The Ivy League announced Wednesday its football programs will compete in the FCS playoffs beginning next season.

The league said the decision to compete in the playoffs followed a year-long process initiated by its Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.

Mason Shipp, a senior football player at Yale who serves as the committee’s chairman, called this a monumental day and said to the future generations of Ivy League football players: “go win us some hardware!”

The 2024 season culminated with Columbia, Dartmouth and Harvard earning a share of the Ivy League title. It was Colombia football’s first Ivy League title since 1961.

The league said it will develop a tiebreaker system to determine how its automatic-qualifier for the playoffs will be determined.

Wake hires Wazzou’s Dickert: Wake Forest moved quickly in reaching across the country to find its next coach.

The school hired Washington State’s Jake Dickert on Wednesday, two days after Dave Clawson resigned unexpectedly following 11 seasons that included regular bowl bids and an Atlantic Coast Conference division title.

Dickert, 41, had been the defensive coordinator when he took over during the 2021 season as the Cougars’ interim coach after Washington State fired Nick Rolovich for refusing a state mandate that all employees get vaccinated against COVID-19. Dickert led the team to a 3-3 finish to earn the permanent job, then went 20-17 in the three seasons since.

Washington State has spent nine weeks in the AP Top 25 poll over the last two seasons, peaking at No. 13 during a five-week run amid a 4-0 start in 2023 and reaching No. 19 in early November of this season.

The Cougars went 8-4 this year, the first since the Pac-12 fell apart, with the majority of its schools scattering to the ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten. Now Dickert is back in a power conference again, nine days before his now-former team is set to play No. 21 (CFP) Syracuse in the Holiday Bowl.

Wake Forest has had consecutive 4-8 seasons in Clawson’s otherwise successful run.

Vandy QB Pavia can play 5th season: A federal judge granted Diego Pavia’s request for a preliminary injunction allowing the quarterback to play the 2025 season and told the NCAA the organization can’t take any action against Vanderbilt or any other university that Pavia plays a fifth season for next year.

U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell issued the injunction Wednesday after a hearing Dec. 4. The judge noted in his order filed with the injunction Vanderbilt’s historic success with Pavia reaching its first bowl game since 2018 with wins over both Alabama and Auburn.

Pavia sued the NCAA on Nov. 8 contesting the organization’s rules limiting players who start at junior colleges to only four seasons.

Memphis wins bowl game: Seth Henigan had quite a homecoming for his final game as a four-year starter for Memphis, tying the American Athletic Conference career record with his 104th TD pass and leading the 25th-ranked (CFP) Tigers to one more victory.

Henigan threw for 294 yards and two TDs, and was one yard short of another score, as the Tigers held on for a 42-37 win over West Virginia in the Frisco Bowl on Tuesday night. They got 11 wins for only the second time in 109 years of Memphis football.

“It’s meant the world to me, and just to be able to go out with the win, I feel like that’s a good way to cap off a pretty good career,” Henigan said. “And having stayed at the same university four years, I hope that’s a testament to who I am, and about the people around me.”

The only current four-year FBS starting quarterback to do that all with the same school, Henigan’s 50th game for the Tigers (11-2) came just over 20 miles from his hometown of Denton, Texas. He completed 18 of 26 passes, including an 89-yard catch-and-run in the fourth quarter when DeMeer Blankumsee was tripped up at the 1.

Even though Henigan knew that would have pushed him one past the 104 TDs that Clayton Tune had for Houston from 2018-22, he handed off to Brandon Thomas for a 1-yard score on the next play. He had a run-pass option.

“I’m just happy that we won,” Henigan said.

West Virginia (6-7) had scored on six consecutive possessions (four TDs) before one more chance in the final minute after the Tigers missed a 50-yard field goal. But the Mountaineers’ final push ended when Elijah Herring had an interception.

TODAY’S bowl GAME

NEW ORLEANS BOWL Georgia Southern (8-4, Sun Belt) vs. Sam Houston (9-3, CUSA) 7 p.m. EST (ESPN2) LOCATION: New Orleans NOTABLE: Georgia Southern has the nation’s 92nd-ranked offense this year (364.1 yards per game). Sam Houston has 22 forced turnovers and turned the ball over 14 times, leading to a plus 8 margin, which ranks 20th.