In the spring of 2021, Stephen F. Austin was searching for a home game to complete its upcoming football schedule.

A brand-new program from Oakland, California, offered to help.

The Lincoln University Oaklanders aren’t a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) school like the Lumberjacks. Nor are they affiliated with Division II, Division III, the NAIA, the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA), or any other football division or conference.

But because the Oaklanders are classified as a “countable opponent” under the NCAA’s rules, Stephen F. Austin confirmed the statistics from the game would still count. So, they played.

“When you’ve got to fill games, you’ve got to fill games,” Stephen F. Austin athletic director Ryan Ivey explained.

The Oaklanders got bludgeoned in the game, 61-13, but they pocketed $50,000 for participating.

It was the first of 14 contests they’ve played against FCS teams over the past three years – a series of lopsided losses that have helped keep their threadbare program alive.

USA TODAY Sports research found that Lincoln is one of the few college football programs in the country with no ties to a governing body. And beyond the troubling allegations levied by current and former players and coaches about the program, there are questions about how teams like the Oaklanders are able to exist in the first place.

How can a school with no football facilities or access to federal financial aid money recruit former Division I football players, as Lincoln does? How can a team with meager financial resources still manage to play every game on the road, as Lincoln does? And how can a program with no oversight from the NCAA schedule games against FCS schools on a consistent basis?

Here’s a breakdown of how Lincoln, and other schools like it, stay alive at the bottom of college football’s ladder.

What is a ‘countable opponent?’

There are roughly 1,100 schools in the NCAA, spread across three divisions. But sometimes, usually out of necessity, those schools must go outside the NCAA to fill their schedules.

In an effort to fairly represent the statistics and results from those games, the NCAA established a set of criteria that opposing schools have to meet in order for the contest to count. Then, in 2015, it refined those rules after a series of athletic teams from dubious schools began appearing on NCAA schedules.

“Competition against these teams has led to inflated statistics and results, some of which we feel have compromised the integrity of our national statistics and records,” NCAA director of media coordination and statistics David Worlock wrote in a 2015 memo to membership.

Under the NCAA’s revised rules, the pool of countable opponents automatically includes the 333 schools in the NAIA and NCCAA, as well as about 100 others who meet baseline academic requirements. Each school must be a “four-year, degree-granting institution” that is accredited by a regional body for its sports team to qualify as a countable opponent.

So is Lincoln an accredited school?

Yes. Lincoln University is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges – though it does have some nontraditional quirks.

The school has historically catered to international students, who made up two-thirds of its undergraduate student population as recently as 2015. And it also has a substantial number of international faculty. According to its website, nearly half of Lincoln’s professors earned at least one of their degrees outside of the U.S.

Ten faculty members studied in Russia, including the school’s president, Mikhail Brodsky, who earned multiple advanced degrees at a university in Moscow.

“My goal is to teach students. My goal is not athletics,” Brodsky, who also owns a Russian bathhouse in San Francisco, told USA TODAY Sports.

Its most recent academic catalog shows that it offers four types of business degrees with various concentrations, including marketing management and international business. It also offers degrees in one unrelated field: Diagnostic imaging.

Does Lincoln have sports teams besides football?

The Oaklanders football team is one of at least five athletic programs offered by the school. Lincoln also competes in men’s and women’s basketball and men’s and women’s soccer. According to its website, it has also hired coaches for baseball and softball, and lists track and field as a future offering.

The athletic department’s most recognizable figure is an NBA legend: Gary Payton, who coaches the men’s basketball team.

It is unclear if Lincoln’s athletic department follows the gender equity provisions of Title IX, because the school has not filed the athletics data that most of its peers are required to submit under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act.

Lincoln is not subject to the act because it is currently not eligible to participate in federal financial aid programs for students.

Wait, students at Lincoln can’t get financial aid?

Not at the moment.

An Education Department spokesperson told USA TODAY Sports in an email that the university lost its access to federal aid programs, more commonly known as FAFSA, in 2021 due to an accreditation issue. Specifically, Lincoln switched to its current accreditor while it was still under sanctions from its previous one.

The spokesperson said the Education Department later found that Lincoln had also not met state regulations, which would’ve made it ineligible for FAFSA even before it switched accreditors.

Brodsky said the university has applied to rejoin the federal aid program.

“I think it’s a crime that it’s taken from us because we didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

Multiple former football assistants said Lincoln’s financial aid status caused confusion among players about what sort of assistance would be available to them. The school’s head football coach and athletic director, Desmond Gumbs, said the terms of each player’s aid were clearly spelled out in the letter of intent each signed during the recruitment process.

Why did players go to Lincoln?

Many current and former players told USA TODAY Sports they went to Lincoln for the same reason: A chance to play against the Division I teams listed on its schedule.

In 2023, the Oaklanders played eight FCS teams, including four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The schedule was a focal point of Lincoln coaches’ recruiting pitches, players said. Some viewed it as a stepping stone.

“I was using the school to get the film I need to get out of there,” long snapper Etem Ulusan said.

Kicker/punter Steven Earnest said he was on the roster at Point University, an NAIA school, last year when a coach from Lincoln called during fall camp and offered him a scholarship.

He said he had never heard of Lincoln before but figured he was better off kicking against Division I schools than those in the NAIA.

“I’m pretty sure the schedule is what got everyone here,” Earnest said. “The only thing is I don’t really know how they get the schedule, because you saw, we get smoked every game.”

The Oaklanders went 0-12 last season and have won just three of their 33 games.

Why do NCAA programs schedule teams like Lincoln?

Ivey acknowledged that he didn’t know much about the Oaklanders when he scheduled them in 2021. All he knew is that they would fit a need. The Lumberjacks had just switched conferences and needed a home game on a specific date that would count toward their final record.

“The challenge with football scheduling is these games are scheduled years in advance,” Ivey said. “We needed to fill a game so we were able to fill it with them.”

Western Oregon athletic director Randi Lydum said Lincoln first reached out to her in 2021 about scheduling a game in the fall. She knew it would be a home game, and likely a win.

Located in Monmouth, Oregon, the Division II Wolves sometimes struggle to schedule home games because their home stadium is more than an hour’s drive south of Portland and they can’t offer a large payout to visiting teams, Lydum said. But they offered to pay for Lincoln’s bus trips to and from the Portland airport and one night of hotel rooms at a nearby Hampton Inn.

Western Oregon won that first game, 55-16, then scheduled Lincoln again in 2022 and 2023 – two more wins. It is the only school to schedule the Oaklanders every year.

“I guess it’s kind of the same thing as if some of the big D1 (teams) schedule schools like us,” Lydum said.

Contact the reporters at tschad@usatoday.com and jpeter@usatoday.com