** EDITED ON THE BIG OVERSIGHT OF ACCIDENTLY PUTTING FBS INSTEAD OF FCS. Thanks tute79 for catching that!

Does this mean any conferences (CAA) breakup?

Big South champ will be playoff bound; FCS postseason to expand from 16 to 20 teams beginning 2010

The Football Championship Subdivision playoffs are expanding - and the Big South has an automatic invite to the dance.

Coastal Carolina athletics director Warren “Moose” Koegel told The Sun News on Friday that the NCAA has approved the selection committee’s proposal to expand the playoff field from 16 to 20 teams beginning in 2010.

Koegel is a member of the committee.

After the expansion, all conferences that meet the criteria of having six teams together for at least two seasons will receive automatic bids, according to Big South commissioner Kyle Kallander.

With the addition of Stony Brook this year, the Big South will meet the criteria and will receive an automatic bid as part of the expansion, barring changes in the conference.

“It’s good news for FCS football,” Kallander said. “More teams in the playoffs means more interest in the sport and in the regular season.

“FCS football has one of the smallest ratios of teams in the postseason.”

The FCS has 114 member schools eligible for postseason play. The expansion brings the percentage of teams that qualify for the postseason to 17.5.

By comparison, 19 percent of Division I men’s basketball teams qualify for the NCAA tournament and 53 percent of Football Bowl Subdivision teams play in bowl games.

It is the first expansion of the FCS playoffs since the playoffs grew to 16 teams in 1986.

In its history the Big South has sent just one team - Coastal Carolina in 2006 - to the playoffs. To qualify, Coastal - or any other Big South team - needed a near-perfect record to earn one of eight at-large berths in the previous format.

The new playoffs will feature four first-round games with 12 teams earning byes. Koegel said the first round will be moved up a week, slotted to begin before Thanksgiving.

Koegel said the number - 20 teams - is a compromise from the committee’s original desire to expand to 24 teams.

This article appeared on the Championship Subdivision News website on Friday, April 25, 2008.

Obviously the title of this thread should refer to FCS Playoffs (not FBS Playoffs, which we all wish for, but may never happen at this rate)....

CAA currently sponsors football for 12 teams (6 CAA teams + 6 guests - UMass, Rhode Island, Richmond of the A-10, Villanova of the BE, and Maine and New Hampshire of the AE). CAA has tow more football programs coming on line.... ODU and Georgia State. CAA Commissioner Yeager says there are no plans to eject any guest teams, so plan is to either have 14 football teams or see some guest teams leave voluntarily. NO SUCH PLANS appear to be in the works at present.

Here's the deal with expanding the FCS playoffs. Currently there are 8 conferences in FCS with an automatic qualifier (AQ).
Big Sky, Gateway, Southland, OVC, MEAC, SoCon, CAA, and Patriot. Ivy has been eligible to apply for an AQ for some time, but refuses for some strange (elitist ? I don't know) reason.
Southland is also eligible, however, they choose not to participate, and instead play a conference championship between their 2 divisions, which the NCAA does not sanction, and that would invalidate any Southland AQ.

The NEC has upgraded their football by adding more scholarships and applied for an AQ. The NCAA had no reason to deny them, so they were accepted.

The Big South will be at 6 and eligible once Presbyterian completes their transition from D-II. However, they pulled in Stony Brook to give them 6 for this interim period (through at least 2010), and they will be granted an AQ if they haven't already.

Because the NCAA runs the FCS Championship tourney, and because NCAA by-laws state that at least half of all bracket slots be reserved for AT-LARGE teams, adding AQ's #9 and #10 require adding AT-LARGE slots #9 and #10, as well. So the tourney will expand from 16 to 20 teams. This necessitates a new first round of "play-in games", as I will refer to them.
12 teams will receive BYES, and the lowest 8 will play 4 games the initial week to narrow the field to the current 16.

I fully expect that within another 5 years, the tourney will go to 24 - 8 first-round BYES, and 16 teams facing off to earn the other 8 quarter-final slots. A 24-team tourney can accommodate AQ's #11 and #12.
These may be needed if:
1) the Great West Football Conference grows to 6 teams
2) Southland gives up their conference championship and applies for an AQ
3) Pioneer / Ivy League apply for AQ's
4) Some CAA guest schools leave CAA football and start up an new league (perhaps sponsored by the American East Conference)... Maine, New Hampshire, UMass, Rhode Island, Stony Brook, Albany, Central Connecticut ??? that would be eliegible for an AQ in short order....

All of this is in play and some of these things may come to pass in the next few years. I would say that Item 3) is the LEAST likely...

Panther - thanks for fixing the title of the thread.

I now need to correct something I stated in the above post.

Namely:

The Southland Conferece has an FCS Playoff AQ, as I stated.

The SWAC (Southwest Athetic Conference - primarily HBCU's in the Texas / Arkansas / Gulf region) is the conference that is not (but could be) in the FCS Playoffs. They have 10 all-sports members and have a rivalry with the MEAC (the other HBCU conference in the FCS). The SWAC plays a conference championship game. The NCAA sanctions such games IF the conference has at least 12 members. The SWAC does not, so I believe this is what has prevented the NCAA from granting an AQ to the SWAC football champion.

So the Div. I FCS football conferences that do not currently have
AQ's (but could some day) are:

NEC and Big South (will gain an AQ with the upcoming playoff expansion)

1) Great West (GWFC)
2) SWAC
3) Ivy
4) Pioneer (non-scholarship, they used to kind of label themselves as D-1 AAA), and
5) perhaps a future start-up like American East football (which could conceivably come about if the bloated CAA were to spin off some teams).

Since last season, the MAAC dropped football.
St. Peter's dropped the sport.
Duquesne (a guest from the A-10) joined the NEC.
Marist joined the Pioneer Football League.
Iona is still in limbo (independent) but has been invited to join the Pioneer. If they are going to join the Pioneer, I would expect an announcement before the 2009 schedules have to be finalized. It seems like that is the only real home for them, but their budget must be miniscule, since they seem worried about the cost of having to travel to 5 road games, some of which are more than a bus ride....

The SWAC issue is a bit more simple. They don't find much value in participating as also-rans in the FCS playoffs. Their top teams make a lot of money from their classics that interfere with the playoffs' schedule.

To expound on that a bit, the SWAC got peeved at having their top teams play on the road in the playoffs, despite sometimes having the superior record and ranking. I think a couple of these years they ended up going against Montana, who hardly ever has a road playoff game due to facilities and attendance. The SWAC decided in the early-to-mid '90s to take their ball and go home. Having a championship game as well as being able to move their marquis game (Southern-Grambling) to a later slot (meaning national TV exposure) ended up providing a nice bit of cash flow, so there has been very little movement to return to the I-AA playoffs (as I've stated multiple times previously, I refuse to use the F_S classifications).

As for the Ivy League, there is a bit of snobbery, as well as some hypocrisy, as every other sport fielded can enter the playoffs, but football can't... go figure.