The Group of Five Explained

By 4Football Staff · October 12, 2026 · 9 min read

What the Group of Five label means, which conferences it covers, why it exists, and how these teams reach the biggest postseason games despite a very different financial footing.

Watch enough college football and you will hear a broadcaster say that an unbeaten team "is from the Group of Five" in the tone of someone mentioning an obstacle. The label is shorthand, and it carries a lot of baggage. It describes a set of conferences, a set of financial realities and a particular path to the sport's biggest games.

The term is informal. The NCAA does not hand out "Group of Five" membership cards, and the label has shifted as conferences have merged, split and swapped members. But understanding it explains a surprising amount about how the top level of college football is organized and why a perfect record can mean different things in different leagues.

Where the phrase came from

At the top level of college football, the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), there are roughly 130 programs. For most of the past several decades, five conferences have been treated as the sport's wealthiest and most influential: the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12 and the Southeastern Conference. Those five became known as the Power Five.

The remaining FBS conferences, along with a few independent schools, were grouped together as everything else. When the College Football Playoff replaced the Bowl Championship Series after the 2013 season, the vocabulary settled into a pair of tidy phrases: Power Five for the five big leagues and Group of Five for the five other FBS conferences:

• The American Athletic Conference
• Conference USA
• The Mid-American Conference
• The Mountain West Conference
• The Sun Belt Conference

Independent programs, such as Notre Dame, which plays as an independent in football, are counted separately and do not fall into either group.

A caution about all of this. Conference membership changes, and so does the language. When one of the five big leagues lost most of its members in the early 2020s, fans and writers began using other labels, and "Power Four" appeared. The point is that these are conversational terms, not official categories. Check the college section for the current arrangement of conferences rather than relying on the label.

The BCS years: automatic bids and everyone else

To see why the divide exists, look at the system that came before the playoff. From 1998 to 2013, the Bowl Championship Series paired top teams in major bowl games and used a formula, built on polls and computer rankings, to pick the two teams for the national title game.

The BCS divided conferences into two groups. Six conferences had automatic qualifier status, meaning their champions were guaranteed a berth in one of the BCS bowls. Everyone else was a non-automatic qualifier. A team from one of those leagues could earn a spot only by finishing high enough in the BCS standings, and in practice that meant going unbeaten or close to it.

Several teams did exactly that and became part of the sport's lore. Boise State's win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl after the 2006 season is still one of the most famous bowl upsets, and teams from the Mountain West, among them Utah and TCU, also won BCS-bowl games. These results are the origin of the "mid-major" legend: schools without the resources of the giants occasionally beat them on the biggest stage.

But the system still made the path narrow. An undefeated team from outside the automatic-qualifier group could finish its season without ever getting a chance at the national title, and several did.

The playoff era: from one guaranteed spot to a broader field

When the four-team College Football Playoff began in 2014, it created a selection committee, and the committee picked the four best teams without regard to conference. That had a big symbolic effect. In theory, any team could earn a place. In practice, only a team with an elite record and a convincing resume could.

The playoff structure also set aside a place for the Group of Five. The playoff's access bowls, the New Year's Six, included a guaranteed berth for the highest-ranked champion from the group of five conferences. For many of these schools, that spot became the season's main goal: win your league, finish highest among the non-power champions, and you are playing in a prestigious bowl on or around New Year's Day.

In the 2021 season, Cincinnati, representing the American Athletic Conference, finished the regular season unbeaten and became the first Group of Five team to reach the four-team playoff. It lost its semifinal, but the appearance mattered. UCF, in the 2017 season, finished unbeaten, beat a top opponent in a major bowl and declared itself national champion, although that claim is not recognized by the playoff or the major polls.

For the 2024 season the playoff expanded to 12 teams. Under the format adopted for that expansion, the five highest-ranked conference champions receive automatic berths, and the next seven spots go to at-large teams chosen by the committee. The four highest-ranked champions earn first-round byes. That gives a Group of Five champion a clearer shot, provided its ranking puts it among the five best champions, and it means that winning your conference title matters more than ever. Playoff rules are set by the playoff's governing body and have changed before, so confirm the current format before assuming any of these details still hold.

The money gap

Every conversation about the Group of Five eventually returns to money.

The big conferences negotiate large media contracts that produce revenue for every member school. The Group of Five conferences have their own media deals, but historically those have been much smaller. The same disparity shows up in the playoff itself. For years, revenue from the playoff and its bowls was divided so that the big conferences received larger shares than the others.

The result is a resource gap that shows up everywhere:

• Coaching salaries. Head coaches and assistants at larger programs typically earn far more.
• Facilities. Stadiums, practice complexes, weight rooms and academic centers cost money.
• Support staff. Analysts, strength coaches, nutritionists and recruiting staff add up.
• Name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities. Schools with big donor bases and national audiences usually have more resources for NIL deals.
• Travel. Charter flights and hotels for every road game cost real dollars.

None of this means a Group of Five team cannot win. It means it has to win with fewer resources and with less margin for error. Most of these programs make up for it with sharp scouting, player development and by recruiting players that bigger programs overlooked.

The transfer portal's effect

The transfer portal has changed life for Group of Five programs. A player who develops well at a smaller school may be recruited by a bigger program through the portal, which can pull talent upward. A star quarterback or defensive end who has a breakout year may not return the following season.

Group of Five programs have also used the portal in the other direction, picking up experienced players from larger schools who want more playing time. A common approach is to build a roster that mixes homegrown, developed players with transfers who fill specific needs.

For fans, that means Group of Five rosters can turn over faster than they used to. It also means that a good Group of Five season can lift players into the national spotlight and the NFL draft, which is one of the program's best recruiting arguments. Our explainer on the transfer portal covers the rules in detail.

How the five leagues differ

The five conferences are not interchangeable, and they each have their own character.

These descriptions are broad. Which schools belong to each conference has changed a number of times, so check team pages for the current membership. If you want to understand why those changes happen, read our piece on conference realignment.

What "MACtion" means

Fans of the Mid-American Conference are fond of the term "MACtion." It refers to the league's tradition of playing games on weeknights late in the season. Those games draw a national audience that has few other options on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, and the games often have high-scoring, unpredictable finishes. It is a good example of a smaller conference turning a scheduling gap into an identity.

What Group of Five football looks like on the field

There is no single style. Some Group of Five programs lean on spread offenses with a veteran quarterback. Others rely on option football, speed on the perimeter or aggressive defensive fronts. Many teams in these leagues look for efficiency: a quarterback who throws accurately, a running game that moves the chains, a defense that forces turnovers.

What does differ is depth. A team with a deep roster can survive injuries at key positions. A team with a thinner roster may be one injury away from a very different season. That is part of why Group of Five teams that go undefeated are especially impressive: they did it with less room for error.

Because most of the schedule is conference games against similar opponents, each one matters for the conference race and for the ranking that decides postseason access. A single slip against a middling league opponent can cost more than a competitive loss to a giant.

The strength-of-schedule problem

The biggest dispute about Group of Five teams is how to measure their records. A 12-0 team in a conference with few ranked opponents is not directly comparable to a 12-0 team in a league full of them. Selection committees and fans debate this every year.

The main issue is that strength of schedule depends partly on a team's own conference. A Group of Five team can improve its profile by scheduling non-conference games against stronger opponents, but those games are often on the road, and they carry a risk of losing. One loss can end a team's hopes of reaching a top-tier bowl or a playoff berth. Our guide to strength of schedule explains how those comparisons are made and why they are controversial.

A related point is the guarantee game. Group of Five programs often travel to play larger programs in exchange for a payment. These games provide revenue for the visiting school, and sometimes they produce upsets, but they carry a high risk and little reward in the standings. You can read about how those contracts work in non-conference scheduling and guarantee games.

Common mistakes when talking about the Group of Five

• Treating the label as official. It is informal and changes with conference membership.
• Assuming all five conferences are equal. They differ in resources, depth and exposure.
• Assuming a Group of Five team is automatically a "mid-major" underdog. Some of these programs have strong recent records and sizable budgets.
• Ignoring independents. Some FBS schools do not belong to any conference, and they fall outside both groups.
• Reading a ranking as a prediction. A ranking summarizes results so far. It does not promise a result next week.
• Forgetting the rules change. The playoff and bowl access rules have been rewritten before and may be again.

How to follow Group of Five teams on 4Football

The standings page lets you check where each team sits in its conference race, and the rankings page shows how the polls and committee view them. Each program's team page shows its schedule and results. When you are trying to judge a Group of Five team's postseason chances, look at three things: its conference record, whether it has lost a game it was expected to win, and who is at the top of the rankings among conference champions. Those three together usually tell you more than the label does.

What to remember

• "Group of Five" is an informal label for the five FBS conferences outside the biggest leagues; it is not an NCAA designation.
• The BCS era gave automatic bids to certain conferences only; the playoff era added a dedicated spot and then a 12-team format that rewards conference champions.
• The core difference is money, which affects salaries, facilities, support staff and recruiting.
• The transfer portal can pull players up from these programs and give them a way to add experienced players.
• Strength of schedule is the main debate in judging Group of Five records.
• Confirm current conference membership and playoff rules, because both change.