Great Lakes Football Conference

Great Lakes Football Conference

Conference	NCAA
Founded	2006
Ceased	2011
Commissioner	Bill Massoels
Sports fielded	1 (football) men's: 1
Division	Division II
No. of teams	6 (charter), 7 (total)
Headquarters	Rensselaer, Indiana
Region	Central United States

The Great Lakes Football Conference (GLFC) was a football-only conference that competed in NCAA Division II for six seasons (2006 through 2011). Bill Massoels, Athletic Director at St. Joseph's College, served as its commissioner, and the league was headquartered at the college in Rensselaer, Indiana. St. Joseph's was also the catalyst of a previous failed attempt to form a conference of the same name in the late 1990s.

Public rumors of the GLFC's formation dated from January 2006.^[1] By that April, a schedule for the 2006 season had been drafted, including six founding members: Kentucky Wesleyan College, Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T, then known as Missouri-Rolla), Lincoln University of Missouri, Central State University, Tiffin University, and St. Joseph's. Of the six schools, three (Kentucky Wesleyan, Missouri-Rolla, and St. Joseph's) were full members of the Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC), while Lincoln was a full member of the Heartland Conference. Central State and Tiffin were Division II independents.^[2]

The GLFC was intended as a football home for schools from conferences such as the GLVC and Heartland, which did not sponsor the sport. Tiffin left the conference after the 2007 season, to accept an offer of full membership from the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC). Lincoln left after the 2009 season, when it moved its full membership from the non-football Heartland Conference to the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA). Central State likewise left after the 2009 season, to return to independent status in football. Independent Urbana University joined the GLFC in 2010,^[3] giving the league four members for its last two seasons.

No GLFC team ever qualified for the NCAA Division II Football Championship playoffs. Before leaving to join the GLIAC, Tiffin posted the best overall season records, 10-1 in 2006 (with a final #22 ranking in the AFCA Coaches Poll) and 9-2 in 2007.

Despite its small membership, the GLFC only played a full round-robin schedule in three of its six seasons (2007, 2010, and 2011). William Jewell College, a Division II football independent for the 2011 season, played all four GLFC members that year but was never a member of the conference.

In January 2010, the GLVC established a timeline to begin sponsoring football in the fall of 2012. The plan was announced shortly after William Jewell was admitted to the GLVC, giving it the requisite minimum of six football playing members. Thus the GLFC's last two campaigns were lame-duck seasons, with the demise of the league already a certainty. The transition to GLVC football came not just for Kentucky Wesleyan, Missouri S&T, and St. Joseph's, but also for Urbana, which the GLVC admitted in October 2010 as an associate member in the sport. With all four members of the 2011 GLFC joining the GLVC for 2012, the Great Lakes Football Conference was effectively (though only unofficially) absorbed by the Great Lakes Valley Conference. Two other former members of the GLFC also eventually played football in the GLVC: Central State as an associate member (in 2012 only), and Lincoln as both an associate member (2014 through 2018) and full member (effective 2024).

On October 29, 2011, Urbana won the last GLFC championship with a 42-7 victory over Missouri S&T.^[4]