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NCAA Division I independent schools

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In American college sports, NCAA Division I independent schools are four-year institutions that do not belong to a conference for a particular sport.

Contents

Baseball

There is currently one institution listed as Division I Independent in baseball:

Basketball

There are no independent programs in NCAA Division I basketball as of the 2016–17 season.

Football Bowl Subdivision

There are currently four NCAA Division I FBS independent schools.

Note

Football Championship Subdivision

There is currently one NCAA Division I FCS independent school. Coastal Carolina began a two-year transition from FCS to the Football Bowl Subdivision in July 2016, when its non-football sports joined the FBS Sun Belt Conference. The Chanticleers will join Sun Belt football in 2017, with full FBS membership following in 2018.

Men

There is currently one NCAA Division I independent in men's ice hockey. The Sun Devils moved up from club hockey in the ACHA to full varsity status. Arizona State will start playing a full Division I schedule in 2016–17, and expects to be in a hockey conference for 2017–18.

Women

There is currently one NCAA Division I independent in women's ice hockey. The Sacred Heart Pioneers moved up from Division III (where they were a member of the ECAC East) in 2003. Its men's team plays in Atlantic Hockey, which does not sponsor women's hockey.

Men

There are currently no men's soccer independents as of the 2016 season.

The last NCAA men's soccer season which included independent schools was the 2013 season, in which five schools played as independents. All of these schools left the independent ranks after that season. Two of these are now in the Sun Belt Conference, which reinstated men's soccer as a sponsored sport in 2014; a third played in the Sun Belt for two years until joining the Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN) in 2016. At the time the Sun Belt relaunched its men's soccer league, Georgia State University was already a full Sun Belt member, while Howard University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) became Sun Belt affiliates. Belmont University became an affiliate of the Horizon League, and the University of the Incarnate Word became an affiliate of the Western Athletic Conference.

Women

Three schools are independents in women's soccer. The most recent departure from the independent ranks was NJIT, which joined the ASUN as a full member (though not initially in men's soccer) in 2015.

References

NCAA Division I independent schools Wikipedia