's hockey program.
| Institution | Team | Location | Founded | Type | Enrollment | Years | Primary conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| University of Alaska Fairbanks (Alaska) | Nanooks | Fairbanks, Alaska | 1917 | Public | 8,336 | 2021–present | Great Northwest Athletic Conference (Division II) |
| University of Alaska Anchorage | Seawolves | Anchorage, Alaska | 1954 | Public | 6,813 | 2022–present | Great Northwest Athletic Conference (Division II) |
| Lindenwood University | Lions | St. Charles, Missouri | 1827 | Private | 6,491 | 2022–present | Ohio Valley Conference |
| Long Island University | Sharks[11] | Brooklyn and Brookville, New York[a] | 1926 | Private | 15,197 | 2020–present | Northeast Conference |
| Stonehill College | Skyhawks | Easton, Massachusetts | 1946 | Private | 2,500 | 2022–present | Northeast Conference |
- ^ The current LIU athletic program was created in 2019 with the merger of the athletic programs of the university's two main campuses—the Brooklyn campus, which had been a Division I member, and the Post campus in Brookville, which had competed in Division II. The merged program inherited Brooklyn's Division I membership. The team is open to undergraduate men at both campuses who meet NCAA eligibility requirements.
Soccer
[edit]Women
[edit]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.[12]
| Institution | Team | Location | Founded | Type | Enrollment | Primary conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| South Carolina State University | Lady Bulldogs | Orangeburg, South Carolina | 1896 | Public | 3,000 | Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference |
Volleyball
[edit]Men's (indoor)
[edit]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. Thirteen men's volleyball programs play as independents; all but one are D-II members.
Maryville, Missouri S&T, and Rockhurst will leave the independent ranks after the 2025 season once their primary home of the Great Lakes Valley Conference starts sponsoring the sport, with Roosevelt and Thomas More joining them as affiliate members.[13]
- ^ Mailing address is St. Louis.
- ^ a b c While no member of the University of Puerto Rico system is part of a recognized NCAA conference, all are members of Liga Atlética Interuniversitaria de Puerto Rico, which governs college sports competitions in Puerto Rico.
- ^ Mailing address is Greeneville.
Women's (beach)
[edit]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 will compete as independents in the 2025 season (2024–25 school year).
Wrestling
[edit]As of the current 2024-25 season, one school is a Division I independent in wrestling. Mercyhurst University began a transition from NCAA Division II to Division I in July of 2024, joining the Northeast Conference.[14] However, the NEC does not sponsor men's wrestling, and Mercyhurst has yet to announce a future affiliation for its program.
One program previously competed as an independent in the most recent 2023-24 season. Morgan State University added a wrestling team for the 2023-24 season, becoming the only HBCU to field the sport at the Division I level.[15] However, their primary conference, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, does not sponsor the sport, so they competed as an independent in that sport only. In September of 2024, however, it was announced that Morgan State would join the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association, a wrestling-only conference based in the Northeastern United States.[16]
| Institution | Team | Location | Founded | Type | Enrollment | Primary conference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercyhurst University | Lakers | Erie, Pennsylvania | 1926 | Private | 2,759 | Northeast Conference |
Sports with no independents other than full independents
[edit]Women's ice hockey
[edit]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,[17] 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.[18]
Men's lacrosse
[edit]No schools are competing as independents in the 2025 season. The most recent men's lacrosse independent, Le Moyne, moved its program to the Northeast Conference following the 2024 season.
Women's lacrosse
[edit]In the 2025 season (2024–25 school year), no schools compete as independents.
Men's soccer
[edit]No school is independent in the current 2024 men's soccer season.
Men's swimming & diving
[edit]No men's swimming & diving programs are independents in the 2024–25 season.
Women's swimming & diving
[edit]As in the case of men's swimming & diving, no women's programs in that sport are competing as independents in 2024–25.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Chicago State University To Join Northeast Conference" (Press release). Chicago State University. December 5, 2023. Retrieved December 5, 2023.
- ^ "CSU Graduate Enrollment Increases 5%". Chicago State University. September 11, 2021. Retrieved September 27, 2021.
- ^ Freeman, Joe (January 26, 2024). "Oregon State baseball to play independent schedule in 2025, giving Beavers chance to 'create our own identity'". OregonLive/The Oregonian. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
- ^ "ASUN Conference Welcomes Queens University of Charlotte as Its Newest Member" (Press release). ASUN Conference. May 10, 2022. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
- ^ "Stonehill College Accepts Invitation to Join Northeast Conference" (Press release). Northeast Conference. April 5, 2022. Retrieved June 18, 2022.
- ^ "Notre Dame Goes To ACC: Bowl Security, Football Scheduling Flexibility Key To Move". Sports Business Daily. Street and Smith's Sports Group. September 13, 2012. Retrieved September 9, 2013.
- ^ Christensen, Joe (July 2, 2021). "WCHA's men's hockey era officially ends after 70 years". Star Tribune. Minneapolis. Retrieved July 3, 2021.
- ^ "Men's Hockey Announced as Atlantic Hockey Scheduling Partner" (Press release). LIU Sharks. October 15, 2020. Retrieved October 19, 2020.
- ^ "Lindenwood Adds NCAA Men's Division I Ice Hockey" (Press release). Lindenwood Lions. March 23, 2022. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
- ^ "Stonehill College Accepts Invitation to Join Northeast Conference" (Press release). Northeast Conference. April 5, 2022. Retrieved June 22, 2022.
- ^ "LIU Announces Addition of Men's Ice Hockey" (Press release). LIU Sharks. April 30, 2020. Retrieved May 12, 2020.
- ^ "Delaware State To Extend NEC Associate Membership Partnership to Women's Soccer & Women's Lacrosse" (Press release). Northeast Conference. September 27, 2022. Archived from the original on September 27, 2022. Retrieved September 27, 2022.
- ^ "Men's Volleyball Announced as Next GLVC Sport in 2025-26". Great Lakes Valley Conference. July 25, 2024. Retrieved July 25, 2024.
- ^ "Welcome To The Lake Show: Mercyhurst University Accepts Northeast Conference Membership Invite" (Press release). Northeast Conference. April 4, 2024. Retrieved April 4, 2024.
- ^ "Largest Donation in Morgan State University Athletics History Paves Way for Return of Division I Collegiate Wrestling, Following 24-Year Hiatus" (Press release). Morgan State Athletics. October 21, 2021. Retrieved October 21, 2021.
- ^ "Morgan State joins the EIWA" (Press release). Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association. September 19, 2024. Retrieved September 22, 2024.
- ^ "NEWHA announces intent to be recognized as NCAA national collegiate women's hockey conference". USCHO.com. September 26, 2018. Retrieved October 7, 2018.
- ^ "New England Women's Hockey Alliance approved for NCAA Division I status, effective with '19-20 season". USCHO.com. September 4, 2019. Retrieved October 14, 2019.