Division 1-A Rugby (formerly known as the College Premier Division) is the highest level of men's college rugby within the United States and is administered by USA Rugby. Division 1-A rugby is modeled after NCAA athletic competitions, with the 38 D1-A rugby schools divided into six conferences: Rugby East, Midwest, Rocky Mountain, California, Big Ten, and Independent.
The regular season sees all teams in the conference play one another, with the two top seeds qualifying for the playoffs. Playoffs are a single-elimination format, occurring each year in April and May, with the winner of D1-A declared the National Champion. Regular seasons for most conferences are played in the spring, although some cold-weather conferences, such as the Big Ten Universities, play their regular season in the fall.
The competition's first season was played during 2011 and consisted of teams from 31 schools from across the United States. The first ever match of the competition was played on Friday March 4, the Arizona State Sun Devils hosted the Colorado Buffaloes at the Arizona State University Soccer Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. The 2011 final was played at Rio Tinto Stadium, in Sandy, Utah, on the 21 May 2011.
Several players who have excelled in the top-level competitions in college rugby have also represented their country as part of the United States national under-20 rugby union team or the All Americans rugby union team.
Formation History of college rugby in the U.S.
A group of British Army officers organized a game of rugby against the students of McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) in 1865; the Canadians were so enamored of the game that they decided to continue to play football by the Rugby code. In 1874 McGill organized two games of football against Harvard, one was played under Harvard's rules, the other under "McGill" rugby rules.Rugby in USA, Rugby Football History. Accessed September 26, 2015. In late 1874, the Harvard team traveled to Montreal to play McGill in rugby, and won by three tries in front of 2,000 spectators. In 1875 Harvard athlete Nathaniel Curtis challenged Yale's captain, William Arnold to a rugby-style game. Columbia, Princeton and Yale were persuaded by Harvard to play football according to the Rugby School code in 1876. These four colleges formed the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA), an organization that eventually expanded to become the "Ivy League." In fact, the governing body of all American intercollegiate varsity sports, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) traces its roots to the IFA and is thus a product of rugby rather than any of the sports it now governs.
By 1886 the Yale coach Walter Camp had modified rugby's rules in order to solve the problem of tackled players lying on the ball by introducing a series of four downs to gain ten yards; ironically in the same year the Rugby Football Union in England solved the same problem by requiring that tackled players release the ball. This is still one of the most fundamental differences between Rugby Union and American Football but one further modification, that of allowing one forward pass per down, was suggested by the Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne which, when accepted in 1905, gave rise to that distinctly American form of football.
Around the turn of the century American football was being frowned upon for its violence. Publication of graphic photographs of a harsh game between Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania caused a stir; President Theodore Roosevelt was forced to insist upon reform or abolition of the game. During this period of uncertainty, rugby made a brief but important reappearance in many colleges, most notably at the University of California and at Stanford. It was Stanford that supplied most of the players to the two US Olympic rugby teams (1920 and 1924), along with Santa Clara University and the University of California, who claimed fame by winning both gold medals. As 1924 was the last time the Olympic Games staged a rugby competition, this made the USA the defending Olympic champions when rugby was re-introduced after almost a century at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
In 1934, there was only one official rugby body in the United States, the Eastern Rugby Union, with a total of 9 member teams. By 1950, there were 30 clubs in the US, existing only in small pockets on the East and West Coasts.
It was not until the mid-1960s that rugby began to re-appear with regular fixtures and competitions; the game suited the mildly anarchistic temperament of American College students of the period; it required minimal costs for the individual, the style of the game provided constant action, there was an emphasis on enjoyment rather than winning because rugby was not part of the now rigidly institutionalized athletic system that American Universities had developed. The formation of the United States of America Rugby Football Union (USARFU, now USA Rugby) in 1976 was a major organizational milestone for the sport in the US, and by 1980 there were over 1,000 clubs nationwide.
In 2011, there were 2,433 clubs in the United States with more than 88,000 registered players, approximately 40% of which are college players (about three-quarters being male and one quarter female).
Formation of Division 1-A
Prior to the formation of Division 1-A, there had been some difficulty in determining how many teams each territory would send to the Sweet 16 tournament, as the relative strengths of the rugby teams in each territory fluctuated over time, and despite the disparity in the levels of rugby, it was politically difficult to deny a union any playoff bids, even though the team that came third or fourth in a more powerful territory might be a better side. Further problems occurred because of the different competitive seasons across the continent; in the East the league season is played in the fall while in the South and West spring is the primary season, so this structure was frequently open to criticism.
Because of these issues, and to raise the level of rugby in the consciousness of the American public, USA Rugby restructured Division 1 college rugby. In 2010, several of the top college teams agreed to form the College Premier League to begin play in spring 2011.USA Rugby forms a College Premier League The Roar March 17, 2010 USA Rugby and the top colleges believed that an elite level college rugby competition would make it easier to get college rugby onto TV and attract sponsors. D1-A Rugby secured sponsorships in 2012 with World Rugby Shop and Veloce. USA Rugby also believed that a higher level college competition would develop players to potentially play for the U.S. national team.USA Rugby College D1 Premier Schedules texasrugbyunion.com August 23, 2010
The governance of collegiate rugby was split and diverged in 2021. National Collegiate Rugby (NCR), formerly NSCRO, emerged as a rival by expanding beyond small colleges to include the higher divisions. The umbrella of the USA Rugby Collegiate Council includes College Rugby Association of America (CRAA), among several other organizations. In 2021, there were five men's DIA conferences plus independents under USA Rugby/CRAA. Two men's conferences that played DIA in 2019 joined NCR in 2021.
D1-A Championships results
Ed.YearChampionScoreRunners-upVenueCityTV CoverageSemi-finalists 1 2011 California 21–14 BYU Rio Tinto Stadium Sandy 11,000 ESPN3 / ESPNU Arkansas St. / Utah 2 2012 BYU 49–42 Arkansas St. Rio Tinto Stadium Sandy 8,733 ESPN3 Life University / St. Mary's 3 2013 Life University 16–14 St. Mary's UNCG Soccer Stadium Greensboro 4,000ESPN3 / ESPNU Arkansas St. / Cal Poly 4 2014Saint Mary's 21–6 Life University Steuber Rugby Stadium Palo Alto 4,000 USA Rugby TV Arkansas St. / Lindenwood 5 2015 Saint Mary's 30–24 Life University Fifth Third Bank Atlanta 3,100 ESPN3 Lindenwood / Davenport 6 2016 Life University 24–20 St. Mary's St. Mary's Stadium Moraga 2,000 Rugby Channel Lindenwood / Utah 7 2017 Saint Mary's 30–24 Life University St. Mary's Stadium Moraga 2,000 CBSSN BYU / Arizona 8 2018 Life University 60–5 California Stevens Stadium Santa Clara 4,000 CBSSN Penn State / Lindenwood 9 2019 Life University 29–26 California Stevens Stadium Santa Clara 4,000 CBSSN St. Mary's / Lindenwood 10 2022 Army 20–8 St. Mary's Aveva Stadium Houston Rugby Network Lindenwood / California 11 2023 Navy 28–22 California Aveva Stadium Houston Rugby Network Lindenwood / BYU 12 2024 Saint Mary's 26–22 Navy Aveva Stadium Houston Rugby Network BYU / Life University132025California55–38Life UniversityKuntz StadiumIndianapolisRugby NetworkSaint Mary's / Lindenwood142026California36–22NavyKuntz StadiumIndianapolisYouTubeSaint Mary's / Life University
Collegiate Championship results prior to D1-A Formation The earliest claims to a national title go back to the mid-1960s when Sports Illustrated Magazine started demonstrating an interest in collegiate rugby. During the 1965-1966 season, the University of Notre Dame won several cups and tournaments and, in the absence of a bona fide national championship, Sports Illustrated named them unofficial collegiate rugby champions. The next year, under the authority of USARFU, Notre Dame played a match on April 8, 1967 against California at Memorial Stadium for the unofficial national championship, again as a result of both teams being highly rated by Sports Illustrated; Cal won 37-3.
National Invitational Championship + School Year Champion Match Score Runner-up Ref. 1971–1972 Palmer College of Chiropractic 28–17 Navy 1972–1973 Palmer College of Chiropractic 13–4 Illinois 1973–1974 Texas A&M 12–0 LSU 1974–1975* UCLA 10–7 Santa Monica† Moss, Al (March 24, 1975). "UCLA Wins Monterey Rugby". San Francisco Chronicle, p.48 col.1–2 1975–1976* UCLA‡ 16–13 Old Puget Sound† 1976–1977 LSU 21–3 Palmer College of Chiropractic 1977–1978 Palmer College of Chiropractic 19–4 LSU 1978–1979 Palmer College of Chiropractic 24–6 Navy *The collegiate invitational championship tournament was not held in the 1974-1975 and 1975-1976 school years. Texas A&M planned to host this tournament in March, 1976, but it likely did not occur, as there are evidently no results or details. Some colleges competed against club sides in the separate Monterey National Championships, an annual event that was considered to be the sport's de facto national championship. †Santa Monica and Old Puget Sound were not college teams. ‡UCLA finished in 3rd place, the highest finish of any college team
National Collegiate Rugby Championship The first official National Collegiate Championship series began in 1980. Rugby in the United States is divided into territorial unions (the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Northeast, Pacific Coast, the South, Southern California, and the West). Each of these unions organized collegiate rugby into "Division One" and "Division Two" league competitions, generally with promotion and relegation between the divisions. Between 1980 and 2010 each Territory qualified Division One and Two teams for the Sweet 16 of a D1 and D2 National championship.
California was dominant in Division One for the 31 years that the competition was run in this format, winning 25 titles. Air Force won three titles; Harvard, San Diego State, and Brigham Young University each won one D1 national championship.