NCAA Division I FCS National Football Championship: A Comprehensive History

The NCAA Division I Football Championship, an annual post-season college football game, has been held since 2006 to determine a national champion of the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). This game serves as the final match of an annual postseason bracket tournament between top teams in FCS.

Evolution of the FCS Playoffs

The FCS has settled the debate over a national champion on the field since the Division I split in 1978 by holding a playoff tournament. There have been many iterations of the FCS playoffs, ranging from 4 teams at the start to the current 24-team playoff (as of 2025). The table below shows the different playoff formats used by the NCAA since 1978.

The playoffs have undergone several expansions and format changes over the years:

Early Years: Initially, the tournament featured a smaller number of teams.
1986 Expansion: The playoffs expanded to a 16-team format in 1986, requiring four postseason victories to win the title. Initially, only the top four teams were seeded, with other teams geographically placed in the bracket.
1995-2000: From 1995 through 2000, all 16 teams were seeded, independent of geography.
2010 Expansion: In April 2008, the NCAA announced that the playoff field would expand to 20 teams in 2010, with the Big South and Northeast Conference earning automatic bids for the first time. That bracket structure included seeding of the top five teams. Twelve teams received first-round byes; the remaining eight teams played first-round games, with the four winners advancing to face the top four seeds.
2013 Expansion: The playoffs expanded to 24 teams beginning in 2013, with the champion of the Pioneer Football League receiving an automatic bid for the first time. The number of seeded teams was increased to eight, with the 16 unseeded teams playing in first-round games. The unseeded teams continue to be paired according to geographic proximity and then placed in the bracket according to geographic proximity to the top eight seeds.
Automatic Bids: Since 2013, 24 teams normally participate in the tournament, with some teams receiving automatic bids upon winning their conference championship, and other teams determined by a selection committee.
Seeding: Beginning in 1981, the NCAA seeded the top 4 teams. This expanded to the top 5 in 2010, the top 8 in 2013, and the top 16 in 2024.

The Championship Game: A Culmination of the Tournament

The tournament culminates with the national final, played between the two remaining teams from the playoff bracket. Unlike earlier round games in each year's playoff, which are played at campus sites, the title game is played at a site predetermined by the NCAA, akin to how the NFL predetermines the site for each Super Bowl.

Championship Game Locations: A History of Venues

Since 1978, 46 national games have been played across various locations. The early part of the FCS (then called I-AA) saw the location move around frequently but that changed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The NCAA awarded Statesboro, Georgia (home to Georgia Southern) the championship game from 1989 through 1991. Since 1997, the NCAA has had only two national championship locations: Chattanooga, Tennessee (1997 through 2009) and Frisco, Texas (2010 through the 2024 season). That will change in the 2025 season when Nashville, Tennessee, hosts at least two championship games.

The championship game has been held in various locations throughout its history:

1978: Wichita Falls, Texas (inaugural title game)
1979 & 1980: Orlando, Florida, and Sacramento, California, respectively. The 1979 and 1980 games were held in Orlando, Florida, and Sacramento, California, respectively. The games played in Wichita Falls were known as the Pioneer Bowl, while the game played in Sacramento was known as the Camellia Bowl-both names were used for various NCAA playoff games played in those locations, and were not specific to the I-AA championship.
1981 & 1982: Wichita Falls, Texas
1983 & 1984: Charleston, South Carolina
1987 & 1988: Pocatello, Idaho
1989-1991: Statesboro, Georgia
2010-2024: Frisco, Texas, at Toyota Stadium (a suburb north of Dallas). The stadium was known as Pizza Hut Park until the day after the final of the 2011 season, and then as FC Dallas Stadium until September 2013.
2026 & 2027: Nashville, TN to host 2026, 2027 FCS National Championships

There have been six instances where a team whose venue was predetermined to host the final game advanced to play for the championship on its own field. Georgia Southern won both title games it played at Paulson Stadium, while Marshall had a 2-2 record in four title games it played at Marshall University Stadium (now known as Joan C.

Key Teams and Programs

North Dakota State leads the FCS with nine national titles, while Georgia Southern ranks No. 2 all-time with six. Youngstown State (4) and Appalachian State (3) are the only other programs to win more than two national championships.

North Dakota State (2011-15; 2017-19) and Appalachian State (2005-07) are the only programs to win three or more consecutive national titles.

Conferences and Participation

As of the 2025 season, two FCS conferences usually do not participate in the tournament: the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC). Since 2015, the champions of these two conferences, which consist of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), play each other in the Celebration Bowl, the only active bowl game featuring FCS teams. MEAC gave up its automatic spot in the tournament prior to the 2015 season, while the SWAC's regular season extends through the Turkey Day Classic and Bayou Classic at the end of November and the SWAC Championship Game is played in December. Teams from the MEAC and SWAC may accept at-large bids, so long as they are not committed to other postseason games that would conflict with the tournament.

Read also: Crafting Your NCAA Profile

The Ivy League has been at the FCS level since 1982 and prohibits its members from awarding athletic scholarships in any sport; it plays a strict ten-game regular season. Historically, conferences in FCS that did not offer athletic scholarships were not granted automatic bids into the tournament and, although in theory were eligible for at-large bids, never received any. The Ivy League abstained from the championship tournament and all postseason play until the end of the 2024 season. Ivy League To Begin Participating in the NCAA Division I FCS Playoffs Starting With 2025 Season

Historical Championship Games

The first FCS National Championship Game was held in Wichita Falls, TX, in 1978, where Florida A&M defeated UMass 35-28 in front of 13,604 spectators. Despite not completing a pass, the Rattlers rushed for over 450 yards and held the Minutemen to only 241 total yards. Mike Solomon led the Rattlers with 207 rushing yards and three touchdowns.

The table below shows the national champion, winning conference, final score, runner-up, losing conference, and location of each I-AA/FCS national championship game.

FCS vs. FBS: Understanding the Difference

A national championship in the highest level of college football in the United States, currently the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), is a designation awarded annually by various organizations to their selection of the best college football team. Division I FBS football is the only National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sport for which the NCAA does not host a yearly championship event. Due to the lack of an official NCAA title, determining the nation's top college football team has often engendered controversy. A championship team is independently declared by multiple individuals and organizations, often referred to as "selectors". These choices are not always unanimous. In 1969 even the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, made a selection by announcing, ahead of the season-ending "game of the century" between No. 1 Texas and No.

While the NCAA has never officially endorsed a championship team, it has documented the choices of some selectors in its official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records publication. In addition, various analysts have independently published their own choices for each season. These opinions can often diverge with others as well as individual schools' claims to national titles, which may or may not correlate to the selections published elsewhere.

Since 1992, various consortia of major bowl games have aimed to invite the top two teams at the end of the regular season (as determined by internal rankings, or aggregates of the major polls and other statistics) to compete in what is intended to be the de facto national championship game. The current iteration of this practice, the College Football Playoff, selects twelve teams to participate in a national first round or quarterfinals, with the final four teams advancing to the semifinals. Beginning in 2024, the playoff field was expanded to 12 teams.

Early Championship Designations

The concept of a national championship in college football dates to the early years of the sport in the late 19th century. Some of the earliest contemporaneous rankings can be traced to Caspar Whitney in Harper's Weekly, J. Football, however, is not a game where a great national championship is possible or desirable. Beyond rankings in newspaper columns, awards and trophies began to be presented to teams. Jack F. Professor Frank G. Dickinson of Illinois developed the first mathematical ranking system to be widely popularized. Chicago clothing manufacturer Jack F. Rissman donated a trophy for the system's national championship in 1926 onward, first awarded to Stanford prior to their tie with Alabama in the Rose Bowl. A curious Knute Rockne, then coach of Notre Dame, convinced Dickinson and Rissman to backdate the Rissman Trophy two seasons; thus Notre Dame is engraved on the trophy for 1924 and Dartmouth for 1925. The Rissman Trophy was retired by Notre Dame's three wins in 1924, 1929, and 1930; the Knute Rockne Memorial Trophy was put into competition for 1931 following the untimely death of the legendary coach. Two short-lived national championship trophies were contemporaries of the Dickinson System awards. College football's foremost historian Parke H.

The Rise of Polls and Rankings

The Associated Press (AP) began polling sportswriters in 1936 to obtain rankings. Alan J. Gould, the creator of the AP Poll, named Minnesota, Princeton, and SMU co-champions in 1935, and polled writers the following year, which resulted in a national championship for Minnesota. The AP's main competition, United Press (UP), created the first Coaches Poll in 1950. For that year and the next three, the AP and UP agreed on the national champion. Both wire services originally conducted their final polls at the end of the regular season and prior to any bowl games being played. This changed when the AP Poll champion was crowned after the bowls for 1965 and then in 1968 onward. The Coaches Poll began awarding post-bowl championships in 1974.

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and College Football Playoff (CFP) Eras

The 1980s were marked by a succession of satisfying national championship games in the Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl, but the 1990s began with consecutive split AP Poll and Coaches Poll national titles in 1990 and 1991. The Bowl Coalition and then Bowl Alliance were formed to more reliably set up a No. 1 vs. No. The Bowl Championship Series in 1998 succeeded in finally bringing the Big Ten and Pac-10 into the fold with the other conferences for a combined BCS National Championship Game rotated among the Fiesta, Sugar, Orange, and Rose bowls and venues.

BCS rankings originally incorporated the two major polls as well as a number of computer rankings to determine the end of season No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup. Although the BCS era did regularly produce compelling matchups, the winnowing selection of the top two teams resulted in many BCS controversies, most notably 2003's split national championship caused by the BCS rankings leaving USC, No.

In 2014 the College Football Playoff made its debut, facilitating a multi-game single-elimination tournament for the first time in college football history. Until 2024, four teams were seeded by a 13-member selection committee rather than by existing polls or mathematical rankings. The two semifinal games were rotated among the New Year's Six bowl games, and the final was played a week later. Beginning in 2024, the playoff field was expanded to 12 teams.

Major Selectors of National Champions

Although the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has never bestowed national championships in college football at the topmost level, it does maintain an official records book for the sport. While many people and organizations have named national champions throughout the years, the selectors below are listed in the official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book as being "major selectors" of national championships. The NCAA records book divides its major selectors into three categories: those determined by mathematical formula, human polls, and historical research. Many of the math selection systems were created during the 1920s and 1930s, beginning with Frank Dickinson's system, or during the dawn of the personal computer age in the 1990s.

The poll has been the dominant national champion selection method since the inception of the AP Poll in 1936. For many years, the national champions of various polls were selected before the annual bowl games were played, by AP (1936-1964 and 1966-1967), Coaches Poll (1950-1973), FWAA (1954), and NFF (1959-1970).

College football historian Parke H. Davis is the only selector considered by the NCAA to have primarily used research in his selections. Davis published his work in the 1934 edition of Spalding's Foot Ball Guide, naming retroactive national champions for the years 1869 to 1932 while naming Michigan and Princeton (his alma mater) contemporary co-champions for the 1933 season. In all, he selected 94 teams over 61 seasons as "National Champion Foot Ball Teams". For 21 of these teams (at 12 schools), he was the only major selector to choose them. Their schools use 17 of Davis' singular selections to claim national titles.

The Associated Press (AP) College Football Poll

The Associated Press (AP) college football poll has a long history. The news media began running their own polls of sports writers to determine who was, by popular opinion, the best football team in the country at the end of the season. One of the earliest such polls was the AP College Football Poll, first run in 1934 and then continuously from 1936. The first major nationwide poll for ranking college football teams, the Associated Press is probably the most well-known and widely circulated among all of history's polls.

Due to the long-standing historical ties between individual college football conferences and high-paying bowl games like the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl, the NCAA has never held a tournament or championship game to determine the champion of what is now the highest division, NCAA Division I, Football Bowl Subdivision (the Division I, Football Championship Subdivision and lower divisions do hold championship tournaments).

In the AP Poll's early years, the final poll of sportswriters was taken prior to any bowl games and sometimes even prior to the top teams' final games of the regular season. In 1938, the poll was extended for one week after Notre Dame, No.

Following the 1947 season the AP held a special post-bowl poll with only two teams on the ballot, Notre Dame and Michigan, but stated that the result would not supersede that of the final poll conducted following the end of the regular season. The rivals, both unbeaten and untied, had been ranked No. 1 and No. 2 respectively in the final poll.

In 1965 the AP decided to delay the season's final poll until after New Year's Day, citing the proliferation of bowl games and the involvement of eight of the poll's current top ten teams in post-season play. In the next season, 1966, neither of the top two teams (Notre Dame and Michigan State) were attending bowl games so no post-bowl poll was taken, even after two-time defending AP national champion No. 3 Alabama won the Sugar Bowl and finished the season unbeaten and untied. In 1967 the final poll crowning USC national champion was taken before No. 2 Tennessee or No.

In 1968 the final poll was again delayed until after the bowl games so that No. 1 Ohio State could meet No. 2 USC in a "dream match" in the Rose Bowl. Every subsequent season's final AP Poll would be released after the bowl games. UPI did not follow suit until the 1974 season; in the overlapping years, the Coaches Poll champion lost their bowl game in 1965, 1970, and 1973. The AP's earlier move to crown a post-bowl champion paid off, as in all three years the losing team had also been the No.

The AP Poll was used as a component of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) computer ranking formula starting in 1998, but without any formal agreement in place like the contract made between the BCS and the Coaches Poll. For the 2003 season the AP Poll caused a split national title and BCS controversy when it awarded its national championship to No.

In the College Football Playoff era, the Associated Press has continued to award the AP Trophy to the No. 1 team in the final AP Poll.

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