Schedule superlatives: The toughest, easiest and most interesting matchups of 2025
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Chris Low
There isn’t much surrounding college football that isn’t in something of a state of flux.
The discussions surrounding the future playoff format bounce around like a pingpong ball. Schools are for the first time in history sharing revenue with athletes. Conference realignment marches onward, and the overhaul of rosters via the transfer portal continues at a dizzying pace.
All the while, the start of the 2025 season is less than a month away.
What that means is it’s time to take a magnifying glass to the 2025 schedule and hand out some superlatives, some flattering and some not so flattering. All rankings referenced are from ESPN’s post-spring Top 25, and Notre Dame, despite being an independent, will be considered a Power 4 school for our purposes.
Before we dive in, an annual reminder: Schedule strength tends to look a lot different in July than it does in late October.
Toughest overall Power 4 schedule: Florida
A year ago Billy Napier and his Florida football team epitomized resiliency. Despite an ugly 1-2 start, Napier never lost the locker room and guided the Gators to four straight wins to end the season with an 8-5 finish. But just like a year ago, Florida’s schedule is again brutal.
The Gators are the only team in the SEC facing the league’s three highest-ranked preseason teams (No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Georgia and No. 6 LSU), with the Georgia and LSU games away from home. The Sept. 13 trip to LSU is followed by a trip to No. 21 Miami the next week. In a five-week stretch from Sept. 13 through Oct. 11, which includes a bye on Sept. 27, Florida plays at LSU, at Miami, at home against Texas and at Texas A&M. The Gators’ annual showdown with Georgia in Jacksonville on Nov. 1 is followed by back-to-back SEC road games against Kentucky and No. 24 Ole Miss.
Wisconsin is a close second in this category. Luke Fickell and the Badgers could use a strong bounce-back season after losing five in a row to end 2024 and missing a bowl game for the first time in 22 years. Like Florida, Wisconsin faces six ranked teams, including four of the top 11 — at No. 9 Alabama on Sept. 13, home against No. 5 Ohio State on Oct. 18, at No. 8 Oregon on Oct. 25 and home against No. 11 Illinois on Nov. 22.
Easiest overall Power 4 schedule: Wake Forest
Jake Dickert takes over for Dave Clawson at Wake Forest and has his work cut out to get the program back into the upper tier of the ACC. But he faces only one preseason Top 25 team in 2025: SMU at home Oct. 25, with a bye the preceding week. The Deacons avoid Clemson, Miami and Louisville in the ACC. Their first four games are at home along with two of their last three games. A game at No. 24 Ole Miss was replaced by a trip to Oregon State, meaning there are no Power 4 nonconference foes on the Deacons’ schedule. Their only back-to-back conference games on the road are against Florida State and Virginia on Nov. 1 and Nov. 8, and those teams finished a combined 7-17 last season.
Missouri, coming off back-to-back seasons of at least 10 wins under Eliah Drinkwitz, has a schedule tailor-made to make it three straight seasons with double-digit wins. The Tigers’ first six games are at home, and they avoid Texas, Georgia and LSU in the SEC. Their toughest nonconference game is against Kansas at home.
Toughest overall non-Power 4 schedule: Kent State
This one doesn’t seem fair. Kent State went 1-23 over the past two seasons, fired coach Kenni Burns in April and replaced him with interim coach Mark Carney. Not only do the Golden Flashes have to play three Power 4 nonconference teams on the road, including No. 16 Texas Tech on Sept. 6 and No. 25 Oklahoma on Oct. 4, but they face MAC preseason favorite Toledo on Oct. 18 on the road.
South Florida’s schedule is equally daunting. The Bulls open the season against Boise State, Florida and Miami in successive weeks (Florida and Miami on the road) and face American Athletic Conference contenders Navy, Memphis and North Texas on the road.
Easiest overall non-Power 4 schedule: Liberty
The Flames are a repeat winner here, which means Jamey Chadwell’s club should be a prime candidate to be the Group of 5 representative in the playoff. Liberty doesn’t face any Power 4 nonconference opponents, although James Madison’s trip to Lynchburg on Sept. 20 will be a game to watch. The toughest Conference USA challenge might come in Week 2 against Jacksonville State on the road. Otherwise, Liberty received a favorable draw in the conference. In other words, not returning to the Conference USA championship game for the second straight season would be a big disappointment on the Mountain. Elsewhere, North Texas’ path to the American championship game is helped by avoiding Tulane and Memphis, and its toughest nonconference game is against Washington State at home Sept. 13.
Toughest Power 4 nonconference schedule: Clemson
This was a coin flip between Clemson and Stanford until quarterback Jake Retzlaff departed BYU. Now the trip to No. 10 BYU on Sept. 6 doesn’t look quite as daunting for the Cardinal, who end the season Nov. 29 at home against No. 7 Notre Dame.
So Clemson gets the nod. The Tigers open the season Aug. 30 at home against No. 6 LSU, then close the season Nov. 29 on the road against bitter rival South Carolina, which is ranked No. 13. Clemson also faces Troy, a top contender in the Sun Belt Conference, at home a week after the LSU opener.
Miami has three tough early-season matchups out of conference, albeit all three at home, against No. 7 Notre Dame on Aug. 31, South Florida on Sept. 13 and No. 19 Florida on Sept. 20.
Easiest Power 4 nonconference schedule: Penn State
It’s Penn State by a mile, or about as long as it takes to get to Happy Valley from just about any major airport. This should be James Franklin’s best and most balanced team, but one that will be untested when it rolls into Big Ten play against Oregon at home Sept. 27. The “warmups” come in the first three weeks of the season, all at home, against Nevada, Florida International and Villanova, followed by a bye week before facing the Ducks.
We can’t let Indiana completely off the hook. For the second straight season, the Hoosiers won’t play a nonconference game against a Power 4 foe. They open the season with three straight home games against Old Dominion, Kennesaw State and Indiana State (without Larry Bird). To be fair, Indiana is also the only Big Ten team that has to play Penn State and Oregon on the road.
Must-see nonconference games
To be clear, neutral-site games don’t count for this list:
• Auburn at Baylor, Aug. 29
• Utah at UCLA, Aug. 30
• Texas at Ohio State, Aug. 30
• Notre Dame at Miami, Aug. 30
• LSU at Clemson, Aug. 30
• Alabama at Florida State, Aug. 30
• Michigan at Oklahoma, Sept. 6
• Kansas at Missouri, Sept. 6
• Texas A&M at Notre Dame, Sept. 13
• Florida at Miami, Sept. 20
• USC at Notre Dame, Oct. 18
• Clemson at South Carolina, Nov. 29
Better be careful
Some sneaky good games matching Power 4 teams against Group of 5 teams:
• Toledo at Kentucky, Aug. 30
• James Madison at Louisville, Sept. 5
• UCLA at UNLV, Sept. 6
• Army at Kansas State, Sept. 6
• South Florida at Florida, Sept. 6
• Arkansas State vs. Arkansas, in Little Rock, Sept. 6
• Duke at Tulane, Sept. 13
• Arkansas at Memphis, Sept. 20
• Tulane at Ole Miss, Sept. 20
• BYU at East Carolina, Sept. 20
• San José State at Stanford, Sept. 27
• Boise State at Notre Dame, Oct. 4
Jeff Lebby, in his second season, will lead the Bulldogs against four playoff teams from a year ago at Davis Wade Stadium: Arizona State on Sept. 6, Tennessee on Sept. 27, Texas on Oct. 25 and Georgia on Nov. 8. If that’s not enough, the Bulldogs close the season at home Nov. 28 in their annual Egg Bowl matchup with No. 24 Ole Miss. Nearly 80% of Mississippi State’s roster is made up of first- or second-year players with 60 new players added for this season.
Easiest Power 4 home schedule: Texas
Only one preseason Top 25 team will visit DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium this season, and that’s at the very end when No. 23 Texas A&M makes the 105-mile trip to Austin. After opening against No. 5 Ohio State on the road, Texas plays San José State, UTEP and Sam Houston the next three weeks at home. Other than Texas A&M, Texas’ other two home dates the final month of the season are against Vanderbilt on Nov. 1 and Arkansas on Nov. 22. In an odd twist, Texas doesn’t play a game in Austin in the month of October. Florida, Kentucky and Mississippi State are all on the road, and the Red River Showdown game against Oklahoma, as always, is in Dallas.
Toughest Power 4 schedule away from home: Syracuse
Fran Brown was a first-year head coach last season, but he showed the poise and precision of a 20-year veteran in leading Syracuse to 10 wins, only the third time since 2000 that the Orange had won 10 games. As an encore, he faces an enormous challenge. Syracuse lost most of its key playmakers from a year ago and faces a brutal schedule away from home. The Aug. 30 opener against Tennessee in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium will be a quasi-home game for the Vols, and that’s just the start. The Orange play at No. 2 Clemson on Sept. 20, at No. 15 SMU on Oct. 4, at No. 21 Miami on Nov. 8 and at No. 7 Notre Dame on Nov. 22.
Easiest Power 4 schedule away from home: Missouri
The Tigers play eight of their 12 games this season at Faurot Field, and only one of their four road games is against a ranked opponent, No. 25 Oklahoma on Nov. 22. The other three are against Auburn (Oct. 18), Vanderbilt (Oct. 25) and Arkansas (Nov. 29). It’s never easy on the road in the SEC, but the Tigers are avoiding some of the most treacherous stops.
Toughest close to the season: Rutgers
Granted, Rutgers’ schedule outside the Big Ten is cushy (home games the first three weeks against Ohio University, Miami (Ohio) and Norfolk State), but the close to the season — ouch! Rutgers’ last six games are No. 8 Oregon at home Oct. 18, at Purdue on Oct. 25, at No. 11 Illinois on Nov. 1, Maryland at home Nov. 8, at No. 5 Ohio State on Nov. 22 and No. 1 Penn State at home Nov. 29. The Scarlet Knights are the only Big Ten team this season that has to play Penn State, Ohio State and Oregon.
Easiest close to the season: Illinois
Illinois is poised for another banner season under Bret Bielema with most of its key players back from the 10-win season a year ago. The Fighting Illini’s schedule is front loaded as they play four of their final six games at home, and three of the last four are home games against Rutgers, Maryland and Northwestern. The only road game in that stretch is at Wisconsin on Nov. 22. Illinois won’t face a preseason Top 25 opponent the last five weeks of the season.
Toughest three-game stretch: Oklahoma
The criteria for this category are three games in three consecutive weeks with no byes. Brent Venables and the Sooners will have a chance to build some momentum, but they face an October grind that could break any team. It starts with No. 3 Texas in Dallas on Oct. 11, followed by a road game at No. 13 South Carolina on Oct. 18 and then a home game against No. 24 Ole Miss on Oct. 25. If you want to stretch it out to four games, things don’t get much better for the Sooners. They go on the road the next week to play Tennessee on Nov. 1 in Neyland Stadium. Three of those four games are away from home.
Basking in Florida’s sunshine
Miami doesn’t play a game outside the state of Florida until traveling to face SMU on Nov. 1. Six of the Hurricanes’ first seven games are at home at Hard Rock Stadium, and a seventh is in Tallahassee against Florida State on Oct. 4. Included are three straight all-Florida affairs against South Florida on Sept. 13, Florida on Sept. 20 and at FSU on Oct. 4
Dabo and the SEC
Clemson’s Dabo Swinney gets another shot at the SEC to open the season in the Battle of Death Valleys on Aug. 30 against LSU. Clemson is 18-12 vs. the SEC since the start of the 2012 season, but the Tigers have lost seven of their past 10 games to SEC opponents, beginning with a 42-25 loss to LSU in the 2019 national championship game.
Mountains are calling
From just east of Marys Peak, Oregon State will travel across the country to the Blue Ridge Mountains to take on Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina, on Oct. 4. Talk about two places that are hard to get to, but two gorgeous campuses.
Taking Saturdays off
Houston plays three Friday games (Sept. 12 vs. Colorado, Sept. 26 at Oregon State and Nov. 7 at UCF). The Cougars open the season on a Thursday at home, Aug. 28 vs. Stephen F. Austin.
Ryan Silverfield has guided Memphis to 10 or more wins in each of the past two seasons, a first in program history, and enters his sixth season amid big expectations in the American Conference with a roster full of new faces via the transfer portal. The Tigers are 11-2 at home the past two years, which bodes well for 2025. Just about all of Memphis’ toughest games are at home, including Arkansas’ visit on Sept. 20. In conference play, top contenders South Florida (Oct. 25), Tulane (Nov. 7) and Navy (Nov. 27) all come to Memphis’ Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.
Avoiding campuses
Tennessee, for the 11th straight year, will not play a nonconference regular-season game on an opposing team’s campus. The last time the Vols played a nonconference road game (not counting the playoff game last season at Ohio State) on the opposing school’s campus was Sept. 13, 2014, when they lost 34-10 to No. 4 Oklahoma in Norman. The Vols did win at Pittsburgh in 2022, a 34-27 overtime victory, but the Panthers play their home games at the Steelers’ stadium, Acrisure Stadium, formerly known as Heinz Field, which stands along the Ohio River on the north side of Pittsburgh. The opener against Syracuse in Atlanta will be Tennessee’s sixth neutral-site game in the past 10 years.
Power outages
Houston, Indiana, Maryland, Northwestern, Ole Miss, Penn State, Rutgers, Texas Tech, Wake Forest and Washington don’t play any nonconference games against Power 4 opponents in 2025. Every school in the ACC except Wake Forest plays at least one Power 4 nonconference team, and nine schools (Boston College, Miami, NC State, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, SMU, Syracuse, Stanford and Virginia Tech) play two nonconference games against Power 4 foes. As ACC commissioner Jim Phillips likes to say, “Go ACC!” There are a few caveats. Some of the teams not playing Power 4 opponents are playing Oregon State or Washington State, and that includes Ole Miss. Wake Forest pulled out of the back half of its home-and-away series with Ole Miss last season, and the Rebels had to scramble, adding Washington State at the last minute.
Jet-lagged Huskies
The only time all season Washington plays back-to-back home games is against Colorado State and UC Davis to open the season. From there, it’s back and forth and all over the map for the Huskies. Consider: After playing at Washington State in Pullman on Sept. 20 (not an easy trip), Washington comes back home on Sept. 27 to face Ohio State, then hits the road the following week to play Maryland on Oct. 4, then back home against Rutgers on Oct. 10 (a Friday), back on the road against Michigan on Oct. 18, back home against Illinois on Oct. 25, and then after a bye, back on the road against Wisconsin on Nov. 8. Thank goodness for charter flights.
Vols flopping Dawgs and Gators
Georgia and Tennessee meet Sept. 13 in Knoxville, the earliest the teams have met in a season since 1995 (Sept. 9) when Kirby Smart was a freshman defensive back for the Bulldogs. The Vols won 30-27 in the final seconds on a field goal. Smart never beat Tennessee as a player, but he has won eight straight in the series as a coach. Tennessee, meanwhile, doesn’t face Florida until Nov. 22 at the Swamp, the latest those teams have played (not counting the 2020 COVID season) since 2001 (Dec. 1) when Tennessee won 34-32 in the Swamp in a game that was postponed because of the Sept. 11 attacks. Tennessee is a combined 12-38 against Georgia and Florida since 2000, 2-6 under Josh Heupel.
Hogs debuting on the SEC road … again
For the third straight season, Arkansas opens its SEC season on the road, the only school in the league having to play three straight openers away from home. The Hogs won 24-14 last season at Auburn and lost 34-31 at LSU in 2023. Arkansas opens SEC play this season at Ole Miss on Sept. 13. In fact, Arkansas plays its first two SEC games on the road, traveling to Tennessee on Oct. 11. Arkansas, Auburn and Vanderbilt are the only three SEC teams that have to play their first two league games on the road. All five of Arkansas’ road opponents this season won at least nine games a year ago, and four (Memphis, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas) won 10 or more games.
Border War returns
Kansas and Missouri will renew their series Sept. 6 in Columbia, the first time they’ve played since 2011. It’s the first of a four-game agreement to bring back the series, which dates to 1891, and will be Kansas’ first visit to Faurot Field since 2006, when Missouri won 42-17. Their 2011 meeting was at Arrowhead Stadium, with Missouri winning 24-10. The teams had met 93 years in a row before the series was not renewed following the 2011 game; at the time, it was the second-most-played rivalry in Division I-A football history.
Catching up with old teammates
With full-scale free agency alive and well in college football, more and more players from the transfer portal are going up against their former schools and teammates. Some notable examples this season:
• Duke quarterback Darian Mensah at Tulane on Sept. 13
• Ole Miss offensive guard Patrick Kutas vs. Arkansas on Sept. 13
• Oregon cornerback Theran Johnson at Northwestern on Sept. 13
• Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold at Oklahoma on Sept. 20
• Texas A&M receiver Mario Craver vs. Mississippi State on Oct. 4
• Ohio State tight end Max Klare at Purdue on Nov. 8
• Texas Tech defensive tackle Lee Hunter vs. UCF on Nov. 15
• Missouri receiver Kevin Coleman Jr. vs. Mississippi State on Nov. 15
• Oregon offensive guard Emmanuel Pregnon vs. USC on Nov. 22
• Oregon defensive tackle Bear Alexander vs. USC on Nov. 22
• LSU receiver Nic Anderson at Oklahoma on Nov. 29
Homecoming for Helton
Clay Helton gets a homecoming, sort of anyway. Helton, with a new five-year contract after winning eight games last season at Georgia Southern, returns to Los Angeles when the Eagles face USC on Sept. 6 in the Coliseum. With one game as interim head coach in 2013, Helton was USC’s official head coach for seven seasons before being fired early in the 2021 campaign. He was 46-24 overall and won the Rose Bowl following the 2016 season (52-49 over Penn State), which is the Trojans’ last appearance in the Rose Bowl. The next season, Helton guided the Trojans to the 2017 Pac-12 championship, which is their last conference championship.
They’re playing where?
It’s always interesting (and entertaining) to see Power 4 teams playing on the road at Group of 5 teams, especially when it’s on campus. Case in point: Bill Belichick’s second game as North Carolina’s coach will come Sept. 6 against in-state foe Charlotte in 15,300-seat Jerry Richardson Stadium. Some of the others this season: West Virginia at Ohio University on Sept. 6 and Oklahoma at Temple (Lincoln Financial Field), Iowa State at Arkansas State, SMU at Missouri State and Utah at Wyoming, all Sept. 13.
Not very Belichickian
Speaking of Belichick, he didn’t get a bad draw in his first season at North Carolina. And, yes, we know he’s not one to look ahead until it’s “on to whomever.” But the Tar Heels face TCU at home in the Sept. 1 Monday night opener, and if they win that one, it’s conceivable they could be 5-0 going into their home game against Clemson on Oct. 4. The Tar Heels get a bye week prior to the Clemson game after playing at UCF on Sept. 20.
Fear the Terps
Maryland dipped to 4-8 a year ago after three straight winning seasons under Mike Locksley. The Terps’ schedule in 2025 is manageable enough that they should have a chance to return to their winning ways. Their nonconference schedule consists of Florida Atlantic, Northern Illinois and Towson, all at home, and Maryland is the only Big Ten team that avoids Penn State, Ohio State and Oregon. The Terps have three ranked teams on their schedule, and two of those games (Indiana and Michigan) are at home.
Run-down Red Raiders
Texas Tech, ranked No. 15 in the preseason, is pushing all its chips in on this season and reportedly spent more than $28 million on its roster. Led by coach Joey McGuire, the Red Raiders are looking to reach double-digit wins for the first time since the late Mike Leach led Tech to 11 wins in 2008. But to do it, they’re going to have to push through a seven-week gauntlet of Big 12 games. That’s right, seven straight Big 12 games without a bye from Oct. 4 to Nov. 15 — at Houston, vs. Kansas, at Arizona State, vs. Oklahoma State, at Kansas State, vs. BYU and vs. UCF.
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David Hale
NEWARK, Del. — Russ Crook has a shirt he likes to wear to Delaware football road games. He’s a lifelong fan and the current president of the Blue Hen Touchdown Club, but he knows the jokes, so he picked up the shirt a few years back when he saw it at the historic National 5 & 10 store on Main Street. It’s gray with a map of the state across the chest and the ubiquitous punchline delivered succinctly: “Dela-where?”
Yes, the state is small, though Rhode Island gets the acclaim that comes with being the country’s smallest. In popular culture, Delaware often translates as something of a non-place — cue the “Wayne’s World” GIF — and it’s widely appreciated by outsiders as little more than a 28-mile stretch of I-95 between Maryland and Pennsylvania that hardly warrants mentioning.
It’s a harmless enough stereotype, but Cook is hopeful this football season can start to change some perceptions. After all, in 2025, Delaware — the football program — hits the big time. Or, Conference USA, at least.
“Delaware’s a small state, but the university has 24,000 students,” Crook said. “Many big-time schools are smaller than we are. There’s no reason we can’t do this.”
When the Blue Hens kick off against Delaware State on Aug. 28, they will be, for the first time, an FBS football team, joining Missouri State as first-year members of Conference USA — the 135th and 136th FBS programs.
Longtime Hens fans might not have believed the move was possible even a few years ago, as much for the school’s ethos as the state’s stature. The university’s leadership had spent decades holding firm in the belief that the Hens were best positioned as a big fish in the relatively small ponds of Division II and, later, FCS.
And yet, just as the rest of the college sports world is reeling from an onslaught of change — revenue sharing, the transfer portal, NIL and conference realignment — Delaware decided it was time to join the party.
“Us and Delaware are probably making this move at one of the more difficult times to make the move in history,” said Missouri State AD Patrick Ransdell.
All of which begs the question: Why now?
Many of Delaware’s historic rivals — UMass, App State, Georgia Southern, Old Dominion, James Madison — had already made the leap to FBS, and the Hens’ previous conference, the Colonial, was reeling. Economic conditions at the FCS level made life challenging for administration. The NCAA was making moves to curb future transitions from FCS to FBS, and the school felt its window to make a move was closing.
“We had no choice,” Crook said.
And so, ready or not, the Hens are about to embark on a new era — a chance to prove themselves at a higher level and, perhaps, provide Delaware with a reputation that’s more than a punchline.
“We talk about doing things for the 302 all the time,” interim athletic director Jordan Skolnick said, referencing the area code that serves the entirety of the state. “We want everyone in the state of Delaware to feel the pride in us being successful, and we want people to realize how incredible this place is. It’s not just a place you drive through on 95.”
BACK WHEN MIKE Brey was coaching Delaware’s men’s basketball team to back-to-back tournament appearances in the 1990s, he would often swing by the football offices to talk shop with the Hens’ legendary football coach Tubby Raymond, who won 300 games utilizing a three-back offensive formation dubbed the wing-T. Brey recalls pestering him once about the new spread schemes being run at conference rival New Hampshire by a young coordinator named Chip Kelly. Raymond was a beloved figure at Delaware, and he had helped mentor Brey as a head coach, but he was notoriously old-school.
Raymond huffed, dismissing the tempo offense as “grass basketball,” all style and finesse without the fundamental elements of the game he had coached for decades. The mindset was often pervasive at UD.
“It was in the bricks there,” said Brey, who went on to a 23-year stint coaching at Notre Dame. “Tubby had his kingdom, and nobody was telling him what to do. It was, ‘Leave us alone. We’re good. We’ve got the wing-T.'”
Brey’s contract in those days technically referred to him as a member of the physical education department, and he and his staff had to teach classes during the offseason on basketball skills. Despite Raymond’s retirement in 2001 and an FCS national title in 2003, not much changed. By 2016, when Skolnick arrived to work in the athletic department, a number of coaches were still considered part-time employees, and several programs had to source their own equipment.
But change was brewing.
Old rivals such as App State, Georgia Southern and JMU had left FCS without missing a beat. Delaware had often punched above its weight and churned out genuine stars such as Rich Gannon and Joe Flacco, but the chasm between the haves and have-nots in football was growing. It was clear the Hens needed to invest, though the goal then was to take advantage of the power vacuum among east coast FCS schools.
“I think a lot of people wondered if we’d missed the window,” Skolnick said. “But at that time, the goal was to win as many FCS national championships as we can and resource our teams to be able to compete.”
Delaware football did compete, earning a spot in the FCS playoffs in four of the past six seasons, but another national title eluded the program, and by 2022, with rival James Madison moving up to the Sun Belt, then-AD Chrissi Rawak began to test the waters of a jump to FBS.
The school partnered with consultants who studied the economics of a move, both for the athletic department, which stood to see a $3 to $4 million increase in annual revenue, and for the state, which could enjoy a 50% uptick in economic impact from football alone. Meanwhile, Delaware looked at each FCS school that had made the leap up to FBS in the past 10 years to see how the Hens might stack up. What did Skolnick say the school found? Programs that had already been investing, had a solid recruiting footprint and were committed to football had success.
“We started to check a lot of boxes,” Skolnick said.
There were concerns, of course. The landscape of college football was roiling, and the expense of running a successful program seemed to grow by the day. But the opportunity to generate more revenue was obvious.
In the playoff era, 10 schools have made the leap from FCS to FBS, and nearly all have tasted some level of success. Overall, the group has posted a .548 winning percentage at the FBS level, and seven of the 10 have had seasons with double-digit wins. James Madison, who went from an FCS championship to the Sun Belt in 2022, is 28-9 at the FBS level and enters the 2025 season with legitimate playoff aspirations.
That success, however, is the result of a decades-in-the-making plan, said former JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne. The Dukes kicked the tires on an FBS move as early as 2012 but held steady as the program grew its infrastructure and, when the time came to make a move in 2022, it was ready.
“Before we made that decision, we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could support it financially,” Bourne said. “You had to have the fan base and donor base grow, have our facilities in a place so we could recruit. Looking at it from a broad perspective, it made our move not only prudent but ultimately helped us be successful.”
Off the field, the move has proved equally fortuitous. In JMU’s final year at the FCS level, the athletic department had 4,600 total donors, according to the school. For the 2025 fiscal year, JMU had nearly 11,000. The Dukes have sold out season tickets for three straight years, and high-profile games, including two bowl appearances, have been a boon for admissions.
So, when Conference USA approached Delaware with a formal invitation to join in November 2023, the choice seemed obvious.
“It was pretty clear that, as a flagship institution in our state, we wanted to be aligned with schools that look like us,” Skolnick said. “We want to align our athletic aspirations with our academic ones. Academically we’re one of the best public institutions in the country. Athletically, we’ve had all these incredible moments of success — but they’re moments. They’re spread out. So we felt like this was an opportunity to bring all of it together in a way that will show people — the best way to give people a lens into how special Delaware is, is for our athletic teams to be really successful and create more visibility.”
Brey remembers reading the news of Delaware’s decision to make the jump, and he couldn’t help but think back to his conversations with Raymond nearly 30 years ago. This had been a long time coming, he thought, and yet it still seemed hard to believe.
“I was shocked,” Brey said. “Little old Delaware is finally going for it.”
THERE ARE AMPLE lessons Delaware and Missouri State administrators have learned in the past few months as they’ve worked to ramp up staffing and budgets and add scholarship players for the transition. But if there’s one piece of advice Skolnick would share with other schools considering a similar process, it’s this: Find a time machine.
Delaware announced its intention to jump to FBS in November 2023. Just weeks earlier, the NCAA, in an effort to stem the tide of FCS departures, made changes to the requirements for moving up that, among other things, increased the cost of doing so from $5,000 to $5 million, and Delaware would be the first team to pay it.
That was not a budget line the Blue Hens had accounted for, meaning the school had to raise funds to cover that cost on a tight timeline.
“We had six months to do it,” Skolnick said. “Fortunately, we had people who were really excited about this transition.”
Ransdell took over as AD at Missouri State in August of 2024, just months after the Bears announced their plans to move to Conference USA, and he inherited a budget that wasn’t remotely ready for FBS competition.
“We had to change some things, do some more investing,” he said. “We weren’t really prepared to be an FBS program with the budget I inherited.”
In other words, the buzzword at both schools is the same as it is everywhere in 2025: revenue.
But if budgets have to be stretched with a move up to FBS, there are benefits, too.
Ransdell said Missouri State has sold more season tickets than any year since 2016, buoyed by a home game against SMU on Sept. 13.
Delaware had faced hurdles selling tickets in recent years, thanks in part to a slate of games against opponents its fans hardly recognized. That has changed already, with ample buzz around future home dates with old rivals UConn, Temple and Coastal Carolina. Crook said membership in the booster club is up 10-15% after years of steady declines. This season, Delaware travels to Colorado, and Crook said a caravan of Blue Hens fans will tag along.
On the recruiting trail, Delaware coach Ryan Carty said the conversations are completely different than they were a year ago, and the Hens have been able to add a host of new talent. The Hens’ roster includes 14 transfers from Power 4 programs this year, including Delaware native Noah Matthews, who arrived from Kentucky.
When Matthews was being recruited out of Woodbridge High School, about an hour’s drive down Route 1 through the middle of the state, he never heard from Delaware. It’s not that his home-state school didn’t want him. It’s that, no one on staff believed the Hens had a shot to land a guy with offers in the SEC.
Four years later though, Matthews is back home, and there’s nowhere he would rather be.
“I wanted to come back and show people, this is what Delaware does,” Matthews said. “We can play big-time football, too. After this year, they’ll know exactly who we are.”
For all the hurdles to get their respective programs in a place to compete at the FBS level, the costs are worth it, Ransdell said.
Need proof? Look no further than Sacramento State, a school that has all but begged for an invitation from the Pac-12 or Mountain West, even dangling a supposedly flush NIL fund with more than $35 million raised. And yet, no doors have been opened for the Hornets.
Still, the old guard around Delaware might not be so easily swayed.
Brey has kept a beach house in Delaware since his time coaching in the state, returning the past couple of years to serve as a guest bartender at the popular beach bar The Starboard to raise money for the Blue Hens’ NIL fund. This summer, he was strolling the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, chatting with the locals and getting a feel for how fans felt about this new era of Delaware football.
Most were excited, he said, but one — a longtime season-ticket holder — had a different perspective.
“On the first day of fall camp,” the fan told him, “we always knew we could play for a national championship in [FCS]. That’s not possible anymore.”
In other words, Delaware sold its championship aspirations for an admittedly more financially prudent place near the bottom of FBS. And who’s to say FBS football even remains viable as power players in the SEC and Big Ten move ever closer to creating “super leagues?”
“There very well could be a super league,” Bourne said. “There are signs that could happen. But I think when you look at it from the standpoint of your peer group, it’s to be competitive with them. There’s probably going to be a day where there’s a shake-up and you have some existing [power conference] schools that end up being more aligned with [Group of 6] than they are with the upper tier.”
Brey recalls his old friend Bob Hannah, the former Delaware baseball coach who had long been a progressive among the school’s traditionalists, wondering if the Hens might have been a fit in the ACC, had the school just pursued athletics growth in the 1970s and 1980s. The irony, Brey said, is these days, with even power conferences struggling to keep pace with the rapid change and financial strains of modern college sports, that doesn’t seem like such a long shot.
For Skolnick, that’s a worry for another day. Getting Delaware ready for its chance to shine on some of the sport’s biggest stages in 2025 is the priority. Delaware — the school and the state — hasn’t had many of these moments, and it’s an opportunity the Hens don’t want to miss.
“We’ve got to be ready for what we’re moving into, but everyone in college athletics is dealing with change,” Skolnick said. “That part is comforting. It’s more of an opportunity for us to do it our way. We’re too great of a historical and successful and traditional team to not be part of the conversation.”
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