Bison football regular season to be 12 games and more destination games may be coming

FARGO The FCS will get a head start on the 2026 college football season.

Wednesday, the NCAA announced they had signed off on a proposal for a 12-game regular season.

The FCS Oversight Committee had recommended an expedited process in adopting the resolution that was proposed in April.

At the recommendation of the Football Championship Subdivision Oversight Committee, the council adopted expedited legislation to change the first contest date for FCS football, starting in the 2026 season, the release reads.

Moving forward, FCS programs will be able to compete in 12 regular-season games every year, with the regular season starting 13 weeks before the FCS championship selections date.

The move provides programs greater scheduling flexibility and eliminates the first contest date exceptions.

The biggest change will come with the start date to the 2026 season.

Before the proposal was adopted, the opening week of games was slated for Sept.

5.

Now, teams are allowed to schedule games ten days earlier than that, with the season now slated to begin on Aug.

27.

To sum it up, the former Week Zero for FCS teams now becomes Week One.

And now the challenge begins for athletic directors to find games that are just over a year out.

I've reached out to Dave Brown from Gridiron Scheduling and asked whats your plan?, said Todd Phelps, North Dakota States deputy athletic director, who handles football scheduling.

Brown said, I'm going to be able to start plugging in everybody who's available, and we're going to start the negotiations of trying to figure out who's where we're going to add.

Teams are under no obligation to play a 12-game schedule, but it could favor schools that do play 12 games in the eyes of the FCS Playoff Committee.

Look back to the 2024 season and the teams that played a full Division I schedule received better seeding or at-large berths to the tournament than ones that didnt.

NDSU played 12 regular season games in 2024 and will play 12 this fall.

The calendar allowed for that with 13 Saturdays between Labor Day and Thanksgiving.

With an earlier start date to the regular season, that means teams will begin fall practices at an earlier time.

NDSU head coach Tim Polasek said in March that The one thing Ive started to plan for 2026 is well be in fall camp on July 23.

Everyone will essentially play 12 games and that stresses Todd Phelps out with the scheduling.

Thats in the direction were moving with expansion of the College Football Playoff planned for 2026.

NDSU had its 2026 schedule completed prior to the announcement earlier this week.

The Bison have two non-conference home games; East Tennessee State on Sept.

5 and Austin Peay on Sept.

19.

The Bison travel to Conway, Ark.

to play Central Arkansas on Sept.

12.

That flexibility may open some other possibilities for games according to Phelps.

I'm hoping is that everybody's going to be in the same boat, and everybody's going to be in a scramble, he said.

Everybody's going to need a game and I like the fact that for the 2026 and 2027 seasons, our philosophy has always been, we want six home games, and we have those.

So we've got some flexibility with adding that 12th game potentially.

The recent addition of home and home schedule agreement with Weber State is something to watch with the additional game added.

One-off games are getting harder and more expensive for NDSU to schedule, opening the door for potential new opportunities.

The intriguing part to watch is what happens with FBS football.

That opening date has just one game scheduled in 2026, North Carolina and TCU will play in Dublin on Aug.

29.

Whether the FBS decides to start its season earlier is something to watch, especially if the College Football Playoff decides to expand to 16 teams.

The championship game for the CFP was played on Jan.

20 this year, and theres a desire to not have the season go as long as it is.

The tricky part is working around the NFL schedule, which to this point, no one has figured out a way to avoid.

DESTINATION GAMES BACK ON? Earlier this week, NDSU and Weber State announced a home and home scheduling agreement.

The Bison will host the Wildcats on Sept.

11, 2027, with the Bison heading to Ogden, Utah on Sept.

15, 2029.

NDSU and Weber have faced each other six times, including a home and home series in 2014 and 2015.

The Weber State game gives NDSU a second non-conference game for that season.

The Citadel is scheduled to come to Fargo on Sept.

18, leaving the Bison two potential openings for that season.

Phelps said hes sent out feelers to any FBS teams that have openings for 2027.

He says hell wait until the end of the summer before pivoting to looking towards FCS teams.

I really like being two years out, so, probably wait through this summer and see if anything can play out and where we land, Phelps said.

And if not, then I will pivot to where we could do a destination (game), we could do a neutral site, if that opportunity were to present itself.

We'll just wait and see.

NDSU will play its second destination game in two years this upcoming season with a trip to Nashville on Sept.

6 to play Tennessee State inside Nissan Stadium, the home of the Tennessee Titans.

The Bison opened the 2023 season at U.S.

Bank Stadium in Minneapolis against Eastern Washington.

The athletic department was disappointed in the tepid reception by Bison fans to that game, but it appears that a future destination game may be back on table.

Sources say Dallas and Las Vegas were in consideration for the Bison to play a neutral site game.

If we could get a good match up with whether it's any of the Montana schools, whoever it may be, he said.

If there's something out there that we can get as a neutral site destination, we'll certainly explore it.

NDSU has two games on the schedule beyond 2027.

The Bison will play at the University of Oregon on Sept.

2, 2028.

Thats a game that was rescheduled from 2020 after the pandemic canceled the game.

NDSUs other game is the Weber State game in 2029.

With 12 games now a reality, an earlier start to the season is coming and perhaps more destination games are coming for the Bison..

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