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.
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]
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, dissolved following the 2023–24 season.[3]
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.
As of the 2024 season, one school will be a Division I independent in field hockey. Queens University of Charlotte began a transition from NCAA Division II to Division I in July of 2022, joining the Atlantic Sun Conference.[4] (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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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]
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).
As of the current 2024-25 season, one school is a Division I independent in wrestling. The only full D-I member competing with that status, Morgan State, added a wrestling team for the 2023-24 season, becoming the only HBCU to field the sport at the Division I level.[14] However, their primary conference, the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, does not sponsor the sport, so they compete as an independent in that sport only.
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,[15] 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.[16]
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.
In the 2025 season (2024–25 school year), no schools compete as independents.
No school is independent in the upcoming 2024 men's soccer season.
No men's swimming & diving programs are independents in the 2024–25 season.
As in the case of men's swimming & diving, no women's programs in that sport are competing as independents in 2024–25.