FCS Championship Game heading for Monday Night Football

Saturday afternoon the NCAA announced that the 2025 Football Championship Subdivision championship game will be played on Monday, January 6, 2025 and will be televised by ESPN.

A time was not revealed for the title game. The game will be played at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas, the home of the championship game since the 2010 season.

“The opportunity presented itself with the College Football Playoff title game moving off that day.” said North Dakota State athletic director and FCS Playoff committee chair Matt Larsen.

“It also moves the game away from the NFL head to head and fans are used to Monday Night Football.”

It will mark the first time that the FCS title game will be played in primetime since the championship was moved to Frisco in 2010.

That year, Eastern Washington beat Delaware 20-19 on a Friday night in front of then-Vice President Joe Biden and 13,027 fans.

“Love the move to Monday.” said Big Sky commissioner Tom Wistricill.

“Trying to thread the needle over that weekend with the NFL and CFP games was going to be too difficult and we also don’t want to start the championship game at 10:00 am”.

The date also signifies for the upcoming season that there will be just two weeks between the semifinals and the championship game. The FCS title game has been linked to the College Football Playoff title game since 2014, with a three-week break between the semis and title game.

That is no more.

This upcoming season is a transformative one for college football.

2024 will mark the first year of an expanded College Football Playoff, which sees 12 teams make the tournament. That postseason will begin on December 20 and 21, with four games on campus sites, coinciding with the same weekend as the FCS semifinals.

Back in January, Montana athletic director Kent Haslam said that the title game was going to be locked into the first weekend after New Year’s. This decision affirms that with the game on a Monday night.

The CFP quarterfinal games will be played on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, with the semifinals slated for January 8 and 9, 2025.

Also of note, the NFL regular season ends on Sunday, January 5. The FCS title game will be the only game happening that night.

“Being on Monday night allows us to be THE football game on that night and showcase the great teams and players in FCS.” Wistrcill added.

For the last two seasons, the FCS title game has been played on a Sunday and gone up against the final Sunday of the NFL regular season. The trade-off was that the game was broadcast on national television on ABC.

The game produced solid ratings, 1.07 million viewers watched South Dakota State win its first national title beating North Dakota State in 2023. This year, 1.04 million people watched the Jackrabbits go back-to-back in their win over Montana.

The FCS title game peaked in January 2020, when 2.68 million people watched NDSU beat James Madison 28-20 in the final.

Sources tell WDAY Sports that the game will likely be a 6 p.m. central time kickoff for the title game. The City of Frisco is supportive of the game change, noting that fans will likely come into town on a Friday and spend the weekend in the city, much like fans come into a bowl game at the FBS level a few days early.

The news is a 180-degree turn from an announcement that came in January, when the NCAA and ESPN announced a new eight-year media rights deal. In that announcement, it guaranteed that the FCS Championship Game would air on ABC.

There are no plans now for a simulcast of the game airing on ABC. Last year, ABC simulcast Monday Night Football games because of the ongoing actors and writers strikes that were taking place in Hollywood.

ABC traditionally has popular programming on Monday nights, highlighted by The Bachelor.

Another source added on the day change: “The FCS commissioners and the playoff committee have been pushing for this for three to four years. We had been pushing for Friday night, when the CFP had Monday night, but once the CFP moved, then we said we would take either night.”

This is not a one-year trial for the FCS and ESPN. Sources confirm that the 2025 and 2026 title games will be played on a Monday night.