It’s finally official, but with a surprise.

If a program has national title aspirations for the spring, coaches and players with those championship-seeking teams are going to want to win their league crown along the way.

On Tuesday, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors announced it approved a plan for the FCS to hold its postseason in the spring.

The FCS playoffs are scheduled to start with the selection of the field on April 18 and the tournament will run through mid-May. That plan had been approved by the Division I Council, too, but in the release from the Board of Directors it was revealed that the 16-team playoff field is going to feature 11 automatic qualifiers and five at-large selections.

Up until Tuesday, the FCS Championship Committee and Division I Football Oversight Committee, which had worked to develop the format for the FCS spring postseason, had planned for the field to consist of 10 automatic qualifiers and six at-large choices.

Sources told the Daily News-Record the 11th automatic-qualifying bid for the FCS postseason is going to come from the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. The MEAC hasn’t sent one of its member to the playoffs since 2016 when North Carolina A&T was selected as an at-large choice.

Since 2015, the MEAC champion has played in the Celebration Bowl in lieu of the playoffs.

The remaining 10 automatic qualifying bids will go to the leagues that hold them regularly – Big Sky, Big South, Colonial Athletic Association, Missouri Valley Conference, Northeast Conference, Ohio Valley Conference, Patriot League, Pioneer League, Southland Conference and Southern Conference.

Earlier this month, the DN-R learned the CAA is mulling the idea of splitting into divisions for its regular-season spring slate and holding a league championship game to determine its automatic qualifier.

James Madison has reached the FCS playoffs in each of the last six seasons. The Dukes won the CAA outright and earned the conference’s automatic bid in three of the last four years including in 2016 when JMU captured its second national championship.