The 2025 preseason Stats Perform FCS Top 25 Poll has been released, and the North Dakota State Bison top the rankings.
North Dakota State, which won the FCS Championship last season, received 54 of the 56 first-place votes in the Stats Perform Top 25 Poll. The Bison are followed by the Montana State Bobcats (one first-place vote), South Dakota State Jackrabbits, South Dakota Coyotes (one first-place vote), and UIW Cardinals.
Top-ranked North Dakota State opens its 2025 campaign on the road against the The Citadel Bulldogs on Saturday, Aug. 30 at noon ET / 11:00am CT (ABC ND/Nexstar/ESPN+). Second-ranked South Dakota State opens its schedule on the same day at home against the Sacramento State Hornets, and the game will be streamed live by ESPN+ at 7:00pm ET / 6:00pm CT.
Listed below is the preseason FCS Coaches Poll and preseason Stats Perform Top 25 Poll (first place votes in parentheses).
1. North Dakota State (54)
2. Montana State (1)
3. South Dakota State
4. South Dakota (1)
5. UIW
6. Illinois State
7. Montana
8. UC Davis
9. Rhode Island
10. Tarleton State
11. Mercer
12. Idaho
13. Villanova
14. Lehigh
15. Sacramento State
16. Abilene Christian
17. Jackson State
18. Western Carolina
19. Northern Arizona
20. Southern Illinois
21. Tennessee Tech
22. Monmouth
23. Stephen F. Austin
24. Stony Brook
25. Richmond
Others receiving votes (schools listed on two or more ballots): Harvard 139, Southeast Missouri 127, Southern Utah 123, UT Martin 92, North Dakota 88, Eastern Kentucky 80, Chattanooga 69, ETSU 68, South Carolina State 35, New Hampshire 22, Tennessee State 21, Southeastern Louisiana 19, North Carolina Central 18, Youngstown State 16, Duquesne 2.
The real ONLY @NCAAD1Football Championship which Walks the NFL walk with a Playoff & regular season which build off each other.
Zero contractual-financial club Disconnect from a 10 Win season seeding you in the Playoff whether or not you’ve been a Clio award winning University brand seller since 1978.
what did I just read. What is this????? lol. were you drunk when you typed this???
It is a true playoff system. Each conference champ gets a bid, from the Big Sky, which says they will not restrict scholarships. That means Big Sky teams could have 105 scholarship players.
The zero scholarship Pioneer League champ gets into the playoffs. They’ve won a couple playoff games, but we know they’re not winning the title.
But at the FBS level, the American champ and the Sun Belt champ and the MAC champ could all finish 12-1 and guess what?
Only one gets in.
Not good.
Why not include C-USA in there too John, and the Mountain West and soon PAC?
You’re not serious that all these conferences should have an automatic qualifier. Really? What would, in your case, Ohio, Marshall and Army have brough to the table in last year’s playoff? Even if they went 12-1, as you suggest, Marshall, who lost to the national champion 49-14, so lets call that their and one, Army, who lost to Navy 31-13 and Ohio who lost to Syracuse 38-22 should have made the playoff if that was their lone defeat? Not exactly impressive results in any case and these were just the best of the losses for each team. If these conferences are going to go 12-1, they are doing it against competition that most of the teams that get into the playoffs are going to destroy like TCU did to Louisiana 34-3 in the New Mexico Bowl.
Look at the FCS playoff history and tell me a time when the national champion was a double-digit seed. Now, this isn’t exactly the same because they haven’t all been seeded every year, but the last (and only) one at my look was Massachusetts as an 11 seed in 1998. It doesn’t happen that much and if it does, the team comes from one of the larger conferences, not from the MAC. The top 15 in this poll could qualify for a bowl game playing in the MAC, that doesn’t mean they should have a playoff bid at that level.
@JM Yet in all other sports the smaller conference champs get an auto bid into their respective postseason tournaments. The point is if you have divisions outlined that encapsulate teams into their own space then shouldn’t all the conferences/schools in said division be granted the same equity in the postseason? Otherwise, why include those conferences in the first place within the division. Realistically, within the FBS we know this existing 130+ school arrangement is on borrowed time and may longer be an issue even a soon as the end of the decade for which conferences deserve an autobid.
And sadly, we know the G6 will never be granted all of its conference winners to receive an auto bid. Given the existing arrangement, the current G6 autobid is also completely determined by subjective rankings. As such, the G6 would be wise to adopt their own play-in type round robin or play-in tournament to grant the CFP auto-bid to atleast reduce the subjectivity of the bid and give themselves additional inventory of games that could generate more revenue for the conferences while also potentially including another game on a major network for national exposure.
When Div I-A was formed, most of these schools were in Div I-AA. No one forced them to move up, so if you’re looking for sympathy, you’ll get none from me.
The fact that you complain about subjectivity holds no water here either. At least we aren’t playing bowl games where the top 5 teams aren’t playing anyone in the top 10 and the champion is left up to a vote.
I outlined what you can do here before but those purest out there want to play 12 conference games and argue their flag is the biggest. No one wanted to hear about a 6 game season, but that’s the only way to do this. You can’t have college athletes playing 20 football games.
This isn’t basketball, you can’t play a 136 team tournament and quite honestly, the teams you are talking about would not be in any discussion for a playoff if they were allowed into a power conference. You have no argument to say Boise State was not the right representative into the playoffs last year, they were by far better than any other G5. They got handled in the playoff though, to my disappointment, as I do follow them some as a former Big Sky member.
You’re only kidding yourself if you believe any G5 should have been in the field in 2024 that wasn’t, but I don’t believe you do or you would have put a name out there. I gave plenty, all conference champions, and none of them had a resume worthy of the tournament.
The FCS didn’t start out much different, if you knew that history at all. Talk about a subjective selection, in 1978 there was a selectee for the tournament from the east (Massachusetts, 8-3 Yankee), west (Nevada-Reno, 10-1 Independent) and south (Jackson State, 10-1 SWAC) regions along with an at large bid (Florida A&M .10-1 Independent). The Big Sky, MEAC and Ohio Valley conferences were left out because of the regional set ups. Jackson State finished second in the SWAC but got the bid, I believe Grambling was on sanctions.
The point is, 2024 was the first year of the 12 team FBS playoff and it needs some work. You may be right, but P4 should be the ones to move along and figure out what they want. If you haven’t seen it from basketball, however, you’ll never get it. The last expansion of the basketball tournament from 64, 65, and up to 68 teams was not to put more smaller schools into the field. They added two more 16 seeds and two more 11 seeds in order to get 4 more P4 teams in. That’s all they are thinking about, they don’t want these other schools and teams like Butler and Gonzaga won’t ever win because it won’t be allowed.
That doesn’t mean we should not make the 12 team field the best teams and that does not include auto bids for the inferior MAC or Sun Belt and the rest of them.
John Furgele,
A researched Opinion with empirical data from past Trust 4 Conference College Football I nvitational Token Dependent Conferences Contestant.
I can agree with my Brain & my emotions with most of your points.
JM, Dan-ke for gracing fbschedules.com with your comments.
U present the Status Quo 2 each of us.
A contractual Monopoly Trust by the 64 Unis who have lobbied for n.c.a.a. Bylaws 2 be changed & which have been passed.
Implemented by the SEC-B18g10 under their own BCS, LLC Powers to keep the playoff access to their designated Pop 15 -20 Unis in their 2 conferences with some ACC, B16g12 access.
The College Football Playoff History on Wikipedia empirically lists the SEC-B18g10-ND-ACC-B16g12 Invites with the, sometimes, 1 Rep. from 67 Teams from the 6 under regions of the US.
Of course these Dependent conference Unis R weaker every year. They receive None of the exclusive financial $, legally garanteed $, social marketing $ as ‘the only mainstream Brands who should be invited to the playoff’ propaganda.
This year holds the same playoff Brand distribution as 2024.
Your emotional denial that 2024 ‘s awarding of 4 berths to the B18g10, 3 berths to the SEC, 3 to ND & the ACC, 1 to the B16g12 & 1 to the designated 67 Unis outside the Trust 4 won’t happen every year is laughable.
64 Unis with 11 berths vs 67 Unis with 1 berth is undeniably negatively discriminatory.
Cute.
Try posting in English just once.
I appreciate you highlighting this
Conference Breakdown as follows:
– BigSky 6
– MVC 5
– CAA 4
– UAC 2
– Southland 2
– SoCon 2
– Patriot 2
– OVC 1
– SWAC 1
The Ivy League has one too.
Also, your numbers total to 25 as you have them.
Sorry on that one Rev, I thought you were making a playoff breakdown, not a poll breakdown.
I agree we should play the season first. LOL