Pioneer Football League

From NCAA Wiki

Pioneer Football League

Established	1991
Classification	FCS
National Titles
Commissioner	Patty Viverito
Members	10
Sports Fielded	Football
States
Headquarters	Saint Louis, Missouri
Website	pioneer-football.org

The 2006 season marked the 14th year for the Pioneer Football League which returns to a non-divisional format for the first time since 2000. After five seasons playing a North-South divisional format, the league saw its numbers reduced to eight after the 2005 season (Austin Peay left the PFL to return to scholarship football) and those remaining members voted to adopt a full-round robin scheduling format for 2006. Additionally during the 2006 season the PFL champ participated in the Gridiron Classic vs. the champ of the Northeast Conference.

The PFL, a non-scholarship NCAA FCS football conference, is one of only two conferences that sponsor football as its only sport (the Missouri Valley Football Conference being the other). However, the PFL is a truly national conference with members on each coast and throughout the nation’s heartland. The league still retains four of its charter members – Butler, Dayton, Drake and Valparaiso, plus San Diego (who joined the PFL 1992) – In 2001 four new teams, three of which remain today – Davidson, Jacksonville and Morehead State. Campbell joined in 2008, while Marist will join for the 2009 season.

In January 1991 the NCAA passed legislation to require Division I institutions to sponsor all intercollegiate sports at Division I. The five charter members (Evansville the fifth before dropping football in 1997), each dedicated to the enhancement and sound management of intercollegiate football as an integral part of the student-athletes’ experience, joined together to form the Pioneer Football League. From the league’s inception it has been a proponent of the creation of a non-scholarship football classification within Division I and adopted the moniker of Pioneer based on the intent to become the first league in that new division. The PFL is comprised of NCAA Division I universities that previously sponsored intercollegiate football at other levels with the exception of Jacksonville, which started a non-scholarship program in 1998.

The PFL began play in 1993 with Dayton winning the league’s inaugural crown. The league spent its first season in 1993 under the administrative guidance of the Midwestern Collegiate Conference (Now the Horizon League, the office moved to St. Louis in 1994.