South Dakota State, Montana State lead FCS football committee's top 10

We're less than a month away from FCS playoff selection Sunday — 24 days to be exact — and for the first time since 2019, the Division I Football Championship Committee has revealed its in-season top 10 rankings of the FCS teams. The rankings were announced Thursday, Oct. 26 shortly after 2 p.m. ET on ESPN2's College Football Live broadcast.

The committee used results through games played through Oct. 21, and these in-season rankings serve as a snapshot as to where the committee has teams ranked heading into the final four weeks of the regular season.

“This is a snapshot of where the committee ranks the Top 10 today, based on our review of each team’s resume,” said Kent Haslam, chair of the committee and director of athletics at Montana. “There will be a lot of impactful games played the next few weeks, so things are likely to change. We thought providing transparency would be helpful to the FCS community.”

Haslam and the committee consider some of the following criteria (in no order) when selecting at large teams:

• Each team’s won-lost record
• Each team's strength of schedule
• Eligibility and availability of student-athletes for the NCAA championship
• AFCA Coaches’ Poll 
• Stats Perform FCS Top 25 Poll (replacing the NCAA Simple Rating System (NCAA SRS))
• Additionally, as part of a pilot program, the committee will start to consider the KPI with the hopes of adding it as an official tool in future years.
  • KPI is a metric developed by Kevin Pauga (Kevin Pauga Index). Here's an example of how it's used in college basketball.

The committee's top 10 rankings give insight into which teams are in contention for one of the first-round byes given to the eight seeded teams in the FCS playoff bracket. That's means at least two of the teams in these in-season rankings will end up not receiving a bye come November 19.

That said, it's no surprise at this point in the season that South Dakota State is the top team in the committee's eyes. The Jackrabbits are the defending FCS champions and are the only undefeated FCS team entering Week 9. See the rest of the top 10 rankings below.

The 2023 championship field will consist of 10 automatic qualifiers and 14 at-large selections. The FCS Selection Show will air Nov. 19 at 12:30 ET on ESPNU. The postseason begins on Saturday, Nov. 25 on campus sites, continuing until the FCS Championship game on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024 at 2 p.m. ET in Frisco, TX.

Tickets for the FCS Championship are available at fcs.