Division I-AA football boasts 108 teams, 14 leagues

If one were to start in Princeton, draw a line directly east to the ocean and another directly north to Canada, and call the area in that box "the Northeast," one would find that "the Northeast" has about one-ninth of the country's population. Representing that healthy chunk of the country are just four Div. I-A teams, but a healthy 28 I-AA teams.

The Northeast might not get as excited about football as some other regions of the nation, but with its four Div. I-A teams — Boston College, Rutgers, Army, and Connecticut — having a combined record of 9-25, a significant amount of attention gets shifted to its I-AA teams, some of which rank near the top of I-AA.

About 20 years ago, the NCAA divided Division I football into I-A and I-AA, hoping to separate the strong leagues from the weak leagues, and give the lower conferences something to play for, the Div. I-AA championship.

Today, 117 schools field Div. I-A football teams and 108 field I-AA.

Unlike Div. I-A, which has the bowl system, I-AA actually has a playoff system in which the best 16 teams in the nation play in the I-AA tournament, with the winner of the championship game being declared the overall winner.

With an Ivy League rule not allowing teams to compete in the I-AA postseason, Princetonians usually do not pay much attention to what happens outside of the Ivy and, sometimes, Patriot League, the conference with which the Ivy League most often competes. Still, though, during this season, Princeton has been on the verge of breaking into the I-AA top 25, and Tiger fans should know what teams that ranking consists of.

Twenty years after the divide, Div. I-AA now consists of 14 conferences and 108 teams. Besides the Patriot and Ivy League, the northeastern teams come mostly from the Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conference, the Northeastern Conference, and the Atlantic 10.

In the most recent ESPN/USA Today Div. I-AA poll, teams from these five conferences were in the top 30 in the nation, Maine being the highest northeastern representative at No. 5. The highest Ivy team is Penn, Princeton's opponent this Saturday. The Quakers rank No. 23. Although Harvard was ranked in the teens earlier in the year, they have now fallen from the top 25. Princeton, in the most recent voting, received three votes, putting it about 42nd in the nation.

Montana, from the Big Sky conference, is currently ranked No. 1 in I-AA football, but no other team from its conference cracks the top 10.

The strongest conference is the Southern Conference — it has the most teams at the top of Div I-AA standings, with four in the top 15. At No. 4 in the nation, Furman is the strongest squad from the Southern Conference, and its rivalry with Georgia Southern (nationally ranked No. 9) is legendary.

The strongest conference in this part of the country is probably the Atlantic 10. Maine, at No. 4, leads the group, but the league is also represented by No. 11 Villanova, No. 12 Massachusetts, and No. 19 Northeastern.

Unlike in Div. I-A, Div. I-AA teams in one part of the nation rarely play teams in other parts, making it difficult to compare the strength of, for instance, the Ivy League against that of, say, the Ohio Valley Conference.

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At least one system, the Dolphin rating system, does make the comparison.

In that ranking system, the Ivy League is considered to be the fourth strongest I-AA league in the nation, behind the Southland Conference, represented by No. 2 McNeese State, the Patriot League and the Atlantic 10.