Six power-conference teams have lost to an FCS opponent over the past five seasons of college football, and none of those losses has happened since September of 2023. The five top-level teams that suffered such a loss had at least one thing in common—they weren’t very good. Collectively, Stanford, Northwestern, Washington, Vanderbilt, Florida State and Arizona went 16-56 in the seasons when each lost to a Championship Subdivision program. None of those teams won more than five games1 in those seasons.
So, lest anyone tell you that we can’t take anything from Nebraska potentially beating FCS No. 6 North Dakota this week, we can. If the Huskers should lose, they are very likely bad. On their way to a losing season. The sort of losing season that would make things very complicated and not fun.
None of that is meant to dismiss the Fighting Hawks. The opposite, actually.
“I remember in my formative years as a head coach sitting there and talking to Chip Kelly2 when he was the head coach of the Eagles,” Matt Rhule said this week. Kelly told Rhule that, as a college coach, he preferred playing power-conference teams still figuring it out over FCS teams that “know how to win.”
This has long been my approach to power FBS teams scheduling FCS opponents.3 The FCS teams don’t win all that often, but they’re often more venomous than a bad team that happens to share the same classification.
North Dakota is a ‘tweener in that regard. The Hawks are consistently ranked but last won a conference title in the ultra-tough Missouri Valley Football Conference in the bizarro year of 2020. The Hawks bring a handful of Nebraskans, a high-scoring offense and belief to Lincoln this weekend. Bill Connelly’s all-college rankings put the Hawks at No. 109 nationally this week, ahead of previous opponents Ohio (126) and Bowling Green (145).
The Huskers might roll. They might be in for a fight. They just can’t lose. Style points are a bonus. Those are the real stakes this week.
They’re the real stakes every week, but sometimes you need a designated difference in class to really drive it home. The Huskers have it Saturday.
