Craig Haley releases updated preseason FCS rankings for 2026 season

The headliner did not change because the résumé did not change. Craig Haley’s updated preseason FCS rankings now read like a roster audit, with offseason transfers, returning stars and 25 head-coaching changes forcing the conversation away from brand names and toward who actually brought back the most proof. Montana State, Montana and the rest of the power tier are still the teams everyone circles, but the real shift is in how much harder it is to separate them in May than it was in January.

Montana State has the cleanest case because Brent Vigen still has Justin Lamson, Adam Jones, Taco Dowler, Caden Dowler and Titan Fleischmann, a core good enough to make the Bobcats feel less like a preseason bet and more like the team to beat. Montana is right there with Keali’I Ah Yat, Eli Gillman, Brooks Davis and Peyton Wing, while UC Davis keeps Samuel Gbatu Jr., Winston Williams and Jordan Fisher in the mix. That is why the Big Sky keeps hogging the first-line debate: the conference still has championship-level quarterbacks and playmakers on both sides of the ball, not just one blue-chip roster.

The debatable placements live lower on the board, where Haley stretched the rankings because the FCS has more viable contenders than ever. He specifically called out ETSU, West Georgia, UTRGV, UIW, Southeastern Louisiana, New Hampshire, Harvard, Northern Arizona and Western Carolina, a list that says the race is no longer just a Big Sky and Missouri Valley fight. That matters because the teams that can survive the portal and keep a backbone of returning production can leap from respectable to dangerous in one offseason, while the schools leaning on a coaching reset will have a much narrower margin for error.

That is the real test for Haley’s updated board: not whether the top programs belong, but whether he guessed right on the teams sitting one hot September away from cracking the bracket. By October, the smartest ranking might be the one that trusted Montana State’s continuity, and the most wrong might be the one that overvalued a name brand without enough returning answers. By October, which call will look smartest, and which one will look most wrong?