The 2018 NAIA football rankings reports the poll results conducted during the 2018 NAIA football season. Each season, one poll evaluates the various National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) football teams and ranks them. Coaches from each of the football conferences are members of a selection panel, with conferences receiving one vote for every 4 member teams. Sometimes referred to as the football ratings or the NAIA Coaches' Poll, the poll is generally conducted once during the preseason and after each week of play during the regular season.
The Top 25 is determined by compiling points for each vote. A team receives 25 points for each first-place vote, 24 for second-place and so on through the list. The highest and lowest ranking for each team (counting zero for ballots with no votes for a team) are disregarded. To obtain the final tally, each team's ranking is recalculated with an additional point added to each team for every ballot (including discounted ballots) that includes the team.
As an example, if there are 16 voting panelists, and one team is a unanimous choice for the highest ranking, then that team would receive 25 points * 14 ballots + 16 points (one for each ballot cast) = 366 points.
Teams that receive only one point in the ballot are not considered “receiving votes.”
Once the regular season is completed, the NAIA will conduct a playoff to determine the year's national champion. A final poll will be taken after completion of the series of playoff games, collectively referred to as the 2018 NAIA Football National Championship.
The NAIA released a preseason edition of the rankings on August 6, 2018. A complete schedule of poll release dates will be:[1]
| 2018 Poll Release Dates | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spring | None | |
| Preseason | August 6 | |
| Week 1 | September 10 | |
| Week 2 | September 17 | |
| Week 3 | September 24 | |
| Week 4 | October 1 | |
| Week 5 | October 8 | |
| Week 6 | October 15 | |
| Week 7 | October 22 | |
| Week 8 | October 29 | |
| Week 9 | November 5 | |
| Week 10 (Final Regular Season) | November 11 | |
| Postseason | December 18 |
* preseason rankings include prior season won-loss records
| No change in ranking | |||
| Increase in ranking | |||
| Decrease in ranking | |||
| Not ranked previous week | |||
| NAIA National Champion | |||
| Win–loss record | |||
| Number of first place votes | |||
| Tied with team above or below also with this symbol |
A 16-team tournament will be contested to determine the winner of the 2018 NAIA Football National Championship. Teams were selected to the field of participants through a two-tiered selection process. First, any conference champion ranked in the top 20 positions in the final regular-season Coaches' Poll received an automatic bid into the tourney field.
In 2018, the following 12 NAIA conferences (or divisions within large conferences) had champions who were part of this selection process for the automatic invitations:
| Conference | Division | |
|---|---|---|
| Frontier Conference | ||
| North | ||
| South | ||
| Mid-South Conference | Appalachian | |
| Mid-South Conference | Bluegrass | |
| Mid-South Conference | Sun | |
| Mideast | ||
| Midwest | ||
| Sooner Athletic Conference |
After the automatic bids were granted, any open positions in the field were filled with at-large invitations. These at-large entries were granted to the highest ranked teams who were not conference champions. Since there were 12 conference champions, a minimum of four at-large invitations could have been granted to play in the 2018 tournament.
Based on the Week 10 (final regular season) Coaches' Poll, the following teams (11 champions and 5 at-large teams) made up the 2018 playoff field:
| Rank | Team | Conference/Division[2] | Invitation Type | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Morningside (IA) | Great Plains | Automatic - 1 | |
| 2 | Marian (IN) | Mid-States / Mideast | Automatic - 2 | |
| 3 | Bethel (TN) | Mid-South / Bluegrass | Automatic - 3 | |
| 4 | Reinhardt (GA) | Mid-South / Appalachian | Automatic - 4 | |
| 5 | Northwestern (IA) | Great Plains | At-large - 1 | |
| 6 | Kansas Wesleyan | Kansas Collegiate | Automatic - 5 | |
| 7 | Benedictine (KS) | Heart of America / North | Automatic - 6 | |
| 8 | Saint Francis (IN) | Mid-States / Mideast | At-large - 2 | |
| 9 | Langston (OK) | Sooner | Automatic - 7 | |
| 10 | Grand View (IA) | Heart of America / North | At-large - 3 | |
| 11 | Cumberlands (KY) | Mid-South / Appalachian | At-large - 4 | |
| 12 | Baker (KS) | Heart of America / South | Automatic - 8 | |
| 13 | Concordia (MI) | Mid-States / Mideast | At-large - 5 | |
| 14 | Evangel (MO) | Heart of America / South | ||
| 15 | Dickinson State (ND) | North Star | Automatic - 9 | |
| 16 | Rocky Mountain (MT) | Frontier | Automatic - 10 | |
| 17 | Saint Xavier (IL) | Mid-States / Midwest | Automatic - 11 | |
| 18 | Lindsey Wilson (KY) | Mid-South / Bluegrass | ||
| 19 | Georgetown (KY) | Mid-South / Bluegrass | ||
| 20 | Ottawa (KS) | Kansas Collegiate | ||
| 21 | Southeastern (FL) | Mid-South / Sun | (Outside the Top-20) | |
| 22 | College of Idaho | Frontier | ||
| 23 | Dordt (IA) | Great Plains | ||
| 24 | Eastern Oregon | Frontier | ||
| 25 | Siena Heights (MI) | Mid-States / Mideast | ||
| 25 | Arizona Christian | Sooner |
The first round tournament match-ups, finalized and announced on Sunday, November 11[3], were:
| Rank | Visitor | Rank | Home | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rocky Mountain (MT) 20 | at |
| Morningside (IA) 49 | |
| Saint Xavier (IL) 34 | at |
| Marian (IN) 21 | |
| Baker (KS) 44 | at |
| Bethel (TN) 41 | |
| Concordia (MI) 31 | at |
| Reinhardt (GA) 21 | |
| Dickinson State (ND) 14 | at |
| Northwestern (IA) 6 | |
| Langston (OK) 9 | at |
| Kansas Wesleyan 15 | |
| Cumberlands (KY) 41 | at |
| Benedictine (KS) 48 | |
| Grand View (IA) 3 | at |
| Saint Francis (IN) 34 |
Since the inception of the Coaches' Poll in 1999, the #1 ranking in the various weekly polls has been held by only a select group of teams. Through the last (postseason) poll of the 2018 season, the teams and the number of times they have held the #1 weekly ranking are shown below. The number of times a team has been ranked #1 in the postseason poll (the national champion) is shown in parentheses.
There has been only one tie for the leading vote-getter in a weekly poll. In 2015, Southern Oregon was tied with Marian (IN) in the preseason poll.
In 1999, the results of a postseason poll, if one was conducted, are not known. Therefore, an additional poll has been presumed, and the #1 postseason ranking has been credited to the postseason tournament champion, the Northwestern Oklahoma State Rangers.
| Team | Total #1 Rankings | |
|---|---|---|
| 57 (6) | ||
| 55 (3) | ||
| Morningside (IA) | 28 (1) | |
| 25 (2) | ||
| 24 (2) | ||
| 21 (2) | ||
| 14 (1) | ||
| 12 (1) | ||
| 5 (1) | ||
| 4 (1) | ||
| 4 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 2 |