Get to know the FCS: The Pioneer League

Pioneer Football League Formed: 1991 Commissioner: Patty Viverito Location: St. Louis, Missouri Website: The Pioneer League

Formed in 1991, the Pioneer League is the only league at the FCS level that does not give out scholarships for football.

Before the formation of the league, the members that would make it up were more then content being in either Division II or Division III for football while having Division I sports elsewhere. In fact, beginning in the 80's, Dayton would become a power player at the Division III level with five trips to the National Championship game and winning it twice. Butler would make the Division II playoffs on at least two different occasions as well.

The NCAA, seeing the unfair advantage that schools like Butler and Dayton had, created a rule basically saying that all Division I schools have make all their sports Division I by 1993. This lead to the creation of the Pioneer League in 1991 with Butler and Valparaiso coming in from the Division II MIFC (Midwest Intercollegiate Football Conference, which would later turn into the GLIAC) and Division III independent programs Dayton, Drake and Evansville. San Diego, yet another Division III independent program, would join in 1992 to form the six team conference. Those six schools would join a large group of schools in either Division II or Division III to be forced up to Division I-AA in 1993.

The first major change would come in 1997, when Evansville pulled the plug on their program, turning it into a club level team. This means only five schools were left until 2001.

In 2001, four new schools were added: Austin Peay, Davidson, Jacksonville and Morehead State. The conference also introduced a divisional format in which the original five schools would be in the North Division while the four newcomers would be in the South Division. This also created a conference championship game, a rare event at the FCS level. This would last for five years before, in 2006, Austin Peay would leave the conference to prepare for a move back to the Ohio Valley Conference in football.

Two years later, another new program was added in Campbell and then a year after that, Marist joined the league. This gave the Pioneer League an even ten teams.

The next big move came in 2013 and had two parts. Part one was the addition of Mercer and Stetson to the league. The other part was that for the first time ever, the Pioneer League was now given an automatic bid to the FCS Playoffs. Before this, none of the conference members were invited to the playoffs and the conference also held a de facto non-scholarship bowl game against the Northeast Conference champion in what was known as the Gridiron Classic. The first team to make the FCS Playoffs in this new era for the Pioneer League was Butler. It would be a few years before a Pioneer League member would finally win a playoff game. The excitement was short lived as Mercer, coming off a 10-2 season debut, would join the Southern Conference for all sports.

The next move came in 2018 when Campbell left the conference for the Big South.

2019 saw the announcement of Presbyterian moving into the conference as they went non-scholar for football and Jacksonville pulling the plug on their program. The 2021 Spring season saw the Blue Hose come in to replace the Dolphins in a emergency manner. The Blue Hose weren't eligible for the conference title, but were allowed to have players win conference awards.

The last move would come in 2021 when St. Thomas, recently booted out of the Division III MIAC for being too strong, was invited to join the Pioneer League.

Current Members