Why the FCS Is a Better College Football Product Than the FBS
Why Bigger Budgets, Bigger Brands and Bigger Stadiums Don’t Always Mean Better College Football
College football at its highest level has never been more popular. The television contracts are enormous, stadiums are packed every Saturday, and the College Football Playoff has turned December and January into a national spectacle.
But bigger doesn't always mean better.
If we're talking strictly about which level provides the better college football product, give me the FCS over the FBS.
And yes, this is entirely subjective.
The FBS has the bigger names, bigger budgets, and bigger television audiences. The FCS, however, still has many of the things that made college football special in the first place: regional rivalries, meaningful regular-season games, a real playoff system, and programs that still feel connected to their schools and communities.
The FCS Actually Has a Real Playoff
Let's start with the easiest argument.
The FCS has been determining its national champion through a legitimate playoff for decades.
Win your conference. Earn an automatic bid. Get selected as an at-large team. Then settle it on the field.
Simple.
The current 24-team format isn't perfect, but it gives teams from across the country an opportunity to compete for a championship without needing a committee to decide whether their brand is big enough, their conference is respected enough or their résumé looks good enough on television.
You want to win the national championship?
Get into the bracket and survive.
There's something incredibly refreshing about that.
The expanded College Football Playoff has certainly improved the FBS postseason, but even now, so much of the conversation revolves around seeding, television value, conference strength and which major programs deserve the benefit of the doubt.
In the FCS, eventually the talking stops.
You have to play.
The Regular Season Feels More Important
One of the biggest problems facing major college football is that the sport has become increasingly obsessed with the postseason.
Every Saturday seems to be reduced to one question:
"What does this mean for the playoff?"
A great rivalry game can't simply be a great rivalry game anymore. A conference matchup can't simply matter because two schools don't like each other.
Everything has to become playoff math.
The FCS feels different.
Conference races matter because championships matter. Automatic playoff bids matter. Regional bragging rights matter. Rivalry trophies matter.
For programs in the Southland Conference, Big Sky, Missouri Valley, CAA and elsewhere, there are Saturdays where the stakes are enormous even though ESPN's national playoff graphics aren't constantly reminding everyone about them.
Nicholls against Southeastern Louisiana doesn't need national championship implications to matter.
Montana against Montana State certainly doesn't.
North Dakota State against South Dakota State doesn't.
Those games matter because generations of players and fans have decided they matter.
That's college football.
Rivalries Still Feel Regional
College football was built on geography.
Your rival was usually the school down the road, across the state or just across the border.
Realignment has slowly dismantled some of that at the FBS level.
We're now living in a sport where Stanford and Cal compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Just read that sentence again.
Oregon and Rutgers can play a conference game despite being separated by nearly 3,000 miles.
Texas and Texas A&M finally sharing a conference again is great, but plenty of other traditional rivalries have disappeared or become irregular casualties of television-driven realignment.
The FCS hasn't escaped realignment completely, but the sport still feels far more regional.
South Louisiana schools play South Louisiana schools.
Montana schools play Montana schools.
The Dakota programs regularly run into each other.
Regional identity still means something.
And that's important because college football shouldn't feel like the NFL with university logos slapped onto the helmets.
You Can Actually Feel Connected to the Program
This might be the biggest difference.
Go to an FCS game and there's a good chance you'll see the players around campus. You'll recognize families in the stands. You'll know people connected to the athletic department. Kids can stand along the railing hoping for a glove or autograph after the game.
The stadium might hold 10,000 or 20,000 instead of 100,000, but that doesn't automatically make the experience worse.
Sometimes it makes it better.
There's an intimacy to FCS football that major college football increasingly struggles to maintain.
Take a Saturday in Thibodaux.
Tailgating around Guidry Stadium isn't trying to recreate an NFL experience. It's Nicholls fans, alumni, students and families gathering around a program that belongs to their community.
There are dozens of similar environments across the country.
You aren't simply purchasing admission to a sporting event.
You're participating in something.
Players Can Become Part of a Program's Identity
The transfer portal has changed college athletics everywhere, including the FCS.
Pretending otherwise would be ridiculous.
Players transfer. Coaches leave. Rosters change.
But at the FCS level, there still seems to be a greater opportunity for players to develop into recognizable pieces of a program rather than simply becoming another offseason acquisition.
You watch somebody arrive as an overlooked freshman.
You watch him earn playing time.
You watch him become a starter.
Eventually, you watch him become one of the faces of the program.
That development is one of the best parts of college sports.
The FBS certainly still has those stories, but the constant roster movement and high-dollar recruiting battles have increasingly made major college football feel transactional.
College football has always involved money.
Now the transaction is simply much more visible.
The Talent Is Better Than People Think
There's also a bizarre misconception that FCS football isn't "good football."
It is.
Obviously, Alabama or Ohio State would overwhelm most FCS programs. Nobody seriously argues otherwise.
That's not the point.
The athletes playing at the FCS level are still incredibly talented football players.
Many were overlooked because of size.
Others developed later.
Some wanted immediate playing time.
Some simply weren't recruited by Power Four programs.
And every year, FCS players end up on NFL rosters.
There is a difference between saying the FBS has more elite talent and saying the FCS has a worse product.
Those aren't the same thing.
A football game doesn't become entertaining simply because more future first-round picks are participating.
Competitive football is entertaining.
Upsets Still Feel Special
There's also nothing quite like an FCS team walking into an FBS stadium and ruining somebody's Saturday.
Those games reveal something great about the sport.
The FBS program usually has more scholarships, more resources, a larger recruiting operation and a much larger athletic budget.
None of it matters once the ball is kicked.
Appalachian State's famous win at Michigan in 2007 remains the standard, even though Appalachian State eventually moved to the FBS.
North Dakota State has built a reputation for beating FBS opponents.
Other FCS programs have done the same.
Those aren't simply upsets.
They're reminders that football still has to be played.
The Championship Actually Feels Earned
Want to understand what makes the FCS postseason special?
Look at the road a national champion might have to take.
Perhaps you play during Thanksgiving weekend.
Win.
Play again.
Win.
Travel halfway across the country.
Win.
Then meet another elite program with everything on the line.
There are no meaningless bowl games.
There aren't players sitting out because they're preparing for the NFL Draft.
There's no debate about whether winning a particular exhibition means your season was successful.
You're either advancing or you're going home.
By the time two teams arrive at the national championship game, they've survived a tournament.
That's incredibly difficult.
And incredibly fun.
The FCS Still Feels Like College Football
That's ultimately the entire argument.
The FBS is spectacular.
The stadiums are incredible. The traditions are unmatched. Saturday night in Death Valley or the Horseshoe or Bryant-Denny Stadium is something every football fan should experience.
This isn't an argument that the FBS is bad.
It's an argument that the FCS might represent college football better.
Smaller communities.
Regional rivalries.
Packed tailgates.
Players developing over multiple seasons.
Conference championships that matter.
A playoff where teams from across the country get a legitimate opportunity to compete for a national championship.
There's still money involved. There's still conference realignment. There's still NIL. There's still the transfer portal.
The FCS isn't some untouched version of college athletics.
But when Saturday afternoon arrives, it still feels closer to what college football was always supposed to be.
And while the FBS may always be the bigger product, I'll argue the FCS is the better one.
Because sometimes college football is better when it's a little smaller.
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