It’s been this way for years now, but I’ve wondered this for a while… Why do they now call Div. I in college football FBS (or Football Bowl Subdivision)? They have a similar strange name for Division II, and TV and printed articles never refer to Division I or I any more.
Any ideas?
Incorrect. Division I was divided into Division I-A and Division I-AA. I-A is the major college football subdivision that we now know as the FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision), and I-AA is now known as FCS (Football Championship Subdivision), because I-AA has had a playoff system for quite some time.
Note that the FBS/FCS divide - as well as a third “subdivision” which usually isn’t mentioned anywhere as it only really applies when talking about NCAA legislation, that consists of the Division I schools that don’t play football (“officially,” it used to be called I-AAA, but now it’s something like I-NF (for “Division I, No Football”)) - applies only to football. There is only one Division I men’s basketball tournament, for example, that is open to all Division I schools; in fact, Butler is an FCS school in football.
FBS - and I loathe that name - is the one whose season ends with a metric shit ton of bowl games. FCS has a championship playoff tournament. I guess maybe they were trying to “rebrand” by making it sound like these are just different divisions instead of making it sound like there is a hierarchy of quality, but I don’t think anyone is buying it. And since the FBS will have a playoff soon I’m not sure the new names will even make sense.
I think the change has something to do with wanting to rename the tournament as the “Division I Championship” even though it’s quite obvious that the best teams in Division I have nothing to do with it.
Also. the FBS playoff starting next season is not run by the NCAA (mainly because the major football schools want to control how the money is distributed rather than having the NCAA do it), so as far as the NCAA is concerned, it’s not “really” a championship.
Thanks for clearing this up (sort of). Because as I recall I-A and I-AA were both used long before the FBS and FCS, isn’t that correct? So what was the purpose of the renaming? Did it at one point HAVE a purpose?
I’ve never heard of I-AAA, but I have no reason to believe that the NCAA would not have that tag as well.
But what IS a Division I school that doesn’t have a football program? Is that a school like the Big East’s St. John’s, who has a Division I basketball program but no football team?
Because based on what you wrote, St. John’s is not a Division I school, but a Div I-NF, right?
You mention the designation is for NCAA legislation… So in reality, St. John’s is a Div-I-NF school, and they used to be Div I-AAA?
What is a Division II school without a football team? Or a Division III school without a football team?
Is a school like Georgetown a I-AA school, (or FCS)?
I hate these names too. And is Marley23 correct that the renaming was an attempt at rebranding? What difference did it make to change these names? Does the term FBS not belong to the NCAA?
As others have already noted, FBS and FCS are just subdivisions Division I, and were called Division I-A and I-AA respectively until a few years ago. I think in the early 90’s there was a proposal to create a third football sub-division, to be called Division I-AAA, which would have been for schools wanting to have totally non-scholorship football programs. I think this was the time when the NCAA adopted the rule that Division I schools couldn’t “play down” to a lower division in football. The new football subdivision never was adopted, probably because there weren’t enough interested schools. A few years later the NCAA officially adopted I-AAA as designation for non-football playing schools, but I don’t think that it officially exists anymore. A Division I school that doesn’t play football is now just a Division I school that doesn’t play football.
You are correct. I think the main reason for the renaming was, the NCAA didn’t want people to think that the I-A schools were somehow “better than” the I-AA schools in sports besides football.
Yes.
No. St. John’s is both. Every Division I school is either FBS, FCS, or “I-NF” (and I apologize; I-NF is used only for financial reporting, to differentiate those schools from the football-playing schools). Outside of football, there is no FBS, FCS, or I-NF; only “Division I.” There is no “FBS men’s basketball tournament”; only a Division I tournament.
Another reason I-A and I-AA (now FBS and FCS) were created is, the NCAA wanted to have the FBS schools able to vote on bylaws that applied only to them (for example, the FBS football scholarship limit, or bowl game qualification rules), and similarly for the FCS schools.
Except for financial reporting purposes, the NCAA does not differentiate between schools with football teams and schools without them in Divisions II and III.
Yes, but again, I need to stress that FCS (and I-AA, when it was called that) applies only to football.