List of NCAA Division I FBS Football Programs

List Of NCAA Division I FBS Football Programs

This is a list of schools in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. By definition, all schools in this grouping have varsity football teams. Schools in Division I FBS are distinguished from those in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) by the following:

  • FBS programs are allowed to provide scholarship aid to a total of 85 players, and may grant a full scholarship to all 85. FCS schools are limited to financial assistance amounting to a maximum of 63 full scholarships, although some conferences voluntarily place further restrictions on athletic aid. The NCAA classifies FBS football as a "head-count" sport, meaning that each player receiving any athletically-related aid from the school counts fully against the 85-player limit. By contrast, FCS football is classified as an "equivalency" sport, which means that scholarship aid is limited to the equivalent of a specified number of full scholarships. In turn, this means that FCS schools can freely grant partial scholarships, but are also limited to a total of 85 players receiving assistance. Another NCAA rule mandates that any multi-sport athlete who plays football and receives any athletic aid is counted against the football limit, with an exception for players in non-scholarship FCS programs who receive aid in another sport.
  • The three service academies that play in Division I FBS — Air Force, Army, and Navy — are theoretically subject to this rule, but are exempt in practice because all students at these schools receive full scholarships from the federal government.
  • Division I FBS football is the only NCAA sport without a formal tournament to determine an undisputed national champion. FBS schools instead play in a series of postseason bowl games, culminating in the BCS National Championship Game, which attempts to crown a single national champion. Other organizations, most notably the Associated Press, crown their own champions via polling. The BCS and AP have not always agreed on a single champion. In contrast, Division I FCS football conducts a 20-team single-elimination tournament, the NCAA Division I Football Championship, to determine its undisputed champion. A total of 124 (120 full members, 4 transitional) teams will participate in the 2012 NCAA Division I FBS football season.

Read more about List Of NCAA Division I FBS Football Programs:  Football Bowl Subdivision Programs, Reclassifying To FBS From Division I FCS

Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, division, football and/or programs:

    “Feminism is an entire world view or gestalt, not just a laundry list of women’s issues.”
    —Charlotte Bunch (b. 1944)

    “I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
    —Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

    “Affection, indulgence, and humor alike are powerless against the instinct of children to rebel. It is essential to their minds and their wills as exercise is to their bodies. If they have no reasons, they will invent them, like nations bound on war. It is hard to imagine families limp enough always to be at peace. Wherever there is character there will be conflict. The best that children and parents can hope for is that the wounds of their conflict may not be too deep or too lasting.”
    —New York State Division of Youth Newsletter (20th century)

    “People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
    —Don Delillo (b. 1926)

    “Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.”
    —Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)