The top level of college golf, NCAA Division I, has over 300 men’s teams and over 250 women’s teams across the US, separated into conferences.
That ensures there is strong regional competition between universities, which helps create healthy rivalries, streamlined scheduling, and, crucially, a pathway to the NCAA Division I Championship, with each conference champion team awarded an automatic spot in NCAA Regionals.
Not surprisingly, each conference generally includes universities from the same geographical region, and they frequently compete against each other (as well as universities from other conferences) before a conference champion is crowned.
Some conferences have particularly strong reputations due to several factors, including the history of the universities in the conference, geographic location and facilities, as well as the top players who have emerged from them.
As its name suggests, the Pacific-12 Conference (or Pac-12 as it is better known) encompasses colleges located towards the west of the US, including the renowned Stanford, where players including Tiger Woods and Rose Zhang played, Arizona State, where Phil Mickelson enjoyed a record-breaking college career and UCLA, which laid the foundations for the careers of players including Patrick Cantlay, Lucas Glover and Lilia Vu.
Another big conference is the Southeastern Conference (or SEC), with colleges such as the University of Texas, which produced Scottie Scheffler, and Auburn, who won the 2024 NCAA Men’s Division I Championship.
Scottie Scheffler played for SEC school the University of Texas
Elsewhere, renowned colleges including Wake Forest, Clemson and Georgia Tech are part of the Atlantic Coast Conference, while the Big Ten Conference has revered schools including Ohio State, the University of Illinois and Northwestern.
They're just some of the biggest conferences in NCAA Division I, but there are over two dozen more. Here is the list.
NCAA Division I Conferences
- Atlantic 10 Conference
- Atlantic Coast Conference
- American Athletic Conference
- Atlantic Sun Conference
- Big 10 Conference
- Big 12 Conference
- Big East Conference
- Big Sky Conference
- Big South Conference
- Big West Conference
- Colonial Athletic Association
- Conference USA
- Horizon League
- Ivy League
- Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference
- Mid-American Conference
- Missouri Valley Conference
- Mountain West Conference
- Northeast Conference
- Ohio Valley Conference
- Pac-12 Conference
- Patriot League
- Southeastern Conference
- Southern Conference
- Southland Conference
- Southwestern Athletic Conference
- Summit League Conference
- Sun Belt Conference
- West Coast Conference
- Western Athletic Conference
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