Earlier this week I had intentions to write a conference by conference breakdown of who is in and who is out of the NAIA Football Championship Series. But as life would have it this week has been much busier than normal. Something about a trip to Minnesota, a snow storm and another job kind of got in the way.However, the NAIA wrote a great breakdown of the final week of the regular season. You can read that article here.

The number one thing everyone needs to remember is this: Conference champions rated #20 or better get automatic berths to the postseason. If you are a conference champ and rated #23 in the final poll, you are out of luck. If you are conference co-champs and you are rated #21 and the other team is #15, you are on the outside looking in.

The magic number to remember is 20.

So who am I talking about specifically? Langston, Reinhardt, Saint Francis (Ind.) and Webber International. All of these teams can either win or have part of a conference title by winning this weekend. However, they will all need the help of a lot of other people outside of their control if they are going to make it to the postseason.

There are a lot of teams that should be nervous this week. Basically if you are rated #10-20 in the NAIA you are going to have for sure WIN this weekend and in many cases get some help from other teams in order to make it to the postseason.

The most nervous teams in the NAIA are:

• Baker: Must win to get in.
• Northwestern: Must win to get in.
• Faulkner: Must win. A loss won’t for sure kill their shot at the postseason but it will make it a lot tougher.

Best of luck to everyone this weekend! It’s been a great season of NAIA football!