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- This article depicts the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision Alignment History—specifically, all schools that have competed in the lower tier of NCAA Division I college football since Division I football was split into two subdivisions in 1978. This includes schools competing in:
* Division I-AA from 1978 through 2005
* Division I FCS since 2006 Teams in bold italics are now in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS); those in plain italics either play football in lower divisions or not at all. Teams followed by an asterisk (*) dropped football. Dates reflect when a team began play in I-AA/FCS, not when it became eligible for postseason play. As of the current 2022 season, three schools are transitioning from FCS to FBS. The most recent school to complete such a transition is Liberty, which completed its transition at the end of the 2018 season. The three schools transitioning are Jacksonville State, James Madison, and Sam Houston, all of which began FBS transitions in 2022. James Madison joined the FBS Sun Belt Conference in 2022 and met all FBS scheduling requirements in that season, meaning that it is counted as an FBS team for purposes of its opponents' scheduling. This also allowed James Madison to skip the first year of the standard two-year transition process, thereby becoming a full FBS member in 2023. Jacksonville State and Sam Houston are playing as FCS teams in 2022 before joining Conference USA in 2023, but are ineligible for the 2022 FCS playoffs. Both schools will become full FBS members in 2024. Idaho downgraded its football team from FBS to FCS, and rejoined its all-sports home of the Big Sky Conference as a football member in July 2018. Also in July 2018, North Alabama started a transition from NCAA Division II, joining the ASUN Conference for non-football sports at that time, with the football team playing as an FCS independent in 2018 before joining the Big South Conference in 2019. Two teams joined the FCS ranks in 2020—Dixie State, now known as Utah Tech, and Tarleton. Both schools started transitions to Division I, with the football teams becoming FCS independents while all other sports joined the non-football Western Athletic Conference. The WAC reinstated football at the FCS level for the fall 2021 season, coinciding with the arrival of four schools from the Southland Conference. UTRGV, currently a full WAC member without football, initially announced it will start an FCS football program no later than 2024, but has apparently delayed that move until a later time. The next school to join FCS was St. Thomas, which joined the non-football Summit League and the Pioneer Football League in 2021 as part of an unprecedented transition directly from Division III to Division I. A year later, two other schools joined FCS as part of transitions from Division II, namely Lindenwood and Texas A&M–Commerce. Augustana University, a South Dakota D-II school not to be confused with the D-III Augustana College in Illinois, announced plans to transition to D-I, but was turned down by the Summit League. School names reflect those in current use, not necessarily those used by a school when it competed in I-AA/FCS. Specifically, these schools were known by different names throughout their entire tenures in Division I-AA/FCS:
* Louisiana-Monroe — Northeast Louisiana
* Troy — Troy State
* UConn — Connecticut
* In the case of UConn, "Connecticut" was the official athletic name, but "UConn" was in wide use alongside "Connecticut" before becoming the university's sole athletic brand in 2013.
* West Texas A&M — West Texas State
* Winston-Salem State — Winston-Salem Alignments are current for the 2022 season. (en)
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