1985 NCAA Division III football season
American college football season
The 1985 NCAA Division III football season, part of college football in the United States organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association at the Division III level, began in August 1985, and concluded with the NCAA Division III Football Championship, also known as the Stagg Bowl, in December 1985 at Garrett-Harrison Stadium in Phenix City, Alabama. The Augustana (IL) Vikings won the third of their four consecutive Division III championships by defeating the Ithaca Bombers by a final score of 20−7.
Conference changes and new programs
The Metropolitan Intercollegiate Conference ceased operations prior to the 1985 season. Two of its members joined the newly formed Liberty Football Conference while three became independent.
Ferrum College, formerly known as Ferrum Junior College, fielded a four-year team for the first time.
Worcester State and Villanova each fielded a provisional team that played half a season. Worcester State had started a club program in 1969 and were playing varsity for the first time, while Villanova had cut their football program in 1981 and were reviving it.
Conference standings
Conference champions
Postseason
The 1985 NCAA Division III Football Championship playoffs were the 13th annual single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division III college football. The championship Stagg Bowl game was held at Garrett-Harrison Stadium in Phenix City, Alabama for the eleventh year and first time since 1982. This was the first tournament to feature sixteen teams after expanding from the eight team model in place since 1975.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19863368. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1969, 1981 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “1985 NCAA Division III football season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.