NCAA Division II (D-II) is the intermediate-level division of competition in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). It offers an alternative to both the larger and better-funded Division I and to the scholarship-free environment offered in Division III.
Before 1973, the NCAA's smaller schools were grouped together in the College Division. In 1973, the College Division split in two when the NCAA began using numeric designations for its competitions. The College Division members who wanted to offer athletic scholarships or compete against those who did became Division II, while those who chose not to offer athletic scholarships became Division III.
Nationally, ESPN2 and ESPN+ televises the championship game in football, CBS and Paramount+ televises the men's basketball championship, and ESPN+ televises both the women's basketball and women's volleyball championships.
The official slogan of NCAA Division II, implemented in 2015, is "Make It Yours." The NCAA argues that Division II offers a "balanced" approach to student athletics, providing a high level of competition with regional championships that require less travel and cost and more access to championships than the other divisions. For athletes, Division II mandates a mandatory day off from athletic activities per week; this requirement was eliminated from Division I in 2018.
Membership There are currently 303 full, seven reclassifying and two provisional members of Division II. Division II schools tend to be public universities with fewer than 15,000 students and many are private institutions. A large minority of Division II institutions (91 schools / 30%) have fewer than 2,499 students. Only 18 institutions have more than 15,000 undergraduates, and only five have more than 25,000, led by Simon Fraser University. Eighty-nine percent of Division II institutions have fewer than 7,500 students.
Division II has a diverse membership, with two active member institutions in Alaska and three in Hawaii. Additionally, it is the only division that has member institutions in Puerto Rico and the only division that has expanded its membership to include an international member institution. Simon Fraser University became the first institution outside the US to enter the NCAA membership process. This occurred after the Division II Membership Committee accepted the institution's application during a July 7–9 meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana. Simon Fraser, located in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, British Columbia, began a two-year candidacy period September 1, 2009. Prospective members also must complete at least one year of provisional status before being accepted as full-time Division II members. In the fall of 2012, the NCAA President's Council officially approved Simon Fraser University as the organization's first international member. In April 2017, the NCAA made permanent the pilot program under which Simon Fraser was admitted to the NCAA, allowing each division to determine whether to allow Canadian or Mexican schools to join. In January 2018, Division II became the first NCAA division to officially allow Mexican schools to apply for membership, provided that they meet the same standards as US-based D-II members, including US regional accreditation. At the time, Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior (CETYS), which is fully accredited in both the U.S. and Mexico, was seeking to become the first Mexican school to join the NCAA with the backing of the California Collegiate Athletic Association. However, as of 2024, neither CETYS nor the NCAA has made any further announcements regarding such a move.
Overview
Men's team sports NumberSportTeamsConferencesScholarshipsper teamSeasonMost championships1 Football 164 16 Fall Northwest Missouri State (6)2 Basketball 306 24 Winter Kentucky Wesleyan (8)3 Baseball 256 24 Spring Tampa (10)4 Soccer 206 19 Fall Southern Connecticut (6)5 Lacrosse 75 10 Spring Adelphi (7)6 Volleyball 43 8 Spring UCLA (20)7 Water polo 8 4 Fall California (13)
Notes
Sports are ranked according to total possible scholarships (number of teams × number of scholarships per team). Since all Division II sports are considered equivalency sports (as opposed to the "head-count" status of several Division I sports: men's and women's basketball, FBS football, women's gymnastics, women's tennis, women's [indoor] volleyball), all scholarship numbers are indicated with a decimal point, with a trailing zero if needed.
Men's individual sports No.SportTeamsAthletesSeason1 Track (outdoor) 223 7,555 Spring2 Track (indoor) 173 6,289 Winter3 Cross country 275 3,640 Fall4 Swimming & diving 75 1,619 Winter5 Golf 227 2,353 Spring6 Tennis 167 1,617 Spring7 Wrestling 70 1,884 Winter
Women's team sports No.SportTeamsConferencesScholarshipsper teamSeasonMost championships1 Basketball 306 24 Winter Cal Poly Pomona and North Dakota State (5)2 Soccer 259 21 Fall Grand Valley State (6)3 Volleyball 295 24 Fall Concordia St. Paul (8)4 Softball 283 24 Spring Cal State Northridge (4)5 Lacrosse 111 24 Spring Adelphi (8)6 Rowing 16 24 Spring Western Washington (8)7 Field Hockey 36 24 Fall Bloomsburg (13)8 Water Polo* 12 6 Spring UCLA (7) * Championships are combined with D-I
Women's individual sports No.SportTeamsAthletesSeason1 Track (outdoor) 255 7,530 Spring2 Track (indoor) 202 6,399 Winter3 Cross country 300 3,829 Fall4 Swimming & diving 104 2,101 Winter5 Golf 198 1,547 Spring6 Tennis 223 1,901 Spring7 Gymnastics 7 148 Winter
National Championships Festival Another feature unique to Division II is what the NCAA calls the "National Championships Festival"—an annual event, explicitly modeled after the Olympics, in which a single city hosts national championship finals in multiple sports over a period of several days. Each festival has formal opening and closing ceremonies, and competitors are housed in a centrally located hotel, allowing a village-like experience. The first such festival was held in Orlando, Florida in 2004 for spring sports. It became an annual event in the 2006–07 school year, and has been held each school year since with the exception of 2009–10 and 2021 and 2022 (due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Since the current annual cycle began in 2006–07, the event has rotated between featuring fall, spring, and winter sports, in that order (the cycling was not interrupted by the one-year hiatus). In 2025, the NCAA Division II executive board voted to end the concept after the 2026 fall festival in Kansas City.
Requirements Division II institutions have to sponsor at least five sports for men and five for women (or four for men and six for women), with two team sports for each sex, and each playing season represented by each sex. Teams that consist of both men and women are counted as men's teams for sports sponsorship purposes. There are contest and participant minimums for each sport, as well as scheduling criteria—football and men's and women's basketball teams must play at least 50 percent of their games against Division II or Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) or Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) opponents. For sports other than football and basketball there are no scheduling requirements, as long as each contest involves full varsity teams. The only NCAA sport in which contests against club teams can count toward a team's contest minimum is women's rugby, in which two such contests per school year can be counted. There are not attendance requirements for football, nor arena size requirements for basketball. There are maximum financial aid awards for each sport, as well as a separate limit on financial aid awards in men's sports, that a Division II school must not exceed. Division II teams usually feature a number of local or in-state student-athletes. Many Division II student-athletes pay for school through a combination of scholarship money, grants, student loans and employment earnings. Division II athletics programs are financed in the institution's budget like other academic departments on campus. Traditional rivalries with regional institutions dominate schedules of many Division II athletics programs.
Athletic scholarships are offered in most sponsored sports at most institutions, but with more stringent limits as to the numbers offered in any one sport than at the Division I level. For example, Division II schools may give financial aid in football equivalent to 36 full scholarships (whereas each school in Division I FBS, the highest level, is allowed 85 individuals receiving financial aid for football), although some Division II conferences limit the number of scholarships to a lower level. Division II scholarship programs are frequently the recipients of student-athletes transferring from Division I schools; a transfer student does not have to sit out a year before resuming sports participation as would usually be the case in the event of transferring from one Division I institution to another. Several exceptions to this rule currently exist, of which three are the most significant. First, football players transferring from a Division I FBS school to a Division I FCS school do not have to sit out a year, provided that the player has at least two remaining seasons of athletic eligibility. The same also applies to players transferring from scholarship-granting FCS schools to non-scholarship FCS schools. Second, a first-time transfer does not have to sit out a year, provided that the player's former institution grants a scholarship release. Before the 2021–22 school year, this applied to sports other than football, baseball, men's and women's basketball, and men's ice hockey; it was extended to the remaining sports effective in 2021–22. Additionally, student-athletes in any sport who complete a bachelor's degree and still have athletic eligibility remaining can transfer to another school and be immediately eligible, provided that they enroll in a separate degree program (whether graduate, undergraduate, or professional) at the new institution. There are also some restrictions with transferring to another school for the same sport in the same conference.
Conferences
California Collegiate Athletic Association Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association Conference Carolinas East Coast Conference Great American Conference Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Great Lakes Valley Conference Great Midwest Athletic Conference Great Northwest Athletic Conference Gulf South Conference Lone Star Conference Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association Mountain East Conference Northeast-10 Conference Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Pacific West Conference Peach Belt Conference Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference South Atlantic Conference Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Sunshine State Conference
Notes
The newest D-II conference is the Mountain East Conference, formed in 2012 after the football-sponsoring schools in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC) announced that they would leave to form a new league, a move that led to the demise of the WVIAC. The Mountain East was approved by the NCAA Division II Membership Committee in February 2013, and became an official conference on September 1 of that year.