College Premier Division
| Division 1-A Rugby | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Sport | Rugby union |
| Formerly known as | College Premier Division |
| Instituted | 2010 |
| Inaugural season | 2011 |
| Number of teams | 45 |
| Country | United States (USA Rugby) |
| Holders | Life University (2016) |
| Most titles | California (26 at highest level, 1 CPD titles) |
| Website | http://www.usarugby.org/ |
| Broadcast partner | CBSSN |
Division 1-A Rugby (formerly known as the College Premier Division) is the highest level of college rugby within the United States and is administered by USA Rugby. Division 1-A rugby is modeled after NCAA athletic competitions, with the 45 D1-A rugby schools divided into seven conferences, the East, Mid-South, Western, California, Big Ten Universities, the Red River Conference, and the PAC. 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.
D1-A Rugby secured sponsorships in 2012 with World Rugby Shop and Veloce.
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.
A group of British Army officers organized a game of rugby against the students of McGill University (Montreal, 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 being a game of rugby. After this game, the Harvard students also decided to adopt rugby, making them the first American institution to do so. Columbia, Princeton and Yale were persuaded by Harvard to play football according to the Rugby School code in 1876, these four colleges thus 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.
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