INDIANAPOLIS — The Ivy League is participating in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs for the first time this season, and the conference will be well represented.

Yale, which defeated rival Harvard for the Ivy title on Saturday, and the Crimson are in the 24-team tournament field, which was announced on Sunday night on ESPNU. The Bulldogs (8-2) will play at Youngstown State (8-4), and Harvard (9-1) will play at Villanova (9-2).

“I am incredibly proud of our players and entire staff. They have poured their hearts into the work that brought us to this moment, and earning the opportunity to win a championship and become the first team to represent the Ivy League in the FCS playoffs makes it ever more special,” Yale coach Tony Reno said Saturday after the win. “Our players made a true commitment to one another and never stopped believing in our mission or in the goals we set together. This is an exceptional group of men, and I could not be prouder of everyone.”

In the 141st chapter of the rivalry known as The Game, Yale outlasted previously unbeaten Harvard, 45-28, as quarterback Dante Reno completed 15 of 19 passes for 273 yards and three touchdowns in the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut.

“Our defense is one of the best in the league,” Reno, a sophomore, said. “They’ve been proving that all year. It took us a little bit to start offensively earlier this season, and we kind of clicked over the last couple of weeks.”

TWO BID IVY.@HarvardFootball and @yalefootball have earned bids to the @NCAA_FCS playoffs.

🌿 Harvard vs. No. 12 Villanova
🌿 Yale vs. No. 15 Youngstown State pic.twitter.com/3Md5RlFGiJ

— Ivy League (@IvyLeague) November 23, 2025

At the top of the FCS board, defending national champion North Dakota State will lead a record-tying six teams from the Missouri Valley Football Conference into the tournament. The MVFC champion Bison (12-0) were named the No. 1 seed and will be making their 16th consecutive appearance.

All told, the field is made up of 11 automatically qualifying conference champions and 13 at-large selections. The first round begins Saturday with unseeded teams paired with teams seeded 9-16 primarily according to geographical proximity. The championship game is Jan. 5 at FirstBank Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee.

North Dakota State has won 10 of the past 14 FCS titles. The Bison beat St. Thomas-Minnesota 62-7 on Saturday to extend their winning streak to 16 games.

Montana State (10-2), the runner-up to NDSU last year, earned the No. 2 seed after beating rival Montana 31-28 to clinch the Big Sky Conference championship. Montana (11-1) is the No. 3 seed. Tarleton State (11-1) of the United Athletic Conference is the No. 4 seed.

Patriot League champion Lehigh (12-0) is No. 5, Southern champion Mercer (9-2) is No. 6, Southland champion Stephen F. Austin (10-2) is No. 7 and the Big Sky’s UC Davis (8-3) is No. 8.

The top eight seeds receive a first-round bye and will play their second-round game at home.

The rest of the first-round games are: Illinois State (8-4) at SE Louisiana (9-3); Central Connecticut State (8-4) at Rhode Island (10-2); North Dakota (7-5) at Tennessee Tech (11-1); New Hampshire (8-4) at South Dakota State (8-4); Drake (8-3) at South Dakota (8-4); and Lamar (8-4) at Abilene Christian (8-4).

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

BISMARCK, N.D. — Abortion is again illegal in North Dakota after the state’s Supreme Court on Friday couldn’t muster the required majority to uphold a judge’s ruling that struck down the state’s ban last year.

The law makes it a felony crime for anyone to perform an abortion, though it specifically protects patients from prosecution. Doctors could be prosecuted and penalized by as much as five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Three justices agreed that the ban is unconstitutionally vague. The other two justices said the law is not unconstitutional.

The North Dakota Constitution requires at least four of the five justices to agree for a law to be found unconstitutional, a high bar. Not enough members of the court joined together to affirm the lower court ruling.

In his opinion, Justice Jerod Tufte said the natural rights guaranteed by the state constitution in 1889 do not extend to abortion rights. He also said the law “provides adequate and fair warning to those attempting to comply.”

North Dakota Republican Atty. Gen. Drew Wrigley welcomed the ruling, saying, “The Supreme Court has upheld this important pro-life legislation, enacted by the people’s Legislature. The attorney general’s office has the solemn responsibility of defending the laws of North Dakota, and today those laws have been upheld.”

Republican state Sen. Janne Myrdal, who introduced the 2023 legislation that became the law banning abortion, said she was “thrilled and grateful that two justices that are highly respected saw the truth of the matter, that this is fully constitutional for the mother and for the unborn child and thereafter for that sake.”

The challengers called the decision “a devastating loss for pregnant North Dakotans.”

“As a majority of the Court found, this cruel and confusing ban is incomprehensible to physicians. The ban forces doctors to choose between providing care and going to prison,” Center for Reproductive Rights senior staff attorney Meetra Mehdizadeh said. “Abortion is healthcare, and North Dakotans deserve to be able to access this care without delay caused by confusion about what the law allows.”

The ruling means access to abortion in North Dakota will be outlawed. Even after a judge had struck down the ban last year, the only scenarios for a patient to obtain an abortion in North Dakota had been for life- or health-preserving reasons in a hospital.

The state’s only abortion provider relocated in 2022 from Fargo to nearby Moorhead, Minn.

Justice Daniel Crothers, one of the three judges to vote against the ban, wrote that the district court decision wasn’t wrong.

“The vagueness in the law relates to when an abortion can be performed to preserve the life and health of the mother,” Crothers wrote. “After striking this invalid provision, the remaining portions of the law would be inoperable.”

North Dakota’s newly confirmed ban prohibits the performance of an abortion and declares it a felony. The only exceptions are for rape or incest for an abortion in the first six weeks of pregnancy — before many women know they are pregnant — and to prevent the woman’s death or a “serious health risk” to her.

North Dakota joins 12 other states enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Four others bar it at or around six weeks of gestational age.

Judge Bruce Romanick had struck down the ban the GOP-led Legislature passed in 2023, less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and opened the door to the state-level bans, largely turning the abortion battle to state courts and legislatures.

The Red River Women’s Clinic — the formerly sole abortion clinic in North Dakota — and several physicians challenged the law. The state appealed the 2024 ruling that overturned the ban.

The judge and the Supreme Court each denied requests by the state to keep the abortion ban in effect during the appeal. Those decisions allowed patients with pregnancy complications to seek care without fear of delay because of the law, Mehdizadeh previously said.

Dura writes for the Associated Press.