For years, fans throughout all three NCAA Divisions have clamored for an improved playoff format and the inclusion of an actual playoff system in FBS. The changes to the College Football Playoff were another step toward satisfying the fans' demands. 

But FBS wasn’t the only college football division to see changes to its playoff format. The NCAA Division III playoffs underwent three significant changes during the offseason. Gone are the days of confusing DIII fans with Pool A, B, and C terminology and definitions.

First, the playoff bracket was expanded from 32 to 40 teams, which means an increase in at-large bids from four to 12 this season, with 28 teams earning an automatic bid through their conference affiliation. Adding an extra week to the playoff schedule pushed the DIII national championship game into January.

This year, the national title game will be held on January 5 at Shell Energy Stadium in Houston. Next year, it will move to the Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, where it will be held on Jan. 10, 2026.

The first round of the playoffs remains on the next to last Saturday in November, with the 16 lowest seeds meeting to determine who will advance to meet the top seed in their section of the bracket in the second round. The semifinals will be the Saturday before Christmas, and the teams in the championship game will have two weeks to prepare.

“The NCAA, coaches and various committees thought this was the right thing to do for football, considering that other sports mainly have 64-team brackets,” said Howard Payne Director of Athletics Hunter Sims, who serves as the Region III representative on the NCAA Division III National Football Committee.

How teams are selected, and their seedings determined also underwent a massive change. DIII teams are using the NCAA Power Index (NPI) to assist in selecting and seeding the teams. The NPI formula uses data from five categories to rank all DIII football teams.

The first category calculates a team’s winning percentage and strength of schedule, with wins worth 40 percent and strength of schedule accounting for 60 percent. A team’s strength of schedule is an average of the opponent’s NPI. The next category adds a multiplier to road victories and home losses. Each road win is worth 1.1 points, road loss is 0.9 points. Meanwhile, each home loss counts as 1.1, and home wins count as 0.9. 

The third category is where the Quality Win Base is set. The committee set the number at 54, which means a victory over an opponent with an NPI of 54 or higher earns the team a bonus multiplier of .250 this season. As of the most recent NPI numbers released by the NCAA, 93 teams hold an NPI number of 54 or higher. 

This leads into the next category, where the Quality Win Bonus multiplier is applied. This is where only stat heads typically comprehend how this bonus is calculated. Assuming a few non-stat heads are still reading, the QWB multiplier is the difference between each team's NPI numbers multiplied by .250.

The national committee chose to count all wins in regulation and overtime equally without applying a bonus. The final category is the minimum number of wins a team must achieve before dropping wins against teams that hurt their NPI. That number is set at five, which means the team’s best five wins, at minimum, are used to calculate their NPI. More than five wins can count for teams if it improves their NPI. DIII teams must play 70 percent of their games against other DIII schools in their region or receive a waiver from the national committee to be eligible for playoff selection.

The NPI replaces the regional committee rankings, which left many questioning the criteria used for the rankings. 

“The thought process of the committee was to give coaches access to this information on a weekly basis rather than waiting for a regional ranking to come out without knowing the rhyme or reason for where they’re ranked,” Sims said. “Now, they have all the information at their fingertips to know what they need to do in the future to improve their NPI value.”

Sims believes fans will see schools change how they schedule non-conference opponents next year since most schedules were set before these new guidelines were implemented.

The final significant change to the DIII playoffs this year involves the broadcast of each playoff game. Since ESPN controls the broadcast rights to the DIII football playoff games, every game will be broadcast on ESPN+. Sims believes this will improve the product produced by the institutions and allow the fans to find all playoff games on one platform.

The changes to the playoff format have led to changes in how teams are seeded and in which section of the bracket they will be located. All teams in the tournament will be seeded in their section of the bracket based on their NPI values, regardless of whether they earned an automatic bid or received an at-large bid. This could mean teams with automatic bids playing in the first round while an at-large bid with a higher NPI will receive a bye week.

Only the top eight seeds will be protected, determined by the teams with the top eight NPI numbers. Teams with the top four NPI values will be the top seed in their section of the bracket and will be split using geographic proximity. Teams ranked 5-8 by NPI value will be the second seed in their section and placed in the bracket under geographic proximity rules.

The remaining 32 teams will be placed in the bracket according to “natural geographic proximity” and then paired according to geographic proximity. Teams can be moved to different bracket sections to maintain numerical balance if geographic proximity is maintained.

Sims said he is unaware of any limitations on the number of flights used during each round but notes the top priority in Division III will always be pairing teams in a manner that reduces the need for teams to play opponents further than 500 miles apart to lessen the amount of class time missed each week.