THE BOWL ELIGIBLE BLOG
Who's Left? The Remaining FBS Independent Teams in 2026
Only 2 of the 138 FBS schools in Bowl Eligible's membership file are independents in 2026: Notre Dame and UConn. Here is how the group shrank.
The answer fits in one short sentence: Notre Dame and UConn.
That is the whole list in Bowl Eligible's conference membership file for 2026. The file covers 4,462 school-seasons for 142 schools from 1990 through 2026, using the conference each school actually played in that season. Its 2026 section contains 138 schools. Two carry the Independent label. The other 136 are spread across ten conferences, from the 18-school Big Ten down to the rebuilt eight-school Pac-12.
Independent used to be a normal condition in this sport. In the file's first season, 1990, 25 of 106 schools were independents. By 2026, the category has nearly vanished.
The final two
| School | 2026 label | Path in the membership file |
|---|---|---|
| Notre Dame | Independent | Independent in every season covered, 1990-2026 |
| UConn | Independent | Independent 2000-2003, Big East 2004-2012, AAC 2013-2019, Independent again 2020-2026 |
They arrived at the same label from opposite directions. Notre Dame never left it during the 37 seasons in the file. UConn left, spent 16 seasons in two conferences, then came back.
Notre Dame: the permanent exception
Notre Dame is listed as an independent in all 37 seasons covered by the membership file. That does not mean its schedule lacks recurring fixtures. Our separate rivalry dataset, with series records frozen at the end of 2025, lists three Notre Dame series, and their statuses show the strange shape of independence.
Navy is the annual anchor. The file records 98 Notre Dame-Navy meetings, first played in 1927, with the next meeting scheduled for 2026. The most recent meeting in the dataset was a 49-10 Notre Dame win in 2025. USC is different: the rivalry file lists 96 meetings, but its status is paused and its next scheduled meeting is 2030. Michigan is also paused, with 44 recorded meetings and a next scheduled meeting in 2033.
So Notre Dame's independence is not isolation. It is a schedule built without a conference slate, with some fixtures treated as permanent and others allowed to disappear for years. The membership file gives it the same one-word label as UConn, but the history behind that word is much longer and much more stable.
UConn: the return trip
UConn first appears in the file as an independent in 2000 and stays there through 2003. It then joins the Big East for the 2004 season, just as Miami (FL) and Virginia Tech leave that league for the ACC. UConn remains in the Big East through 2012. When the file changes the post-2013 Big East football lineage to the AAC, UConn goes with it and stays in the AAC through 2019.
The turn comes in 2020. UConn is independent again, and it remains independent through 2026. That makes 2026 its seventh straight season in its second independent spell.
Its path also gives it a distinction neither power-conference money nor a modern expansion invite can erase: UConn has been an independent both before and after a long run through the old Big East and AAC. Notre Dame is the famous independent. UConn is the accidental survivor.
How seven became two
The recent contraction happened in clear steps.
The file lists seven independents in each season from 2020 through 2022: Army, BYU, Liberty, New Mexico State, Notre Dame, UConn, and UMass.
In 2023, three left at once. BYU joined the Big 12, while Liberty and New Mexico State joined CUSA. That cut the group from seven to four.
In 2024, Army joined the AAC. The remaining independents were Notre Dame, UConn, and UMass.
In 2025, UMass joined the MAC. That left Notre Dame and UConn, and the file keeps the same two-school list for 2026.
No new school replaced them. The story is not that independence found a new generation of believers. It is that one school after another accepted a conference home until only the most famous independent and one unusually traveled former Big East school were left.
The long view
The file's history makes the endpoint even starker. After beginning with 25 independents in 1990, the count fell to 17 in 1991, the first Big East football season. It reached two once before, in 2004, when Navy and Notre Dame were the only schools with the label. Navy is in the AAC in the 2026 file, so even that old pairing is gone.
The category briefly grew again in the late 2010s and early 2020s as BYU, Liberty, New Mexico State, UMass, and UConn spent time outside conferences. Realignment then absorbed nearly all of them. Independence did not die in one dramatic announcement. It thinned out through a series of practical decisions recorded one season at a time.
That is why the 2026 list matters. It is not a trivia answer with seven or eight names and a few judgment calls. In the membership file, it is two names, one obvious and one easy to forget.
Try sorting seasons like these in Realignment Cartographer, then compare the endpoint with our conference realignment map post. The quiz is harder than the modern list suggests. The old seasons are where independence was everywhere.