OPINION: FCS’ Diversity Isn’t Reflected In Their Top 25 Ballots, and That’s a Problem.

BETHLEHEM, PA – This week, fans, sportswriters and media organizations are rolling out their Top 25s for Division I – Football Championship Subdivision.

They will all mean well. They will make an attempt to see, from their eyes, who they think the Top 25 teams are and who the preseason all-America teams are.

So will I. I will go ahead and pick my FCS Top 25. I will do so after doing a thorough study of the Patriot League, their out-of-conference schedules, their rosters, and perhaps using my memory of returning players of CAA, Missouri Valley and Big Sky teams I happened to catch in my travels last fall.

That’s exactly the problem.

I’m just like everyone else. I know my backyard, the Patriot League, very well. I try to get a decent background on Patriot League opponents, and the occasional national game of interest. I watched a fair amount of the FCS Playoffs last fall and winter, and Google searches are useful to determine preseason all-Conference teams, returning starters and the like.

But there is this huge diversity of teams lumped in FCS that I’m less familiar with – and that no FCS watcher is familiar with. And that’s exactly the problem.

FCS Origins

It’s not the fault of anyone that the FCS has the richest diversity of football programs in all of college sports.

That diversity is what both makes the subdivision great, and a bear to cover.

In no other division of football would you see a Mississippi Valley State (the tiniest school in the SWAC), a Butler (a non-scholarship program from Indiana), a Bucknell (a private University in central Pennsylvania with about 4,000 undergraduates) and a Stony Brook (a public University with about 17,500 undergraduates).

All of these schools had different paths to FCS football.

FCS came about in 1978 when a group of schools from power football programs formed a cartel inside the NCAA called the CFA and helped the formation of NCAA divisions (I,II, III) and subdivisions (what would ultimately become FCS and FBS). Broadly speaking, any school not looking like them, or favored by them, was ultimately forced to compete in what was then called Division I-AA, later renamed as Football Championship Subdivision, of FCS.

I-AA football ended up becoming a popular spot for institutions that wanted to compete in Division I for basketball, and wanted to field a football team, in large part to continue traditional football Rivalries.

Though there were loads of different reasons for individual schools choosing to compete at the FCS level over the years, in practice that meant that some schools offered no scholarships, some schools offered fewer that the maximum allowed number of equivalent scholarships (63), and some offered the maximum number allowed.

Over the years some schools had tiny stadiums that hosted no more than 2,000 paid attendees, and others had relative 30,000+ seat palaces meant to communicate to the FBS that they didn’t want to really compete in FCS at all.

This diversity is what makes FCS great – a unique construct in college athletics. Nowhere else is their such diversity in mission and such a range of football programs.

The trouble is that the people writing about the sport see that diversity less and less – and I include myself in that description.

I’d love to enjoy more HBCU football. I’d love it if Patriot League schools schedule more football teams from the MEAC and even further afield from the SWAC. I have gone to HBCU Classic games in the past and have attended a game at Bethune-Cookman’s Municipal Stadium, a treasured memory. But when these games don’t happen, I don’t get a chance to scout those teams, or get a chance to even take a close look at what those programs or conference races are about.

And when I don’t watch those games or programs, I’m just guessing at where they belong in the Top 25, and I’d bet most voters out there are doing the exact same thing. Some don’t bother to make any sort of effort to see who the best SWAC teams are, and why.

The same thing happens to Ivy League programs nationally.

As a Patriot League fan, I make it my business to know who Princeton’s starting quarterback is and who Yale’s returning starters are, because they’re going to be playing Patriot League schools. However, I can’t begrudge a fan of a SoCon team for not researching an Ivy League team’s relative worth in their conference, because for a SoCon fan whose primary concerns are the SoCon title and the FCS Playoffs, the Ivy League title race doesn’t register at all. (The Ivy League chooses to have their teams not compete in the FCS Playoffs.)

This goes to the heart of the issue (and challenge) of determining an FCS Top 25.

FCS: One Championship, But Three Titles

At the national level, there are media organizations that attempt to cover FCS football at a national level, like Sam Herder at Hero Sports and Craig Haley at FCS STATS. Their voices are important at the national level and they’re good at what they do, but inherently their job is near impossible, thanks to what FCS is.

The not-so-secret flaw of national coverage is its hype and focus on one “championship” over the others – the FCS National Championship.

Every FCS program in a conference has on their goal list this upcoming season a conference championship. And the vast majority have as a goal to make it to the FCS Playoffs.

But not all of them.

The Ivy League chooses to not participate in the FCS Playoffs. I don’t agree with their reasoning, but it is their prerogative, and thus their voice gets lost in the national conversation – even though the Ivy League schools are one of the top conferences in terms of having their players reach the NFL.

This means the Ivy League focus is first and foremost the Ivy League Conference Championship. Ivy League fans don’t have much incentive to study the relative worth of the other schools in the subdivision. If Stephen F. Austin doesn’t play Columbia, there’s no need for any Columbia fan to engage with the schools of the Southland (or to understand that Stephen F. Austin returns to the Southland this season after several years in an alliance called the UAC).

Similarly, the SWAC sends its divisional champions to the FCS Championship Game, and the MEAC sends its champion to the Celebration Bowl, whom most in the HBCU world consider the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Division I National Championship. This doesn’t technically mean the MEAC and SWAC chooses not to participate in the FCS Playoffs, but it does mean that the teams that perform the best during the regular season don’t participate. The SWAC, too, is one of the top FCS conferences that supply the NFL with talent.

What this means in reality is that those that cover the MEAC and SWAC cover the world of HBCUs – which also include a significant number of Division II schools like Morehouse and Winston-Salem State – and don’t really choose to learn more about Morehead State and North Dakota State.

And who can blame them? Those covering the SWAC rightfully are looking at their athletes, many of them NFL caliber, and the goals of the MEAC and SWAC teams, which is winning the SWAC Championship and winning the Celebration Bowl. For better or worse, the FCS Playoffs register a distant third in terms of their interests – or fourth, depending on how much they are into the marching band culture at these schools.

Similarly, why would a sportswriter covering Harvard engage about, say, Montana State’s prospects in the Big Sky? The Crimson don’t play the Bobcats, and whether the Bobcats win or lose, it doesn’t impact Harvard’s season at all, and vice versa.

Out Of Conference

Some of these issues are structural in nature, and unique to FCS. But the FCS and perhaps ESPN could do a much better job showcasing the diversity of FCS, especially during the early season.

ESPN currently sponsors the FCS Kickoff Classic at the Cramton Bowl and the MEAC/SWAC Challenge Sunday opening weekend. Why not invite all the FCS conference champions of the prior year to play on ESPN in Week 0 or Week 1, playing out-of-market teams?

It would make last season’s conference championships extra meaningful and give extra exposure on ESPN’s flagship. They could be rematches of thrilling FCS playoff games from the prior year, or dream matchups that people rarely would get to see.

Converting the FCS Kickoff Classic would be easy, as would the MEAC/SWAC Challenge, both already with ESPN slots and host cities. With more love and care, the matchups wouldn’t just be nearby state schools playing each other yet again, but could highlight FCS’ diversity. Wouldn’t Lafayette/Montana State be an interesting matchup, or Florida A&M/Austin Peay?

Better yet, these types of games would improve people’s FCS Top 25 ballots. I can guarantee you more people would learn about Florida A&M playing Austin Peay in Week 0, or Yale playing South Dakota State, or Furman playing North Carolina Central.

More than ever FCS needs to highlight their differences from FCS, Division II or anything else, and diverse scheduling like this at this level could be a real game changer. If FCS wants to feel more like a happy family, with everyone in the same boat, all three championships will have to come together like this to promote the subdivision.

Until then, our FCS Top 25s will all be separate and imperfect.