The 2009 season marks the 17th year for the Pioneer Football League – the nation’s only non-scholarship NCAA Football Championship Subdivision conference that offers football as its only sport.

The league expanded to 10 members in 2009 as Marist College began conference play. In addition, the Pioneer Football League will participate for the fourth consecutive year in the Gridiron Classic, a postseason championship game which pits the PFL champion against the Northeast Conference champion.

The PFL 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 University, the University of Dayton, Drake University and Valparaiso University, plus the University of San Diego (joining in 1992) – which were joined in 2001 by Davidson College, Jacksonville University and Morehead State University. Campbell University joined the PFL in 2008, its first season of intercollegiate football.

In January 1991 the NCAA passed legislation to require Division I institutions to sponsor all intercollegiate sports at the Division I level. 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’ collegiate 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. All are currently committed to the non-scholarship football model.

The PFL began play in 1993 with Dayton winning the league’s first crown. The league spent its first season in 1993 under the administrative guidance of the Midwestern Collegiate Conference, and the office moved to St. Louis in 1994 when current commissioner Patty Viverito was named the PFL commissioner, a leadership position she continues to fill.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Patty Viverito, Commissioner
1818 Chouteau Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63103

Cody Bush, Media Relations Director
P.O. Box 4515
Clarksville, TN 37044
[e-mail]