NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision

The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). As of the 2025 season, there are 10 conferences and 138 schools in FBS.

College football is one of the most popular spectator sports throughout much of the United States. The top schools generate tens of millions of dollars in yearly revenue. Top FBS teams draw tens of thousands of fans to games, and the fifteen largest American stadiums by capacity all host FBS teams or games. Since July 1, 2021, college athletes have been able to receive payments for the use of their name, image, and likeness. Prior to this date colleges were only allowed to provide players with non-monetary compensation such as athletic scholarships that provide for tuition, housing, and books.

Unlike other NCAA divisions and subdivisions, the NCAA does not officially award an FBS football national championship, nor does it host a playoff tournament to determine such a champion on the field. As the College Football Playoff did not exist until 2014, organizations such as the Associated Press and AFCA have historically sought to rank the teams and crown a national champion, by taking a vote of sports writers and coaches, respectively. Various cities across the United States have created their own postseason contests, called bowl games, in which they traditionally invite teams to participate. Historically, these bowl games were mostly considered to be exhibition games involving a payout to participating teams. However, in the modern era, some of the bowls serve as quarterfinal or semifinal games of the Playoff and the remainder constitute the de facto postseason for teams that fail to qualify for the Playoff. The decades preceding the advent of the Playoff also included attempts by the premier FBS conferences and bowl games to attempt to organize matchups so that the FBS national championship was decided on the field, such as the Bowl Coalition from 1992 to 1994, the Bowl Alliance from 1995 to 1997, and the Bowl Championship Series from 1998 to 2013.

Overview

The FBS is the highest level of college football in the United States, and FBS players make up the vast majority of the players picked in the NFL Draft. For every sport, the NCAA divides schools into three major divisions: Divisions I, II, and III. However, in football, Division I is further divided into two sub-divisions: the Bowl Subdivision, abbreviated as the FBS, and the Championship Subdivision, abbreviated as the FCS. Divisions are themselves further divided up into conferences, which are groupings of schools that play each other in contention for a conference championship. The FBS currently has ten conferences, which are often divided into the "Power Four conferences" – which consist of the most prestigious schools and enjoy a certain amount of autonomy from NCAA rules – and the less prominent "Group of Six".

Although FCS programs can draw thousands of fans per game, many FCS schools attempt to join the FBS in hopes of increased revenue, corporate sponsorship, alumni donations, prestige, and national exposure. However, FBS programs also face increased expenses in regards to staff salaries, facility improvements, and scholarships. The athletic departments of many FBS schools lose money every year, and these athletic departments must rely on subsidies from the rest of the university. In many states, the highest-paid public employee is the head coach of an FBS team. Before the settlement of the House v. NCAA legal case took full effect in 2025–26, FBS schools were limited to a total of 85 football players receiving financial assistance. Since then, FBS programs have had a hard roster limit of 105, but all rostered players may receive full scholarships. Nearly all FBS schools that are not on NCAA probation give the full allowed scholarship allotment. The three United States service academies that are FBS members were technically subject to the 85-scholarship limit before House, but were effectively exempt because all of their students receive federally-funded full scholarships whether or not they play a varsity sport.

In order to retain FBS membership, schools must meet several requirements. Before 2023, FBS schools had to average at least 15,000 home attendance (over a rolling two-year period). An FBS school must sponsor a minimum of 16 varsity intercollegiate teams (including football), with at least six men's or coeducational teams and at least eight all-female teams. Across all sports, each FBS school must offer at least 200 athletic scholarships (or spend at least $4 million on athletic scholarships) per year, and FBS football teams must provide at least 90% of the maximum number of football scholarships (which is currently 85).

In October 2023, the NCAA announced major changes to FBS membership requirements. The average home attendance requirement, which had largely gone unenforced in the 21st century and was suspended in 2020 due to COVID-19 impacts, was permanently eliminated, effective immediately. Effective in 2027–28, minimums on both the total number of, and spending on, athletic scholarships in all FBS programs will be enforced. The number of required athletic scholarships will increase to 210, and the annual spending requirement rises to $6 million. Also starting in 2027–28, FBS programs must not only provide at least 90% of the required number of football scholarships, but must provide at least 90% of the maximum number of scholarships across a total of 16 sports, including football.

Scheduling

The FBS season begins in late August or early September and ends in mid-January with the College Football Playoff National Championship game. Most FBS teams play 12 regular season games per year, with eight or nine of those games coming against conference opponents. All 10 FBS conferences hold a conference championship game to determine the winner of the conference.

Following the conference championship games, 12 teams are selected to compete in the College Football Playoff, while other eligible teams are invited to bowl games. The top four seeds in the playoff receive a first-round bye, while the remaining eight teams compete in first-round games on campus sites. After the first round, the eight remaining playoff teams compete in the New Year's Six bowls, which rotate the responsibility of hosting quarterfinal and semifinal playoff games. The playoff culminates in the College Football Playoff National Championship.

The Hawaii Rainbow Warriors and teams that play at Hawaii get a special exemption and are allowed to play an extra regular season game in order to defray travel costs. Therefore, the longest possible FBS schedule is 18 games: 13 in the regular season, a conference championship game, and four playoff games.

For non-conference regular season games, FBS teams are free to schedule matchups against any other FBS team, regardless of conference. A small number of FBS teams are independent and have total control over their own schedule. Non-conference games are scheduled by mutual agreement and often involve "home and homes" (where teams alternate as hosts) and long-established rivalries. In order to balance out the difficulty of their in-conference schedules, teams from the stronger conferences frequently play non-conference games against teams from the weaker conferences or, occasionally, against FCS teams. FBS teams are free to schedule up to 40% of their games against FCS teams, but FBS teams can only use one win per season against an FCS team for the purposes of bowl eligibility. Additionally, the FCS opponent must have averaged at least 80% of the FCS limit of 63 scholarship equivalents over a rolling two-year period. (Before the 2022 season, this limit had been 90%.) An FBS team must schedule a total of five home games per year; for the purposes of scheduling, a "home game" must take place at a venue in which the team plays 50% of its "home games", although a team is allowed to count one neutral-site game against an FBS team toward the "home game" requirement. FBS–FCS games, known as "money games", are often home games for the FBS team, and victories by FCS teams are considered to be upsets. FCS teams receive hundreds of thousands of dollars for their participation in these games.

The Football Bowl Subdivision gets its name from the bowl games that many FBS teams play at the end of the year, although other college divisions also have their own bowl games. FBS bowl games are played at the end of the season in December or January. During the 2024–25 bowl season, there were 46 FBS bowl games, including four first-round College Football Playoff games and the College Football Playoff National Championship. An FBS team typically must have a record of 6–6 or better in order to be bowl eligible. In certain cases – usually if not enough teams have such records – 5–7 and 6–7 teams can also be selected to bowls.

Many bowls have one or more conference tie-ins; for example, the Pop-Tarts Bowl provides a matchup between teams from ACC and the Big 12. A small number of long-established bowls played a major role in the Bowl Championship Series, which was used to select the national champion until the 2013 season, and these bowls continue to play a major role in the College Football Playoff. In addition to payouts to participating teams, conferences receive millions of dollars for each school that appears in the playoff. Appearances in other bowls are also quite lucrative. In addition to the regular bowls, some postseason games, such as the Senior Bowl, match up teams of all-stars and NFL draft entrants.

History

College football has been played for over one hundred years, but the game and the organizational structure of college football have evolved significantly during that time. The first college football game was played in 1869, but the game continued to develop during the late 19th and early 20th century. During this period, Walter Camp pioneered the concept of a line of scrimmage, the system of downs, and the College Football All-America Team. The 1902 Rose Bowl was the first bowl game in college football history, and the event began to be held annually starting with the 1916 Rose Bowl. In the 1930s, other bowl games came into existence, including the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl Classic, and the Orange Bowl. The 1906 college football season was the first season played under the IAAUS (which would later change its name to the NCAA) and the first season in which the forward pass was legal. The IAAUS had formed after President Theodore Roosevelt, responding to several deaths that had occurred during football games, requested that colleges find ways to make football a safer sport.

In 1935, the Heisman Trophy was presented for the first time; the award is generally considered to be college football's most prestigious individual award. In 1965, the NCAA voted to allow the platoon system, in which different players played on offense and defense; teams had previously experimented with the concept in the 1940s. In 1968, the NCAA began allowing freshmen to compete in games; freshmen had previously been required to take a redshirt year. In 1975, after a growth of "grants-in-aid" (scholarships given for athletic rather than academic or need-based reasons), the NCAA voted to limit the number of athletic scholarships each school could offer. In 1968, the NCAA required all teams to identify as members of either the University Division (for larger schools) or the College Division (for smaller schools), and in 1973, the NCAA divided into three divisions. At the urging of several larger schools seeking increased autonomy and commonality, Division I-A was formed prior to the 1978 season; the remaining teams in Division I formed the Football Championship Subdivision or FCS (then known as Division I-AA). In 1981, members of the College Football Association attempted to create a fourth division consisting solely of the most competitive schools, but this effort was defeated. In the 1992 season, the SEC split into divisions and played the first FBS conference championship game. The Big 12 and Western Athletic Conference did the same for the 1996 season, and most conferences eventually adopted divisions and championship games.

The NCAA does not officially award an FBS football championship, but several teams have claimed national championships. Other organizations have also sought to rank the teams and crown a national champion. The Dickinson System and other methods were formed in the early 20th century to select the best team in the country, and the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll began rankings teams in the middle of the 20th century. In many seasons, selectors such as the AP and the Coaches Poll designated different teams as national champions. Often, more than one team would finish undefeated, as the top teams were not guaranteed to play each other during the regular season or in bowl games. In 1992, five major conferences established the Bowl Coalition in order to determine the FBS champion. In 1998, the two remaining major conferences joined with the other five conferences to form the Bowl Championship Series. The BCS used a rankings system to match up the top two teams in the BCS National Championship Game. However, even the BCS era saw split national championships, as in 2003 the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll selected different national champions. The College Football Playoff replaced the BCS starting with the 2014 season; it featured four teams through the 2023 season, after which it expanded to 12 teams.

Since 2021, when the Supreme Court unanimously held in NCAA v. Alston that restrictions on name, image, and likeness compensation violated antitrust law, FBS football players have been able to make money from sources other than college scholarships. However, there remains no unified system to provide players with such compensation.

AP Poll performance by team

Key

• CH National Champion
• RU National Runner-up
• T4 Top 4 finish
• T8 Top 8 finish
• T16 Top 16 finish
• T25 Top 25 finish

Please note that the exact ranking is shown for each school outside of the national champions and runner-up.