Which FCS Conferences Have The Most Returning Production In 2025?

As we roll into June, we will take an opportunity to look at the returning experience across the FCS landscape. Soon, we will deep-dive into each major FCS conference with detailed previews, but today, we will take a broader look at the returning production for each conference.

In the following table, we take a look at the number of significant contributors returning next season. We counted "significant contributors" as players who played at least 200 snaps last season. The reasoning here is that the transfer portal has created an unstable environment for FCS programs with a record number of players entering their names into the portal.

We used Pro Football Focus (PFF) to collect the snap count data for this exercise. It's important to note that not all rosters have been finalized, but the idea here is to get a general look at what roster retention was across each FCS conference. We took an average across each FCS conference, limiting the impact of outliers from teams who experienced an unexpected coaching change.

It should also be noted that some conferences were excluded due to the unavailability of rosters (Pioneer, SWAC). The Ivy League was also excluded because the conference is not impacted by the transfer portal in the same way as other FCS conferences.

Seven of the nine conferences that were analyzed experienced a decrease in returning significant contributors this year compared to last season. The only two conferences that increased were the Big South-OVC and Southland, with the SLC being the only conference with a major increase in returning production.

The Big Sky, SoCon, and MVFC had the biggest decrease in returning production, with all three showing a major decrease of over three significant contributors. It could be argued that these three conferences have the most individual talent each season, which makes them more susceptible to tampering and the transfer portal. This is most evident with the MVFC, which is the consensus No. 1 FCS conference.

The other part of this conversation is that FCS teams are exploring different strategies to replace talent each season. We've seen some teams take the transfer portal approach, adding 20-30 players through the portal, while others remain committed to building their nucleus through high school pipelines. Based on past data, teams that add transfers with playing experience have been much more successful than others who have added a large number of unproven FBS players.

As the landscape of college football continues to become more unpredictable, it will be interesting to analyze this trend of returning talent over the next few seasons. The concern for the long-term health of the FCS is that the depth and quality of talent will continue to be worn down year after year as programs struggle to replenish the large amount of talent that's lost each offseason.