NCAA Division I men's basketball alignment history
This is an NCAA Division I men's basketball alignment history. NCAA Division I is the highest level of competition in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the main governing body for U.S. college sports. For its first half-century of existence, the NCAA, founded in 1906 as the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States and adopting its current name in 1910, was a single body for competitive purposes. It did not split into separate divisions for competition and governance purposes until 1956, when it established the University Division and College Division . In 1973, the University Division was renamed Division I, while the College Division was split into today's Divisions II and III. However, the NCAA now considers the 1947–48 season as the first in which an equivalent to today's Division I existed in basketball. This particular season was the first in which the Associated Press published college basketball rankings, with the news service choosing to publish separate rankings for what it called "major colleges" and "small colleges". The AP's "major colleges" of 1948 correspond directly to today's Division I, with "small colleges" corresponding to today's Divisions  II and III. Teams in "italics" are no longer in Division I. Seasons are listed by the calendar year in which they end—for example, if a school's first Division I season was the 1991–92 school year, it will be listed as having begun in 1992. Dates used reflect when the school first became eligible for NCAA-sponsored postseason play—either the NCAA tournament for men or women, or the NIT since it was acquired by the NCAA in 2005. Note that it is possible for a school that is not eligible for NCAA postseason play to play in  a tournament not operated by that organization. For example, South Dakota State's women's team, which was not eligible to compete in the NCAA tournament until 2009, played in the WNIT, which is not an NCAA-controlled tournament, in 2007 and 2008. Similarly, the Omaha men's team played in the 2014 CIT before becoming eligible for NCAA postseason play in 2016. School names listed here reflect those in current use, which may or may not reflect names used in an institution's earlier history.