When NC State's football team began playing in 1892, conferences scarcely existed in college football, especially in the South, where the sport was in its infancy. The country's first football conferences were found in the North, the first being the Triangular Football League, which began in 1885. By the early 1890s, more and more schools and colleges were forming local groups to help organize the rules of competition and determine regional champions. North Carolina created a regional football conference of her own not too long after, forming the North Carolina Inter-Collegiate Foot-ball Association on November 29th, 1888. The formative meeting invited hosted representatives of North Carolina, Trinity (now Duke), and Wake Forest; Davidson College, who had been fielding a small club team at the time, was reportedly invited but barred from attending by their own faculty. After 18 unsuccessful attempts to vote on leadership, names were drawn from a hat.

The NCICFA was mostly modeled after national football conferences and associations, but was unique in the fact that it was almost entirely student-led, with students doing everything from settling team disputes to refereeing; school faculty was only involved in the verification of students as members of a given school. After playing a few games for the late winter of 1888 and the early spring of 1889, and a "regular" winter season in 1889, the league was instantly embroiled with bitter arguments over professionalism, player safety, and the title of league champion after both seasons resulted in games with disputed victories and a three-way tie for first. The Association was abandoned by Wake Forest first, on March 8th, 1889, and the league folded by 1890, before A&M could ever join (Jim L. Sumner, pp. 263-286).

In December 1894, the first major Southern football conference was formed in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA). Founding members resided mostly in the Deep South and included powerhouses of the time such as Sewanee, Georgia, and Vanderbilt. North Carolina, football powerhouse of the Carolinas at the time, and neighboring rival to the North, Virginia, initially intended to join for the 1895 season, but quickly withdrew, claiming that the SIAA's ban on playing against teams who had professionals, post-grad players, or even adults would hinder their ability to practice and play a full season of games (The Tar Heel, January 26th, 1899, p. 2). A&M, as best as I can find, did not initially ever consider joining the SIAA, likely for similar reasons, in addition to the fact that the team was too small and inexperienced, and would likely not have been wanted as a member at the time.

The Farmers remained independent from their first game in 1892 until late in 1899, after the close of the football season, when A&M, in addition most of the other colleges preperatory schools, joined the North Carolina Athletics Association. The Farmers, however, decided to leave the NC Athletics Association just before the start of the 1902 football season, after being a member for just two years. The NC Athletic Association folded some time after the summer of 1903 shortly after A&M and the sole remaining member college who fielded football, Trinity, applied to join the SIAA.