Each season, one poll evaluates the various National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) football teams and ranks them.
A final poll will be taken after completion of the series of playoff games, collectively referred to as the 2020 NAIA Football National Championship.
First, any conference champion ranked in the final regular-season Coaches' Poll received an automatic bid into the tourney field.
This was a modification (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) to the normal requirement that a champion needed to finish in the top 20 positions to receive an automatic invitation.
The lone exception was #5 Concordia (MI), who played an away game due to restrictions in Michigan caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This alignment was then tweaked, for geographic and travel considerations, by the tournament selection officials to determine the announced first-round pairings.