....LawPundit

One sees clearly that defending NAIA champion Sioux Falls this season stands head and shoulders above the other teams, although Carroll, Lindenwood, Morningside, St. Xavier and Lambuth are all almost dead even in terms of NAYPPA as adjusted for schedule difficulty. Ottowa Univiversity, Kansas, is hopelessly outclassed in these rankings and is over-ranked.

NAYPPA = net yards per play advantage
YPP OFF = net yards per play gained on offense
YPP DEF = net yards per play allowed on defense
Schedule = Schedule difficulty thus far in the season according to Massey Ratings (SchP=Schedule Partial)
To obtain the Rating from which the Rank is calculated, one starts with the YPP OFF, subtracts the YPP DEF, subtracts the difficulty of schedule as a variable calculated as 1/100 of the schedule rating so that for a schedule rating of 18 for example, .18 is subtracted (rounded up or down to the nearest figure, here rounded up to .2), and for each loss .2 is subtracted. A penalty of .1 is subtracted if the defense allows 5.0 or more yards per play, .2 for more than 6.0 yards per play, and .3 for more than 7.0 yards per play. In the case of equal ratings, the team with the toughest schedule is ranked first. One point of rating difference is equivalent to 9 points on the scoreboard.

NAIA stats on the whole will mirror those in the NCAA. The average yards per play component in NCAA Division I-A FBS college football has been remarkably constant for all the years we have kept track of it - this year showing a median for 120 teams of 5.5 yards per play gained on offense and 5.4 yards per play permitted on defense. There is at most a 1/10th yard variation (.1) any season. This is in spite of continuous tweaking of offenses and defenses. For an average schedule: a team averaging less than 5.5 yards per play on offense has either a subpar offense or a subpar offensive coordination, while a team averaging more than 5.4 yards per play on defense has either a subpar defense or a subpar defensive coordination. One must of course adjust those stats by the difficulty of schedule for each team.

Schedule difficulty beyond Division I-A FBS does not show a linear decrease - it is more than that. Massey Ratings rank Sioux Falls 92nd in the country of all football teams. This would be approximately a rating of -2.8 in our rating system, so that, e.g. in the case of Sioux Falls, which according to Massey Ratings played the 392nd most difficult schedule, ca. TWICE that amount would have to subtracted from the NAYPPA to get a rating which fits into the Division I-A FBS rankings. But that would be too much in view of the fact that Sioux Falls beat FCS North Dakota 28-13 as compared to e.g. Division I-A Texas Tech which beat North Dakota 38-13. Hence, instead of 1/100 of schedule difficulty, we here deduct 1.5/100 from the NAYPPA.