Missouri Valley Football Conference


The Missouri Valley Football Conference, formerly the Gateway Football Conference, is a collegiate NCAA conferences|athletic conference] which operates in the Midwestern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I Football Championship Subdivision as a football-only conference.
WWW Official Site

History

The Missouri Valley Football Conference has a complex history that involves three other conferences:
In 1985, the MVC stopped sponsoring football. At that time, the two remaining I-AA members from the MVC joined Eastern Illinois, Northern Iowa, Southwest Missouri State, and Western Illinois from the AMCU and together became a football conference under 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 for football in 1996, 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 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 all-sports members. The conferences continue to share the "Missouri Valley" name, and space in the same building in St. Louis, but remained separate administratively until 2025, and are still separate legal entities.
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 II North Central Conference that NDSU and SDSU left in 2004–05.
On April 4, 2022, Murray State University, who had previously been announced as a new MVC member effective in July 2022, joined the MVFC in 2023, bringing the league up to a record high of 12 active members. This was short-lived however, as on May 12, 2023, founding member Western Illinois announced that they would be leaving the MVFC and their full time conference, the Summit League, for the Ohio Valley Conference beginning in fall 2023 and 2024. They would leave the Summit beginning in fall 2023, and would leave the Valley after the conclusion of the 2023 football season. Almost exactly a year after that, on May 10, 2024, fellow founding member Missouri State announced that they accepted an invitation to join Conference USA in all sports, beginning with the 2025-26 academic year.
On May 5, 2025, the conference announced a new governance structure that took effect on July 1, 2025 following longtime commissioner Patty Viverito's retirement on June 30. The new structure placed current Missouri Valley Conference commissioner Jeff Jackson as the new MVFC commissioner and current Summit League commissioner Josh Fenton as an executive advisor to the conference. This move marked the conference's only leadership change in its 40-year history. With this move, the MVFC is now formally connected to both primary conferences for 9 of the 10 conference members.

Member schools

Membership timeline


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id:Full value:rgb # Use this color to denote a team that is a current member
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bar:1 color:AssocF from:1985 till:1996 text:Eastern Illinois
bar:1 color:OtherC1 from:1996 till:2023 text:OVC
bar:1 color:OtherC2 from:2023 till:end text:OVC-Big South
bar:2 color:AssocOS from:1985 till:1986 text:Illinois State
bar:2 color:Full from:1986 till:end
bar:3 color:Full from:1985 till:end text:Northern Iowa
bar:4 color:AssocOS from:1985 till:1986 text:Southern Illinois
bar:4 color:Full from:1986 till:end
bar:5 color:AssocF from:1985 till:2005 text:Southwest Missouri State
bar:5 color:AssocF from:2005 till:2025 text:Missouri State
bar:5 color:OtherC1 from:2025 till:end text:C-USA
bar:6 color:AssocF from:1985 till:2024 text:Western Illinois
bar:6 color:OtherC1 from:2024 till:end text:OVC-Big South
bar:7 color:Full from:1986 till:end text:Indiana State
bar:8 color:Full from:1997 till:end text:Youngstown State
bar:9 color:AssocF from:2001 till:2007 text:Western Kentucky
bar:9 color:OtherC1 from:2007 till:2008 text:FCS Ind.
bar:9 color:OtherC2 shift:25 from:2008 till:2009 text:FBS Ind.
bar:9 color:OtherC1 shift:50 from:2009 till:2014 text:Sun Belt
bar:9 color:OtherC2 from:2014 till:end text:C-USA
bar:10 color:Full from:2008 till:end text:North Dakota State
bar:11 color:Full from:2008 till:end text:South Dakota State
bar:12 color:Full from:2012 till:end text:South Dakota
bar:13 color:Full from:2020 till:end text:North Dakota
bar:14 shift: color:Full from:2023 till:end text:Murray State
bar:N color:powderblue from:1985 till:1992 text:Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference
bar:N color:yellow from:1992 till:2008 shift:35 text:Gateway Football Conference
bar:N color:pink from:2008 till:end text:Missouri Valley Football Conference
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Conference champions

12 different teams have won MVFC championships. The most recent champion is North Dakota State, their 12th. The school with the most championships is Northern Iowa, with 16.

NCAA Football Championship Subdivision national championships

♯ ''Now a member of the Football Bowl Subdivision.''

Records

Overall winning streaks

† ''FCS Record''

Consecutive conference wins

  1. North Dakota State, 19
  2. South Dakota State, 19
  3. North Dakota State, 18