The FCS playoffs, the best postseason format in football move to their second round on Saturday. That means the playoff debut for the eight seeded teams at the top of the bracket. They’ll all be hosting teams that had to play first-round games last week.
All the basics about the second round of the FCS playoffs
The bracket, the schedule, and how the format works.
Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports
So it’s the first game of the playoffs for No. 1 North Dakota State, winners of six of the last seven national championships. The Bison going out this early would be shocking, but the FCS playoffs do lend themselves to chaos. An unseeded team at least makes the semifinals almost every year, and that usually requires multiple upsets on the way.
The winners will be three wins away from the national title. Every game’s played in the seeded team’s stadium, and the higher-slotted team continues to host every game until the title game. That one’s in Frisco, Texas, at noon ET on Jan. 5.
Here’s the schedule for Saturday, broken down into quadrants. Here’s the bracket visualized. All times are Eastern, and all games this week are streamable at WatchESPN. They’re not nationally televised:
No. 1 North Dakota State’s quadrant
1 p.m: No. 8 Colgate hosts James Madison
3 p.m.: No. 1 NDSU hosts Montana State
No. 2 Weber State’s quadrant
12 p.m.: No. 7 Maine hosts Jacksonville State
4 p.m.: No. 2 Weber State hosts Southeast Missouri State
No. 3 Eastern Washington’s quadrant
5 p.m.: No. 3 EWU hosts Nicholls
7 p.m.: No. 6 UC Davis hosts UNI
No. 4 Kennesaw State’s quadrant
2 p.m.: No. 4 KSU hosts Wofford
3 p.m.: No. 5 South Dakota State hosts Duquesne
The winners in those quadrants play each other next weekend, with games split between Saturday the 7th and Sunday the 8th.
Some of those games will be on ESPN’s main TV channels.
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