Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee competes in one of the most football-obsessed cities in the South — a market where the Memphis Tigers play at the FBS level and SEC recruiting battles play out in the newspapers and on the radio every fall. The Lynx recruit from the Memphis metro and the Mid-South corridor, drawing players who chose Rhodes's selective academic environment and DIII competition over the scholarship track. That choice is a statement in a city where football is not a casual interest, and Rhodes has built a program that reflects it.

The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee sits on the Cumberland Plateau at 2,000 feet — a campus of Gothic sandstone buildings, 13,000 acres of forest, and a football history that includes being the dominant program in American football in the 1890s. The Tigers compete in the SAA as a program that has never been about winning national championships but about maintaining an athletic tradition on a campus that exists outside ordinary academic and commercial categories. Sewanee's football games, played in the mountain air with the plateau stretching to the horizon, are unlike any other DIII experience in the country.

Berry College in Mount Berry, Georgia has become the Southern Athletic Association's most consistent challenger for the automatic bracket bid, competing from a campus of 27,000 acres — the largest contiguous campus in the world — at the foot of the Appalachian foothills. The Vikings recruit from the northwest Georgia corridor and the Atlanta suburbs, drawing players who chose Berry's distinctive combination of academics, work program, and outdoor character over the SEC-adjacent scholarship track. When Berry's roster is deep and their system is running, they challenge Rhodes for the SAA title.