The 1993 NCAA Division I-AA football season, part of

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

in the United States organized by the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

at the

Division I-AA The NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly known as Division I-AA, is the second-highest level of college football in the United States, after the Football Bowl Subdivision. Sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic ...

level, began in August 1993, and concluded with the

1993 NCAA Division I-AA Football Championship Game The 1993 NCAA Division I-AA Football Championship Game was a postseason college football game between the Youngstown State Penguins football, Youngstown State Penguins and the Marshall Thundering Herd football, Marshall Thundering Herd. The ga ...

on December 18, 1993, at

Marshall University Stadium Joan C. Edwards Stadium, formerly Marshall University Stadium, is a football stadium located on the campus of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, United States. It can hold 38,227 spectators and includes twenty deluxe, indoor suit ...

Huntington, West Virginia Huntington is a city in Cabell and Wayne counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is the county seat of Cabell County, and the largest city in the Huntington–Ashland metropolitan area, sometimes referred to as the Tri-State Area. A h ...

. The

Youngstown State Penguins The Youngstown State Penguins are the athletic teams of Youngstown State University of Youngstown, Ohio. The university is a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Division I, and the Penguins compete in football as memb ...

won their second I-AA championship, defeating the

Marshall Thundering Herd The Marshall Thundering Herd is the intercollegiate athletic collection of teams that collectively represent the Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Thundering Herd athletic teams compete in the Sun Belt Conference, which are member ...

by a score of 17−5. It was the third consecutive year that Marshall and Youngstown State faced off in the I-AA title game.

Conference changes and new programs

*A 1991

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

rule change required athletic programs maintain all of their sports at the same division level by the 1993 season. As such, many Division I programs with football teams at the Division II and

Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...

levels were forced to upgrade their programs to the Division I-AA level. *The rule change directly led to the establishment of the

Pioneer Football League The Pioneer Football League (PFL) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the United States. The conference participates in the NCAA's Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) as a football-only conference. It has member s ...

, a non-scholarship football conference at the Division I-AA level with six founding members, all formerly in Division III: Butler, Dayton, Drake, Evansville, San Diego, and Valparaiso. *It also led to the creation of the

American West Conference The American West Conference (AWC) was a college athletic conference in the United States from 1993 to 1996. It consisted of schools in California and Utah. The charter members of the conference were California Polytechnic State University; ...

, initially a football-only conference at the Division I-AA level with five founding members, all formerly in Division II: UC Davis, Cal Poly, Cal State Northridge, Sacramento State, and Southern Utah. *The

Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC, ) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I. Of its current 11 full members, 10 are located in three states of the northeastern United States: Connecticut, New Jersey, and ...

, an existing Division I conference, also began sponsoring football in order to accommodate these new I-AA football programs. Note: The

UC Davis Aggies The UC Davis Aggies (also referred to as the Ags or Aggies) are the athletic teams that represent the University of California, Davis. Seventeen of the school's 25 intercollegiate sports - baseball, men's basketball, men's cross country, men's ...

, although a member of the new American West Conference, were listed in Division II polls, and participated in the Division II postseason.

Conference standings

Conference champions

Postseason

NCAA Division I-AA playoff bracket

Only the top four teams in the field were seeded, with the NCAA placing others teams in the

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

to avoid early round matchups between teams from the same conference. This was the first season that the NCAA did not use an in-house poll process for I-AA ranking purposes; independent polling by

The Sports Network The Sports Network (TSN) is a Canadian English language sports specialty channel established by the Labatt Brewing Company in 1984 as part of the first group of Canadian specialty cable channels. Since 2001, it has been majority-owned by comm ...

wire service was used. The site of the title game,

, had been predetermined months earlier. * ''Next to team name denotes host institution''
* ''Next to score denotes overtime period''
Source:

References

{{NCAA football season navbox