The Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC), formerly the Gateway Football Conference, is a collegiate

athletic conference An athletic conference is a collection of sports teams, playing competitively against each other in a sports league. In many cases conferences are subdivided into smaller divisions, with the best teams competing at successively higher levels. Conf ...

which operates in the

Midwestern United States The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

. It participates in the

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 ...

's Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) as a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

-only conference.

History

The Missouri Valley Football Conference has a complex history that involves three other conferences: *

Missouri Valley Conference The Missouri Valley Conference (also called MVC or simply "The Valley") is the third-oldest collegiate athletic conference in the United States. The conference's members are primarily located in the midwest. History The MVC was established ...

(MVC): A long-established conference, in existence since 1907, that sponsored football until 1985. In its last years as a football conference, it was a hybrid league that included teams in NCAA Divisions I-A (today's FBS) and I-AA (now FCS). *

Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference The Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference was a women's-only college athletic conference which operated in the midwestern United States from its inception in 1982 to its absorption by the Missouri Valley Conference in 1992. History The Gateway Co ...

(Gateway): A women's sports conference founded in 1982 by MVC member schools. * Association of Mid-Continent Universities (AMCU): An all-sports conference, also founded in 1982, that sponsored football at the I-AA level through the 1984 season. The AMCU had absorbed the Mid-Continent Athletic Association, a football-only league founded in 1978. (After dropping football, the AMCU later became the Mid-Continent Conference, and is now The Summit League.) In 1985, the MVC stopped sponsoring football. At that time, the two remaining I-AA members from the MVC (Illinois State and Southern Illinois) joined Eastern Illinois, Northern Iowa, Southwest Missouri State, and Western Illinois from the AMCU and together became a football conference under the Gateway's auspices. Indiana State, which had left MVC football after the 1981 season to become a Division I-AA independent while remaining a full MVC member, would join the next year. In 1992, when the Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference merged with the MVC, the football conference kept the Gateway charter, with a minor name change to Gateway Football Conference. After Eastern Illinois joined the

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. It participates in Division I of the NCAA; the conference's football programs compete in the Football Cham ...

for football in 1995, Youngstown State joined in 1997 and was followed by Western Kentucky University in 2001. Southwest Missouri State changed its name to Missouri State in 2005. Western Kentucky moved to the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division I-A) after the 2006 season, leaving the GFC with seven members for the 2007 season. Great West Football Conference members North Dakota State and South Dakota State were invited to join the conference beginning with the 2008 season. Subsequently, the Gateway Football Conference changed its name to the Missouri Valley Football Conference in June 2008. This change aligned the conference with the Missouri Valley Conference, a conference in which five of the nine Missouri Valley Football schools were (and still are) all-sports members. The conferences continue to share the "Missouri Valley" name, and space in the same building in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

, but remain separate administratively. The University of South Dakota joined as the 10th member in 2012. The University of North Dakota joined as the 11th member in 2020, bringing back the yearly rivalries among North Dakota, North Dakota State, South Dakota and South Dakota State which had existed under the Division 2 North Central Conference that NDSU and SDSU left in 2004–05. The most recent change to the MVFC membership was announced on April 4, 2022.

Murray State University Murray State University (MSU) is a public university in Murray, Kentucky. In addition to the main campus in Calloway County in southwestern Kentucky, Murray State operates extended campuses offering upper level and graduate courses in Paducah, ...

, which becomes a full MVC member in July 2022, will join the MVFC in 2023.

Member schools

Current members

Future members

Former members

Membership timeline

DateFormat = yyyy ImageSize = width:1000 height:auto barincrement:20 Period = from:1985 till:2025 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal PlotArea = right:20 left:0 bottom:50 top:5 #> to display a count on left side of graph, use "left:20" to suppress the count, use "left:20"<# Colors = id:barcolor value:rgb(0.99,0.7,0.7) id:line value:black id:bg value:white id:Full value:rgb(0.742,0.727,0.852) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports id:FullxF value:rgb(0.551,0.824,0.777) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in all sports except for football id:AssocF value:rgb(0.98,0.5,0.445) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member for football only id:AssocOS value:rgb(0.5,0.691,0.824) # Use this color to denote a team that is a member in some sports, but not all (consider identifying in legend or a footnote) id:OtherC1 value:rgb(0.996,0.996,0.699) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference id:OtherC2 value:rgb(0.988,0.703,0.383) # Use this color to denote a team that has moved to another conference where OtherC1 has already been used, to distinguish the two PlotData= width:15 textcolor:black shift:(5,-5) anchor:from fontsize:s bar:1 color:AssocOS from:1985 till:1992 text:

Eastern Illinois Eastern Illinois University is a public university in Charleston, Illinois. Established in 1895 as the Eastern Illinois State Normal School, a teacher's college offering a two-year degree, Eastern Illinois University gradually expanded into a c ...

(1985–1995) bar:1 color:AssocF from:1992 till:1996 bar:2 color:AssocOS from:1985 till:1992 text:

Illinois State Illinois State University (ISU) is a public university in Normal, Illinois. Founded in 1857 as Illinois State Normal University, it is the oldest public university in Illinois. The university emphasizes teaching and is recognized as one of th ...

(1985–present) bar:2 color:AssocF from:1992 till:end bar:3 color:AssocOS from:1985 till:1992 text: Missouri State (1985–present) bar:3 color:AssocF from:1992 till:end bar:4 color:AssocOS from:1985 till:1992 text:

Northern Iowa Iowa () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wiscon ...

(1985–present) bar:4 color:AssocF from:1992 till:end bar:5 color:AssocOS from:1985 till:1992 text:

Southern Illinois Southern Illinois, also known as Little Egypt, is the southern third of Illinois, principally along and south of Interstate 64. Although part of a Midwestern state, this region is aligned in culture more with that of the Upland South than the Mi ...

(1985–present) bar:5 color:AssocF from:1992 till:end bar:6 color:AssocOS from:1985 till:1992 text: Western Illinois (1985–present) bar:6 color:AssocF from:1992 till:end bar:7 color:AssocOS from:1986 till:1992 text: Indiana State (1986–present) bar:7 color:AssocF from:1992 till:end bar:8 color:AssocF from:1997 till:end text:

Youngstown State Youngstown State University (YSU or Youngstown State) is a public university in Youngstown, Ohio. It was founded in 1908 and is the easternmost member of the University System of Ohio. The university is composed of six undergraduate colleges ...

(1997–present) bar:9 color:AssocF from:2001 till:2007 text: WKU (2001–2007) bar:10 color:AssocF from:2008 till:end text:

North Dakota State North Dakota State University (NDSU, formally North Dakota State University of Agriculture and Applied Sciences) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Fargo, North Dakota. It was founded as North ...

(2008–present) bar:11 color:AssocF from:2008 till:end text:

South Dakota State South Dakota State University is a public land-grant research university in Brookings, South Dakota. Founded in 1881, it is the state's largest and most comprehensive university and the oldest continually-operating university in South Dakota. ...

(2008–present) bar:12 color:AssocF from:2012 till:end text:

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large po ...

(2012–present) bar:13 shift:(-20) color:AssocF from:2020 till:end text:

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, ...

(2020–present) bar:14 shift:(-65) color:AssocF from:2023 till:end text:

Murray State Murray State University (MSU) is a public university in Murray, Kentucky. In addition to the main campus in Calloway County in southwestern Kentucky, Murray State operates extended campuses offering upper level and graduate courses in Paducah, H ...

(2023–future) bar:N color:powderblue from:1985 till:1992 text:Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference bar:N color:yellow from:1992 till:2008 text:Gateway Football Conference bar:N color:pink from:2008 till:end text:Missouri Valley Football Conference ScaleMajor = gridcolor:line unit:year increment:2 start:1986 TextData = fontsize:L textcolor:black pos:(0,30) tabs:(400-center) text:^"MVFC membership history" #> If the chart uses more than one bar color, add a legend by selecting the appropriate fields from the following six options (use only the colors that are used in the graphic.) Leave a blank line after the end of the timeline, then add a line with the selected values from the list, separated by a space. <#

Conference champions

11 different teams have won MVFC championships. The most recent champion is

. The school with the most championships is

(10).

NCAA Football Championship Subdivision national championships

♯ ''Now a member of the

Football Bowl Subdivision The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, is the highest level of college football in the United States. The FBS consists of the largest schools in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). As ...

(FBS).''

Records

Overall winning streaks

† '' FCS Record''

Consecutive conference wins

, 19 (2017–2020) #North Dakota State, 18 (2012–2014)

Facilities

Future member Murray State in gray.

References

External links

* {{NCAA Division I FCS conference navbox Sports organizations established in 1985 Articles which contain graphical timelines 1985 establishments in the United States