FCS Playoffs to expand seeding format for the 2024 postseason

There is also a major change coming to the Football Championship Subdivision’s postseason as well.

Beginning this coming fall, the postseason field of 24 teams will be seeded 1-16, after the NCAA Board of Governors signed off on a proposal that came from the NCAA Finance Commitee.

“This change will allow the tournament to be much more of a “national” tournament and will no longer be regionally based.” said North Dakota State athletic director and incumbent FCS Playoff Committee Chairman Matt Larsen.

The change will be immediate to fans of the FCS. When the playoff field expanded to 24 teams in 2013, the top eight teams were seeded and received byes in the first round of the tournament.

The remaining 16 teams then were put into a pot with the highest bid usually receiving the home game during Thanksgiving weekend. That process seemed to go sideways in the fall of 2022, when the University of North Dakota put in a higher bid, but was not awarded a home game and instead had to travel to Weber State University.

“You look at some of the TV ratings in recent years and they have been really impressive.” said UND head coach Bubba Schweigert. “It’s just great to see there was a response to what the coaches wanted to make it more of a national tournament.”

The tournament has been plagued in recent years because of the NCAA’s rule on regionalization for the playoffs. Teams within 400 miles of one another would be forced to bus and would likely be paired up in the first or second rounds.

NDSU ran into this numerous times with rival South Dakota State over the last decade. The Bison and Jackrabbits met in the second round or quarterfinals three times in a five-year stretch (2012, 2014 and 2016).

The Bison were the top seed two of those years, while SDSU was a top-ten ranked team. Under a bracket that had to put together with regionalization in mind, those schools were forced to play early on.

Northern Iowa also ran into this, twice over having to face South Dakota State early in the tournament. The Panthers are usually considered one of the top at-large teams to receive a bid, but because of geography were sent to Brookings to face the Jackrabbits because it’s a bus trip.

The Missouri Valley Football Conference isn’t alone in seeing its top teams get pitted against each other early on in the tournament.

The Big Sky was also a victim of their success. In 2019, Montana and Weber State were seeded sixth and third respectively and had to face each other in the quarterfinal round. In 2021, Eastern Washington was placed in the same bracket with Montana, and had to go to Missoula to face the Grizzlies in the second round.

This past fall may have been the most egregious case for national seeding. NDSU was an unseeded team and was placed in the same bracket with sixth-seeded Montana State, a team that was contending for a top two seed until the final weekend of the season.

There was a strong case that the Bison should have been seeded in the top eight and were just left out.

So in theory, you had the number nine seed facing the number six seed in the second round. Those two teams shouldn’t have played until the quarterfinals at the earliest and it diminished the tournament that one of those teams was out before the quarterfinal round.

Under the expanded seeding format the tournament will likely look like this:

“Seeding 16 teams will help reward team performances in the regular season. It will remove the bidding process as part of the host selection in most cases.” Larsen said.

One of the reasons why the seeding happened for this year is thanks to the NCAA’s new television deal. In January, the NCAA announced an eight-year, $920 million contract to televise 40 college championships, including the FCS playoffs.

Earlier this month, the FCS announced that the 2025 title game will be moving to a Monday night and will be televised on ESPN.

The 2024 FCS Selection Show will be on Nov. 24. The first round games will be played on Nov. 30, with the second round scheduled for Dec. 7.

The quarterfinals would be the following weekend on December 13 and 14, with the semifinals slated for December 20 and 21.

The FCS Championship Game will be played Monday, January 6, 2025 at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas.