#38 overall#4 in DIIIRR50 -27.7Upper strength -26.91 teamsTop 25 teams 0
HOPE-DOPING · 2026
Chicago's Western Suburbs Conference
The Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference is the Midwest's smallest-footprint DIII football league — Aurora, Benedictine, Concordia Wisconsin, Lakeland, Maranatha Baptist, Milwaukee Engineering, and Rockford — competing in northern Illinois and Wisconsin in a conference where faith-based institutions and technical colleges compete side by side. Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois recruits from the Chicago western suburbs — one of the country's most productive DIII talent markets — in a conference that runs just west of the city where North Central's CCIW and St. Norbert's Midwest Conference establish the regional standard.
Aurora and Benedictine have split recent NACC titles. Does Lakeland or Concordia Wisconsin challenge for the conference championship in 2026, or does the Chicago western suburbs pipeline define the NACC's ceiling?
Division III1 teamsRace: DIII Bracket
NACC · Where They Stand · 2026
Power Map
Power landscape heading into 2026. Based on 2026 performance data.
Benedictine: Lisle's Catholic Liberal Arts Program
Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois recruits from the DuPage County suburbs — some of the most productive DIII football territory in the country, where the same communities that feed North Central and Wheaton in the CCIW produce players who chose Benedictine's Catholic liberal arts identity. The Eagles compete in the NACC as the conference's most talent-rich program by geography, drawing from a market that Power Four programs target and where DIII football is taken seriously at the family and coaching level. When Benedictine's recruiting class aligns with their system, the NACC title is theirs to win.
The Rival
Aurora: The Fox River Valley Program
Aurora University in Aurora, Illinois has been the NACC's most consistent challenger to Benedictine, competing from a campus along the Fox River in one of the Chicago metro's fastest-growing suburban corridors. The Spartans recruit from Aurora's diverse market — a city that has grown from a railroad hub to a mid-sized city of 200,000 — drawing players from communities that the CCIW's more selective programs frequently overlook. When Aurora's coaching staff translates that demographic diversity into roster depth and physicality, they are the NACC's most dangerous opponent to a Benedictine team that expects to win the conference every year.
Wild Card
Concordia Wisconsin: Mequon's Lutheran Program
Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon competes in the NACC from Milwaukee's northern suburbs, drawing from the Milwaukee metro and the Southeast Wisconsin corridor in a market where the Green Bay Packers and Wisconsin Badgers define the football conversation at every level. The Falcons recruit from a pipeline that includes communities in both Milwaukee and the north shore suburbs, competing with a Lutheran identity that connects them to a broader network of faith-based families. In a NACC where the title race typically comes down to Benedictine and Aurora, Concordia Wisconsin is the program most positioned to disrupt the two-program competition.
Conference record determines standing. Power = neutral-field pts vs. all-level average. Last 5 = most recent game results.
The Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference is the Midwest's smallest-footprint DIII football league — Aurora, Benedictine, Concordia Wisconsin, Lakeland, Maranatha Baptist, Milwaukee Engineering, and Rockford — competing in northern Illinois and Wisconsin in a conference where faith-based institutions and technical colleges compete side by side. Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois recruits from the Chicago western suburbs — one of the country's most productive DIII talent markets — in a conference that runs just west of the city where North Central's CCIW and St. Norbert's Midwest Conference establish the regional standard.
Conference Snapshot
RR50-27.7
Upper Strength-26.9
Median Power-28.0
Resume Pulse0.7
Avg ATS--
Wins vs Market+0.00
Top-to-Middle Gap0.0
Combined Record0-0
`RR50`, `Upper Strength`, and `Median Power` are shown on the same public power scale as the rest of the site: points on a neutral field versus the average all-level NCAA team. Very small affiliations are gently regressed toward their subdivision baseline so a one-team outlier does not hijack the entire conference board.
The league stack, sorted by predictive strength. Power is shown as neutral-field points versus the all-level average team, while resume is shown on a 0-100 season score.
