This is a list of defunct college football conferences in the United States and a defunct university football conference in Canada. Not all of the conferences listed here are truly defunct. Some simply stopped sponsoring football and continue under their current names, where others changed their names after changes in membership.
United States
Conferences whose charter no longer functions, listed by year of dissolution.
^The GNAC entered into a football scheduling agreement with the Lone Star Conference in 2019. The two leagues had planned to continue said agreement through at least 2023, but this arrangement was scrapped after the 2021 season, with the three remaining GNAC football members becoming LSC football-only members starting in 2022. One of these three schools, Simon Fraser, dropped football after the 2022 season.
^The CSFL did not compete in the 2012 season. In 2017, the Sooner Athletic Conference, which served as the primary conference for the majority of the CSFL's membership decided to sponsor football beginning in 2018. As a result, most of the league's remaining members shifted to that conference.
^After the 2016 football season, conference realignment left the NEFC with only five teams, all members of the all-sports Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC). If the CCC had brought the NEFC fully under its umbrella, the CCC football schools would have lost their opportunity for automatic qualification to the Division III tournament. Accordingly, the CCC instead maintained the NEFC as a technically separate league but took over its administration, rebranding the NEFC as Commonwealth Coast Football (CCC Football). CCC Football later restored its membership to the level then required to maintain NCAA tournament qualification. CCC Football was fully merged into the all-sports CCC in 2022, following changes in Division III rules regarding automatic qualification for the D-III tournament.[1]
^Although the MEC was formed under a separate charter, there is considerable continuity between the MEC and WVIAC. Of the 12 original all-sports MEC members, eight had played WVIAC football in that conference's final season. (One of these inaugural MEC football members has since left the league.) As of the 2021 season, eight of the 12 current football members of the MEC had played in the final WVIAC football season, and a ninth was a non-football WVIAC member that later added the sport.
^Dropped football as a conference sport after the 2012 season, following a near-complete membership turnover from 2011 to 2013. All but two of the WAC's football schools left the conference in that period. Both remaining football schools, Idaho and New Mexico State, played as independents in the 2013 season before returning to football-only membership in the Sun Belt Conference in 2014. The WAC reinstated football in 2021 at the FCS level, and after the 2022 season merged its football league with that of the ASUN Conference, creating the United Athletic Conference.[2][3]
^The American Athletic Conference operates under the same charter as the 1979–2013 version of the Big East Conference. After the 2013 split of the Big East, the schools that did not sponsor FBS football reorganized under a new charter as the current Big East Conference, having purchased that name from the remaining members. The remaining FBS members reorganized as the American Athletic Conference. However, The American does not recognize any of the football history of the Big East.
^Before 1985, the Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference was a women's athletic conference whose membership featured several schools now in the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC). When the MVC stopped sponsoring its hybrid Division I-A (now FBS) and Division I-AA (now FCS) football league in 1985, the Gateway Conference took on football as its only men's sport. The initial football membership included the two I-AA football programs then in the MVC, plus the four final members of the AMCU football league. When the women's portion of the Gateway Conference merged with the MVC in 1992, the football conference maintained the Gateway charter, with a name change to Gateway Football Conference. In 2008, the Gateway Conference, by now featuring five current MVC members, changed its name to the Missouri Valley Football Conference to better align itself with the MVC. The two conferences, however, remain legally separate, although they operate out of the same offices in St. Louis.
^Initially formed as a non-football conference, began sponsoring football in 1993. Dropped football after the 2007 season, after most of its member schools discontinued their football programs.
^In 2007, the Colonial Athletic Association began sponsorship of football. However, the football conference that now operates under CAA administration as the technically separate entity of CAA Football has been in existence since 1938, under different charters: the New England Conference (1938–1945), the Yankee Conference (1947–1996), and the Atlantic 10 Conference (1997–2006). In 1997, the Atlantic 10 Conference, initially formed as a non-football conference, absorbed the Yankee Conference football programs and began football sponsorship in 1997. After several membership changes in the CAA in the early 2000s, the CAA had six schools with FCS football teams, and eventually, it was agreed that the CAA would take over management of the A-10 football conference. The changeover occurred in 2007. Further illustrating the continuity between conferences, the Yankee's automatic berth in the FCS playoffs passed in succession to the A-10 and CAA.
^The Big West Conference, originally the Pacific Coast Athletic Association, adopted its current name in 1988 as it admitted more schools located in the interior West. Dropped football as a conference sport after the 2000 season.
^Dropped football as a conference sport after the 1985 season. As noted above, the Missouri Valley Football Conference is a separate entity from the MVC, although the football conference (which, as of the 2023 season, has six members in common with the MVC) has a licensing agreement with the MVC allowing it to use an adapted version of the MVC logo.
^Founded in 1982, it absorbed the former Mid-Continent Athletic Association and sponsored Division I-AA football through the 1984 season. Of the four schools that participated in AMCU football in the 1982–84 period, three now compete at the Division I FCS level in the football-only Missouri Valley Football Conference, and the other is an all-sports member of the FCS Ohio Valley Conference. After dropping football, the AMCU (informally known as the "Mid-Continent") became the Mid-Continent Conference in 1989, and adopted its current name of The Summit League in 2007. Currently, six Summit League members sponsor football; five are MVFC members and the other plays in the Pioneer Football League.
Canada
Ontario-Québec Intercollegiate Football Conference (1975-2000) – This conference existed with varying membership with many Ontario teams leaving for the current Ontario University Athletics in 1980. The remaining Ontario teams departed after the 2000 season and the remaining Quebec teams ultimately became the Quebec University Football League in 2004.
