Guide
How to read the Division I football roll
This page is every college in the file with a Division I football team. The teams are split into FBS, the bowl subdivision, and FCS, the championship subdivision. A Division I school with no football team is not here. It belongs on the Division I colleges page instead.
Conference pages such as the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, and ACC are slices of this roll. An independent FBS team can be on this page and on none of those conference pages. The note under the table names the Equity in Athletics file. A team that changed subdivision can lag that file.
- Schools
- 258
- States
- 49
- Median admit rate
- 77%
- 255 report a rate
- Median earnings
- $58,516
- 10 years after entry
FBS and FCS
FBS is the subdivision that plays in the bowl system. FCS is the other Division I football subdivision, and it includes the Ivy League. Both groups are Division I. They are not two spellings of the same set, and this page keeps them in separate tables so the distinction stays visible.
Membership is the football division in the athletics file, not a vote by this site. A school appears once, in the subdivision the file records. Reclassification is real. Until the source file moves a team, this page does not move it.
Who this roll leaves out
Division II, Division III, NAIA, and junior-college teams stay off. So does a Division I basketball school that does not field football. Notre Dame is a useful test: its football team is coded as a Division I-A independent, so it is on this page, and it is not on the ACC football list.
A famous athletics brand with no football team stays off even when fans still talk about the school. The rule is the team in the file. It is not the overall athletics department.
How to use the two tables
Start with the subdivision if you are comparing programs. An FCS roster and an FBS roster do not share a postseason, and mixing them in one mental list hides that. Then use a conference page when you care about a specific football membership.
Each row shows undergraduate enrollment and the admission rate when the file has one. Earnings, price, and graduation rate are in this guide and on the school profile. They describe the institution. They do not describe the football team's record. This page is not a poll and not a trophy case.
Conferences, independents, and lag
Most of these teams sit in a conference, and the conference pages name the ones readers ask for. An independent is still Division I football. Leaving independents off this roll would hide real teams, so they stay.
The source year is on the line under the tables. If a school announced a move and you do not see it, the athletics file may not have caught up. The school profile is the next place to look, not a hand edit on this page.
Where the schools are
These schools sit in 49 states. The largest groups are Texas (22), North Carolina (14), Pennsylvania (12), California (11), and Louisiana (11). The rest of the roll is spread across the other states in the table.
Who runs them
By reported control, 188 are public and 70 are private nonprofit. A blank control stays out of that split.
Predominant degree is the credential the campus awards most often. On this list it is a bachelor's degree at 256 schools, an associate degree at 1 school, and a certificate at 1 school. A campus can still award other credentials.
How large they are
The largest undergraduate enrollments on this list are Arizona State University Campus Immersion in Tempe, Arizona, with 64,674 undergraduates, Texas A&M University-College Station in College Station, Texas, with 59,615 undergraduates, University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida, with 59,146 undergraduates, Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, with 50,012 undergraduates, and Ohio State University-Main Campus in Columbus, Ohio, with 45,638 undergraduates. Enrollment is the undergraduate figure. It is not a ranking, and it leaves out graduate students.
Admission
255 of 258 schools report an admission rate. The median of those rates is 77%. Schools with no reported rate stay out of the median. A missing rate is not an open door, and it is not a closed one.
The lowest reported admission rates on this list are Stanford University in Stanford, California, at 4%, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 4%, and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, at 4%. A lower rate is harder entry. It is not a score for the school.
The highest reported admission rates on this list are The University of Texas at El Paso in El Paso, Texas, at 100%, Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana, at 99%, and University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, at 99%.
What they charge
Among 188 public colleges that report an in-state sticker price, the median is $10,758. Among 70 private colleges that report a sticker price, the median is $57,795.
Sticker price is not net price. Grants, waivers, and a service commitment can move the bill by a wide margin. Open a school for the net-price figures.
Earnings and graduation
Among 258 schools that report earnings, the median of those school-level medians is $58,516. The clock starts at entry, not at graduation. The highest reported medians on this list are Stanford University in Stanford, California, at $124,080, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at $111,371, and Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, at $110,066.
Among 258 schools that report a graduation rate, the median rate is 66%. A blank rate is left out. It is not treated as zero.
Also on other lists
Some of these schools also meet the rule for another list on this site. The overlap is a second flag or a second classification. It is not a second ranking.
108 are also on R1 research universities. 63 are also on R2 research universities. 11 are also on liberal arts colleges. 21 are also on HBCU colleges. 33 are also on Hispanic-serving institutions.
How these figures work
Admission rate, enrollment, sticker price, earnings, and graduation rate all come from the College Scorecard. Earnings are the median 10 years after a student entered the school. Tuition for a public college is the in-state sticker price. Tuition for a private college is the published sticker price. None of these is net price after aid.
A blank field stays blank. This page does not turn a blank admission rate into an open door, a blank fee into a free application, or a blank earnings figure into zero. The table above is membership under the rule in this guide. Sort order is not a quality ranking.