2024-25 FCS Playoff Projections


The road to Frisco, the home of the 2024-2025 FCS National Championship game, starts on November 24th, 2023 with the Selection Show. On that day, twenty-four teams will be given the opportunity to work their way through the bracket to win a National Championship. Here, we attempt to project the FCS Playoff bracket to find out who those teams are. Of the fourteen FCS conferences, nine are awarded automatic bids as conference champions. One auto-bid is a combination of the Big South and Ohio Valley Conferences. The other fourteen teams come from an at at-large pool of the best of the rest non-conference champions.

For more reading, see our FCS College Football Ratings and our CFB game predictions.

We’ve analyzed the teams and understand how the selection process works, so below is our projected FCS Playoff field for the year. In preseason, this list is mostly a crap-shoot, however, as more games are played we will be able to more accurately predict where the FCS teams will land in the bracket.

Our FCS Playoff Bracket attempts to analyze everything that the selection committee would look at. This includes record, conference record, conference championships, strength of schedules, big wins, RPI and more. Remember, this list is not who we think should make the tournament, but who we think the committee will select to make the tournament.

Final: Updated on 11/24/2024 @ 8:35am EST.

FCS Playoff Bracket Projection

Seed Team Record Conference
1 Montana St 12-0 Big Sky
16 Abilene Chr 8-4 United
TN Martin 8-4 Big South-OVC
8 Richmond 10-2 Colonial
9 Rhode Island 10-2 Colonial
Central Conn 7-5 Northeast
5 South Dakota 9-2 Missouri Valley
12 Villanova 9-3 Colonial
Lehigh 8-3 Patriot
4 UC Davis 10-2 Big Sky
13 Illinois St 9-3 Missouri Valley
Tennessee St 9-3 Big South-OVC
3 N Dakota St 10-2 Missouri Valley
14 Tarleton St 9-3 United
Northern Arizona 8-4 Big Sky
6 Idaho 9-3 Big Sky
11 Montana 8-4 Big Sky
New Hampshire 8-4 Colonial
2 S Dakota St 10-2 Missouri Valley
15 SE Missouri St 9-3 Big South-OVC
E Kentucky 8-4 United
7 Incarnate Word 10-2 Southland
10 Mercer 10-2 Southern
Drake 8-2 Pioneer

Just missing the cut, here are our last four out…

Seed Team Record Conference
L1 Southern Utah 7-5 United
L2 Chattanooga 7-5 Southern
L3 Stony Brook 8-4 Colonial
L4 W Carolina 7-5 Southern

FCS Projected Automatic Bids

As mentioned above, there are ten teams that are awarded automatic bids due to being a conference champion. In both the SWAC and MEAC, the conference champions play in the Celebration Bowl. However, teams that are not winners of those conferences are still eligible to make the FCS Playoff. The Ivy League is the only FCS conference that completely sits out of the playoff.

Conference Projected Bids Projected Auto Bid
Big Sky 5 Montana St
Big South-OVC 3 SE Missouri St
Colonial 4 Richmond
FCS Independents 0 No Auto Bid
Missouri Valley 4 S Dakota St
Northeast 1 Central Conn
Patriot 1 Lehigh
Pioneer 1 Drake
Southern 1 Mercer
Southland 1 Incarnate Word
Southwestern Athletic 0 No Auto Bid
Mid-Eastern Athletic  0 No Auto Bid
United 3 Abilene Chr
Ivy League 0 No Auto Bid