Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio has appeared in the DIII national championship game multiple times and been the NCAC's most consistent playoff program. Their program draws from the Dayton and Columbus corridors, developing players who chose a Lutheran liberal arts education and have produced NFL combine participants at the DIII level. Wittenberg's football program is one of the most recognizable brands in non-scholarship college football.

The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio has won NCAC titles and appeared in the DIII bracket with a program built on northeast Ohio's football tradition. Their Fighting Scots recruit from the same Ohio pipeline as the OAC programs but with an academic profile that attracts a different kind of student-athlete. When Wooster's roster is deep, they are the NCAC's most physically complete program outside of Wittenberg.

Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana is one of three remaining all-male liberal arts colleges in the United States and maintains a football culture more intense than programs with ten times their enrollment. The Little Giants play the Monon Bell game against DePauw every year — one of DIII's most celebrated rivalries — and compete in the NCAC with a program that treats football as the center of campus life in a way that co-educational institutions structurally cannot replicate.