Ivy League football teams will have a chance to compete for the FCS national title starting in 2025.
The league announced Wednesday that its teams would be eligible for the FCS playoffs next season. The Ivy League has banned teams from the postseason for decades dating back to a 1945 agreement that banned athletic scholarships for football players.
“The Ivy League prides itself on a storied tradition of impact, influence and competitive success throughout the history of college football. We now look ahead to a new chapter of success and to further enhancing the student-athlete experience with our participation in the NCAA FCS playoffs,” Ivy League Executive Director Robin Harris said in a statement. “I want to commend the students on our SAAC for their thoughtful and thorough proposal as well as their commitment to the league’s legislative process.”
Harvard tied with Dartmouth and Columbia atop the conference at 5-2 this season, but scored head-to-head wins over both teams. Officially, the Ivy League recognized all three teams as co-champions.
As part of the postseason arrangement, the winner of the conference will receive an automatic bid to the 24-team FCS playoffs. In its release, the league said that it “will develop tiebreakers to determine how its automatic qualifier will be awarded when there are co-champions in the future.”
The addition of an automatic bid to the FCS playoffs for the Ivy League will leave the MEAC and SWAC as the only two FCS conferences that don’t get automatic bids to the playoffs.
However, the two champions of those leagues meet in the Celebration Bowl in Atlanta every year. Jackson State beat South Carolina State 28-7 on Saturday for its first Celebration Bowl title.
The FCS playoffs currently award 10 automatic bids for conference winners and the field is filled out with 14 at-large teams. The top four seeds — Montana State, North Dakota State, South Dakota State and South Dakota — are in the semifinals as South Dakota visits top seed Montana State and SDSU plays at NDSU on Saturday. The winners of those two games will play each other on Jan. 6 for the national title.
