The rules of collegiate football on the field are very similar to those detailed on the page about American football, so we won't go into them here save for the most basic explanation: 11 guys on offense, 11 guys on defense. Scoring is almost the same as in the professional leagues as well—the defending team has long been able to score a point on a blocked PAT (a rule that the NFL didn't adopt until 2015) and college overtime rules are complicated.^note Each team starts a possession on the opposing team's 25-yard line. The first team posts a score (which can include 0 points), then the other team has to match it to continue OT or beat it to win; otherwise, the first team wins. After the 2nd possession for both teams, the PAT kick on a touchdown is banned; teams must go for two if they score a touchdown. The rules got even more complicated in 2019—the 5th and any subsequent possessions for each team are two-point conversion attempts, taken from the standard point of the 3-yard line. In 2021, to reduce the amount of time overtime takes, the two-point conversion requirement moves to the 2nd overtime, and the 3rd and subsequent overtimes use the two-point conversion shootout method until the tie is broken. There are a few different rule changes^note The most obvious ones being (1) that the NFL's iconic two-minute warning wasn't used until 2024; (2) the ball carrier is down the moment his knee or body touches the ground instead of needing to be touched by a defender; (3) receivers only need to get one foot in-bounds rather than two; (4) in a recently implemented change, a touchback puts the ball on the 25-yard line for kickoffs (but a touchback on punts is still the 20-yard line); (5) in an even more recent change (which the NFL eventually adopted in 2023), if the receiving team on a kickoff makes a fair catch inside its own 25-yard line, it's treated as a touchback; and (6) college football still uses the traditional kickoff formation instead of the NFL's recently adopted and radically different kickoff formation. Before the 2023 season, the game clock temporarily stopped to move the chain on each first down, but this now only happens in the last 2 minutes of each half. (NCAA Division III didn't adopt this last change until 2024.), but nothing enough to disrupt the basic flow of the game.

The most apparent differences between the pro and college game today usually has less to do with how the game is played than who plays it and what they're playing for. While the NFL's attempts to assert a degree of parity through the draft and salary cap typically ensure that teams are close in skill and a total Curb-Stomp Battle is relatively rare, there are far fewer restrictions in college. This results in the most prominent programs often having far more raw talent then many of their opponents, which tends to make the outcomes of many games a Foregone Conclusion and the main point of interest (and gambling, for those so inclined) being seeing by how many points the rival will be blown out. This margin can often play a role in power schools' national rankings and playoff hopes, meaning a narrow victory against underdog competitors is often treated as a loss and a close upset can get someone fired. Additionally, even games between competitive teams tend to be much higher scoring than pro games due to lack of experience and athleticism on the defensive side of the ball, allowing for more prolific passing and rushing performances.

College football has many, many other rules dictating what schools and players are allowed to do off the field. In some schools, football is the only men's sport^note (though not in the NCAA; provided that a school enrolls men [which almost all NCAA schools do, including every Division I member], all schools are required to field at least 6 men's sports except D-III schools with 1,000 or fewer undergraduates, which need only 5) - the federal Title IX requires equal amounts be spent on men's and women's athletics based on gross expenditure. so a top-tier football program is a major resource hog by that standard even if the whole point of running it at that level is that it's a profit center for the school and the black from football makes up for the red most if not all of the other sports operate in.^note "Non-revenue" sports do operate in the red if you consider only athletic department accounting. A more holistic view shows that many of these sports are actually net money makers for the university as a whole. In most NCAA sports, with football and basketball the most notable exceptions, only partial athletic scholarships are awarded. The remaining cost is generally borne by the students themselves, and often their parents as well, through loans, with those dollars flowing directly into the university coffers without ever touching the athletic department.

A collegiate football player's career begins in high school, when prospects, rated on a scale from one to five stars, are selected by the colleges of their choice and given scholarships. This officially occurs in early February; however, since 2017, students can sign up as early as January, which means competitive universities must start recruiting for the next season before the current one is even finished. This has caused a number of issues, most prominently by incentivizing schools to also hire new head coaches early to help market their program to recruits. Since those coaches have to come from somewhere, this means that it has become increasingly common for coaches, even ones in the middle of a successful run, to leave their current teams in the middle of the season to pursue higher profile positions and more lucrative contracts, a situation that few fans or players are ever happy with.

Before July 2021, college football players (like all NCAA athletes) were not allowed to be directly paid outside of their scholarships, and schools faced harsh punishment if they were found to have paid their players, directly or indirectly. USC was found guilty of providing "improper benefits" to star player Reggie Bush in 2004 and 2005; as a consequence, USC was required to forfeit all the games in which Bush appeared after receiving the gifts, including the 2005 national championship game. Bush himself was scrubbed from team records and university promotional materials for a decade, and the NCAA still officially doesn't recognize his statistics. Many other schools have suffered similar fates, most infamously Southern Methodist, the only football program to have received the NCAA "death penalty" for over a decade of widespread payments to players. The combination of penalties (including two canceled seasons and 55 scholarships lost) and stigma (few players wanted to play for SMU after the scandal) was so damaging that it took 22 years before the former powerhouse had another winning season (by which point none of its players had even been born when the scandal broke) and 10 years after that for the Mustangs to make their next appearance in the national rankings. Only in the mid-2020s, after the legalization of NIL (see below), has the school even started to approach its past prominence.

This forced amateurism became an increasingly controversial and criticized policy, particularly for football players who a) play for programs that bring in millions of revenue for their schools, b) play for coaches who receive multi-million dollar contracts, c) are especially vulnerable to injuries that could end a pro career before it gets started (often without insurance for said injuries), and d) are often not truly prepared for other career paths by the free education they receive as sole compensation for their play. On top of that, many saw it unfair that all other students could monetize their social media accounts, or take jobs outside and even for their school, while scholarship athletes couldn't. As a result, players, politicians, and even Supreme Court justices became increasingly vocal in their opposition to the existing amateur rules as an unfair labor practice, becoming one of the few issues in American politics that saw something approaching bipartisan consensus.

The first signs of a changing landscape came in the NAIA (see "Different levels" below), which in 2014 allowed student-athletes at its member schools to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL), though they initially could not reference their status as student-athletes. Much larger change followed in 2019 when California passed a law that allowed college athletes within the state to profit from their NIL, with considerably fewer restrictions than the NAIA rules. Several other states followed with similar laws. In 2021, shortly before the first of these laws were to take effect, the US Supreme Court held that any serious NCAA attempts to prevent student-athletes from receiving NIL compensation would likely run afoul of antitrust (competition) laws. Caving to the inevitable, the NCAA issued its own NIL rules. While the NCAA still prohibits member schools from directly paying players beyond their scholarships, schools can no longer prevent players from being paid by outside parties, with certain limitations that vary from institution and state (ex. Can't conflict with a university's athletic sponsorship deals, can't use their school's trademarks barring a licensing deal or permission, can't run afoul of an existing school honor code, etc.).^note However, the US service academies can prevent said payment—the Department of Defense prohibits cadets/midshipmen from endorsements and sponsorships. Most schools immediately formed NIL collectives comprised of wealthy alumni that were essentially tasked with paying players in lieu of the school itself. Essentially no one likes this unnecessarily convoluted system; traditionalists were mad that amateurism was over, players were upset that they lacked any protections as employees, donors were mad that they had to foot the bill for their schools to stay competitive, and even the schools probably would have preferred for things to be better regulated. In 2024, the NCAA and its member conferences were forced to settle a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit from former players in multiple sports (House v. NCAA) protesting their exclusion from TV revenue; part of that settlement included a complete end to amateurism, making players de facto employees of their schools in 2025.

While pro football players can ostensibly play as long as they can compete (10-15 year runs are not uncommon and 20 years is not unheard of, especially for kickers and punters since they tend not to get hit very often), a college football player's eligibility was more or less limited to four years through the 2025 season. We say "more or less" because there was the option of redshirting, where a coach was allowed to stretch a player's eligibility to five years instead of four, with the stipulation that one of those years (most commonly the first, as many freshman are felt to be not quite ready for the collegiate level) would be spent mostly on the bench and that the player participate in no more than four regular-season games (Division I) or three total games (Division II).^note Prior to 2018 in Division I and 2023 in Division II, even participating in one game "burned" the redshirt. From 2018–2023, D-I postseason games (conference championships, bowls, FCS playoffs, and the CFP) counted against the 4-game limit. Division III still prohibits redshirting. They can participate in practices, which is the origin of the name; such players traditionally wore a red jersey in practice. Extra redshirt seasons are occasionally granted in extreme cases of injury where a player is sidelined for multiple seasons. Also, thanks to a 2024 court victory by Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia, it was at the time likely that at least some time spent in junior college (see "Different Levels" below) would not count against NCAA eligibility going forward.

In 2026, Division I adopted a new "five for five" eligibility model, in which athletes in all sports have a five-year eligibility window, and can play in all five years. The new model has a couple of dramatic differences from the one used through 2025–26:

• The pre-2026 eligibility clock started when a student enrolled in a degree-granting institution. In the new model, the eligibility clock starts with full-time enrollment in a degree-granting institution, or the start of the academic year following the student's 19th birthday, whichever is sooner.^note The initial proposal started the clock with high school graduation, which would have seriously affected early high school graduates—either academic superstars, or Québécois(e), who graduate from high school one grade earlier than their counterparts in the US or Anglophone Canada. It would have also affected those who took a "gap year" before enrolling in college. In men's ice hockey specifically, many players delay college attendance to develop in junior leagues. Concerns from that community, as well as the service academies (many of whose cadets/midshipmen spend a year at the academy's in-house prep school before enrolling in the academy proper), led to the starting point being changed.
• Redshirting is now banned, even for medical reasons. The only situations that would allow for extended eligibility are active-duty military service, pregnancy, or religious missions.^{Note 1}The last of these is very common at BYU, the only D-I Mormon school. Most young LDS men, and a few women, go on missions (2 years for men, 18 months for women) at some time after their high school graduation. ^{Note 2}The ban on medical redshirting received significant pushback, but didn't lead to any change to the model. Also, a redshirting ban hurts athletes who need further physical development, although the tweaked proposal now allows early HS grads to take a prep school year before starting their eligibility clocks.
  • The new model takes full effect for those who enroll for the first time in the 2027–28 school year. Athletes who had remaining eligibility under the old rules at the end of 2025–26, plus those enrolling for the first time in 2026–27, can use either the old or new eligibility rules, depending on what's most favorable to each individual.
    
    

For decades, the NCAA penalized students who attempted to transfer to another program by forcing them to sit out a season of play once at their new school. This rule was first relaxed in 2006, when the NCAA established the "graduate transfer" rule allowing players who graduated with remaining athletic eligibility to transfer to another school without sitting out. Initially, this was only if the player enrolled in a postgraduate degree program not offered at the previous school, but this rule was later relaxed to allow enrollment in such programs regardless of whether the old school offered it. It was further relaxed in 2020, when graduate transfers were allowed to play while pursuing a second bachelor's degree at the new school, and was relaxed still further in 2021 by allowing every student to move programs one time without penalty. More recently, all limits on transfers were lifted, with the caveat that a player can only represent the first school attended in a given academic year.^note The NCAA had long allowed the so-called "one-time transfer exception" in all sports other than baseball, men's and women's basketball, football, and men's ice hockey. The 2021 change placed all sports under the same transfer rules. Finally, three years after graduating from high school, a college player has the option to forgo the rest of his collegiate eligibility and enter the NFL Draft early. A player automatically forfeits his eligibility if he accepts a salary to play football (but not a different sport — a few high-profile college footballers have played minor league baseball^note In the past, accepting pay for any sport would invalidate college eligibility for all sports, but that rule has since been discarded because it was stupid.) or signs with an agent to negotiate with professional teams. Before July 2021, accepting endorsements also ended eligibility, as did signing with an agent for any purpose. A player who leaves early for the NFL Draft but pulls out of it before it's held can apply for reinstatement of college eligibility, and the NCAA normally grants it; however, once the draft has been held, they cannot return to college even if they are not drafted.

College football is played mostly on Saturdays, but there is at least one game every week on Thursday and Friday and often also Tuesday and/or Wednesday, and the opening week of the season sees the remaining two days of the week represented as well.^note This is because the NFL, which traditionally carries those days, generally starts the week after Labor Day weekend, whereas the college football season usually starts the week leading up to it. The Mid-American Conference is especially famous for playing on midweek nights (even Tuesday or Wednesday). As with high school football, the playing season is basically the same as the fall semester, but some schools will play a defense vs. offense team scrimmage in the spring to make sure the players are keeping themselves in shape. There is a "bye week" for most teams to give them some mid-season rest, although some teams use a Thursday for this purpose instead, while others play the entire season through without a break; Penn State was long famous for not using a bye week.

American collegiate sports has one of the largest and most complex sporting structures in the world, rivaling even the English association football system.^note There are even some rough analogues between college football divisions and the English soccer pyramid. Think of it like this: FBS Power 4 (and Notre Dame)=Premier League, FBS G6=EFL Championship, FCS=EFL Trophy leagues, D-II=FA Trophy leagues, D-III=FA Vase leagues. The NAIA falls somewhere between the last two of these. It began with football, and took over a century to evolve into its current form.

College football had a very loose organizational structure until World War II, and even after the war it took a while for it to take its current shape. In the early years, the sport was centered around regional conferences and alliances. Eventually the notion that there was a tier of elite schools developed, but this didn't become semi-formalized until the 1930s. In 1937, the NCAA began dividing schools into the "University Division" (the high-profile teams) and the "College Division" (everyone else). Historically black colleges also formed a separate de facto division that, thanks to segregation, was isolated from the rest of the sport, though the Civil Rights Movement brought them into the mainstream of the sport by The '60s.

Many College Division schools shared dual membership in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), a younger organization than the NCAA that catered more to smaller schools. The NAIA launched a playoff system culminating in a national championship game in 1956. After that, the NCAA formalized its two-tier structure. While the University Division had the highest profile with its polls and bowl games, the College Division also got weekly AP and UPI rankings with a mythical national champ declared at the end of the season and a smattering of regional bowl games (Tangerine, Boardwalk, Grantland Rice, Pecan, Camellia) that aired on ABC. However, this two-tiered structure didn't please everyone. UD schools who couldn't maintain the large football budgets of the biggest programs pushed for an intermediate division of like-minded schools, and there was a growing divide between College Division schools that offered athletic scholarships and those who didn't.^note The NCAA semi-formalized that last divide in 1969 by splitting off a hundred or so non-scholarship schools into a "College Division II", which got two bowls of their own, the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl and the Knute Rockne Bowl. The Stagg Bowl later became the D-III championship game.

The NCAA finally addressed this in 1973 by dividing the membership into three divisions. The University Division became Division I, and the College Division was divided into Division II (which allowed scholarships) and Division III (no scholarships). The NCAA also established a playoff system for Divisions II & III. In 1978, the NCAA further divided D-I into I-A (the major schools) and I-AA (everything else). I-AA membership was voluntary at first, and the division hovered around 40 schools in its early years, but the NCAA demoted a bunch of low-attendance I-A schools to I-AA in 1982, and the current structure was basically set: around 100 schools each in I-A and I-AA, and closer to 200 each in II and III, with limits on the number of full athletic scholarships that can be awarded by a team in each division (currently 36 in D-II and none in D-III; D-I now has a roster limit of 105 for both FBS and FCS).^note The limit is 24 for NAIA schools.^{More detail}The number of scholarships isn't the whole story. Before the House settlement dramatically changed the D-I financial model starting in 2025, FBS football was one of six D-I sports classified as "head-count"—the others being men's and women's basketball, women's gymnastics, women's tennis, and women's volleyball. In those sports, the number of players receiving athletic financial aid was limited, but each such player could receive a full ride, and they pretty much always did unless scholarships were limited by the NCAA as punishment for rules violations. FCS football, all other D-I sports, and all D-II sports were "equivalency" sports, and D-II sports still are. This means that total athletic aid in a given sport is limited to the equivalent of a set number of full scholarships. Pre-House, FBS and FCS actually shared the same limit of 85 aid recipients, with FCS football limited to 63 equivalents. All NAIA sports are also "equivalency" sports. As for D-III's non-scholarship status, casual fans sometimes misunderstand it to mean that players can't receive any financial assistance, but they're actually eligible for the same financial aid (both academic merit-based and needs-based) as the rest of the student body. There are plenty of opportunities for Loophole Abuse in this situation, however, and almost all successful D-III programs have been accused of bending the rules to favor athletes at one time or another. As if this wasn't all confusing enough for the casual fan as it is, the NCAA renamed the D-I classifications in 2006—I-A became FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision), and I-AA became FCS (Football Championship Subdivision). Fans have often found these names clunky, and the I-A and I-AA tags are still commonly used, especially since both subdivisions now conduct a playoff and the renames have become an Artifact Title. Incidentally, while many schools have played at two of the current NCAA levels, and a decent number have played at three, only two programs have played at all four current levels—UCF and James Madison.^note UCF held that title alone for over a quarter-century (they rose to I-A in 1996) before James Madison made the jump in 2022. Current FCS programs UAlbany, Mercyhurst, Merrimack, Sacred Heart, Stonehill, Stony Brook, Tarleton State, Towson, Valparaiso and West Georgia would join the list if they ever moved to FBS (Tarleton has also played as a junior college). LIU would arguably count if it moved up, since its predecessor program LIU Post (originally C. W. Post) had D-III and D-II stints before it got folded into the D-I Long Island University athletic department. LIU's Brooklyn campus had football, but dropped it in 1940, before the NCAA's divisional split and also before the Post campus existed. Current D-II school Savannah State has been in three of the four, but moved back down from FCS in 2019.

FBS remains the highest level of play and garners the most national attention. For most of the FBS's history, national champions were chosen by the polls, with a sole "national champion" being unofficially crowned if both polls agreed and a split national championship resulting if they didn't. In 1998, the FBS introduced a postseason championship structure based around giving the two top teams an opportunity to compete against each other for the title. In 2014, this shifted into a committee selecting four teams to play a semi-final bracket before the championship game, and in 2024 that bracket expanded to 12 teams (see more under "The College Football Playoff"). This has all been organized by the FBS schools and conferences themselves; the NCAA has never organized an official championship in FBS or its predecessors.^note While the NCAA does not operate an FBS national championship, its record books list national champions crowned by various outside parties, including polls, computer rankings, historians, the BCS, and now the CFP. FBS schools play almost all of their games against other FBS schools, though most will play a game or two a season against an FCS school as a tradeoff: the FBS team gets, in theory, an easy win, the FCS team gets a lucrative payday. This isn't without its risks: several FCS schools will beat FBS schools in a given season, most famously being when #5 ranked Michigan lost to then-FCS Appalachian State in 2007 in possibly the biggest upset in college football history. There are rules controlling these games. Only one FCS win can count toward bowl eligibility for an FBS team, meaning that if a team schedules two such games they'll need to have at least a 7-5 record instead of 6-6 to qualify for a bowl. By design, this usually discourages FBS teams from playing against more than one FCS team per year.

The rest of 4-year college football is currently played in the FCS and Division II and III in the NCAA, and in the NAIA, which was once large enough to have two divisions, but a mass exodus of NAIA schools to the NCAA starting in The '90s has reduced NAIA membership to under 100 schools for football. The term "small college" is often used to describe non-FBS football, and it's largely accurate, but enrollment can range anywhere from just a few hundred full-time students (NAIA school Arkansas Baptist has around 375) to nearly 32,000 undergraduates (FCS UC Davis).^note Before moving to FBS for the 2024 season, the largest non-FBS football school was Kennesaw State, with over 37,000 undergraduates in its final FCS season in 2023. D-II is largely made up of lower-tier state-supported schools; D-III is mainly private colleges, including some of America's most elite schools (MIT, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Amherst), while the NAIA is heavy on tiny church-related schools. All of those classifications crown a national champion via a playoff system. In normal years, FCS has 24 teams in its playoff, D-II has 32 (formerly 28, expanded in 2025), D-III has 40 (formerly 32, expanded in 2024), and the NAIA has 20 (formerly 16, expanded in 2023). These classifications all have their own elite programs, traditions and rivalries, and some of the most amazing statistical feats of college football have occurred in them. Linfield University, a D-III school from Oregon, is on a 69-year streak of winning seasons (1956–present, interrupted in 2020 by COVID-19). An Ohio D-III school, the University of Mount Union, won 24 consecutive conference titles from 1982 to 2015, and put up a .951 winning percentage from 1990–2019 (397–20–1). John Gagliardi, who coached at NAIA member Carroll (Montana) and D-III school Saint John's (Minnesota), amassed 489 wins in 64 years as a head coach. The highest-scoring game in the sport's modern history was a 2011 NAIA contest in which Faulkner (Alabama) defeated Union Commonwealth^*called Union at the time, but they changed their name in 2024. (Kentucky) 95-89 in triple OT (the score was tied at 75 at the end of regulation). These schools boast some unique stadiums, like Winston-Salem State (the stadium is also home to a NASCAR track, which circles the field), Northern Michigan (the only domed stadium outside of Division I), South Dakota Mines (there are several parking terraces surrounding the field, which allows you to watch a game from your car) and Knox College (except for two tiny sets of bleachers, all of the stadium's "seats" are on grass berms that totally surround the field). While small college players have succeeded in the NFL, it's in coaching that these schools have made their biggest impact on the pro game, with four Super Bowl-winning coaches who graduated from D-III or NAIA schools.^note Don Shula (John Carroll), Bill Belichick (Wesleyan), Mike McCarthy (Baker), Nick Sirianni (Mount Union).

One D-II school that many fans have at least heard of is Slippery Rock of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference. Named after the town in which it's located, the Inherently Funny name of Slippery Rock has made it synonymous with small college football. It first gained national attention in 1936 with the arguments over the national championship as decided by the inaugural AP poll, with some wags making a tongue-in cheek case that Slippery Rock (who finished a modest 6-3 that year) was the real national champion.^explanation Minnesota was voted #1 despite a loss to Northwestern. Pittsburgh argued that they deserved the title, since they'd beaten Notre Dame, who'd beaten Northwestern. Detractors noted that Pittsburgh had lost to Duquesne, then it was noticed that Duquesne had lost to West Virginia Wesleyan, who lost to Westminster (PA), who lost to Slippery Rock. This led to a Running Gag where public address announcers and broadcasters for big time teams would announce Slippery Rock's scores, most famously at Michigan's home games, with an Odd Friendship between the two schools developing because of it. Michigan has invited Slippery Rock to play three games at Michigan Stadium over the years (1979, 1981, 2014; the 1979 game holds the attendance record for a D-II game, with 61,143 fans witnessing The Rock's 45-14 loss to Shippensburg).

Two-year colleges^note also known as "community" or "junior" colleges, which cater to students who lack the financial ability, academic performance, or geographical convenience to attend a 4-year school right out of high school, who can then transfer to a 4-year school to finish a bachelor's degree before or after earning an associate degree at the 2-year school also field football teams. The two main governing bodies are the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) and California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA). Even though the NJCAA was founded in California, that state no longer participates in the NJCAA, choosing to govern sports at its 2-year colleges itself. Oregon and Washington don't participate in the NJCAA either; the non-football Northwest Athletic Conference governs juco sports in that region (no juco in those states has a football team). Both the NJCAA and the CCCAA have traditionally held postseason bowl games but have added formal playoffs in recent years (four teams in the NJCAA, eight in the CCCAA) alongside the bowls. The NJCAA also added a "Division III" championship game in 2021 (though there's no "D-II" for football) for non-scholarship teams. So called "juco" transfers are a common source of college football talent at the NCAA level, giving coaches players who already have one or two seasons of experience under their belts and are theoretically more mature and skilled than a player just out of high school. Some big names began their college football careers in either the NJCAA (Heisman winners Roger Staubach and Cam Newton, Heisman runner-up and current Tennessee HC Josh Heupel) or CCCAA (Heisman winner O.J. Simpson, Warren Moon, Aaron Rodgers, Josh Allen).

There's also the variant known as sprint football, which was created in the 1930s by Ivy League schools as "150-pound football" and later known as "lightweight football". It was played almost exclusively in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states before expanding into the Midwest and Upper South in 2022. It's played under standard college rules, but has severe limits on player weight. Originally, players could weigh no more than 150 lb/68 kg; today, the limit is 178 lb/81 kg, with an additional requirement of a minimum of 5% body fat.^note Players must meet these limits at two separate weigh-ins, four days and two days before each game. This weight limit means that speed and agility are valued more than sheer strength. As of the 2026 season, 15 schools compete in this variant—10 in the Collegiate Sprint Football League (the variant's original league) and five in the Midwest Sprint Football League. Since weight limits take sprint football out of the sport's mainstream, few figures in this variant have achieved any kind of notability. Future NFL coaching great George Allen did serve as an assistant coach for a season. Future NFL team owner Robert Kraft played in college, as did two others who achieved greater fame outside of sports, Jimmy Carter and Donald Rumsfeld.

That's not all. A limited-contact form of the sport, flag football, is seeing increased popularity in the current decade, having been popular in school physical education classes and college intramural sports for decades and having more recently developed into a seriously competitive sport for men and especially women. Here, players wear a belt with flags attached; depending on the design of the belt, either the flags or the belt itself can be easily removed by a defender. The ball is down once the ball carrier's flag or belt is removed, removing the need to tackle and cause physical harm to ball carriers. Rules vary widely by league; team sizes range from 4 to 10 players and may be coed or single-sex; field sizes can range from NFL (or CFL) size to a third of that; blocking may or may not be allowed (if allowed, contact is limited to the chest area); linemen may or may not be eligible receivers; and more. The NFL now strongly promotes flag football as a youth sport and has played a major role in promoting it as a women's college sport. In 2020, the NAIA partnered with the NFL to add women's flag football as one of its "emerging women's sports", and the sport has since been upgraded to "invitational" status, one step short of full championship status. The NJCAA added women's football as a recognized sport in 2023. In the 2020s, NCAA members (also frequently in partnership with the NFL) have been embracing women's flag football. In spring 2025, the D-III Atlantic East Conference became the first NCAA conference to officially sponsor the sport, followed by the D-II Conference Carolinas in 2026. The first D-I conference to sponsor the sport is the FCS Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, with its first championship in spring 2027.^note Another FCS conference, the Big South, beat the MEAC to announcing it would sponsor the sport, but doesn't plan to actually hold a championship until spring 2028. By the time the Atlantic East started flag football play, about 65 NCAA members had club-level or varsity flag football teams, leading the NCAA to recommend that all three of its divisions add flag football to its own Emerging Sports for Women program. All divisions approved this at the 2026 NCAA convention. Since the convention takes place in January, before the variant's standard spring season, the sport's "emerging" status took immediate effect. In May of that year, the NCAA committee that oversees the Emerging Sports program recommended that all three divisions sponsor legislation to elevate the sport to full championship status; at the time, over 100 NCAA members were set to compete in the spring 2027 season. If approved, the first official NCAA championship would take place in spring 2028. Flag football has also grown as a competitive sport at the international level; the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles will feature men's and women's flag football as full medal events, marking the first time that any form of gridiron football has been part of the Olympic program.

Before deciding on who goes to which bowl game, the first step of the FBS postseason is to determine who is the champion of each individual conference. For most FBS schools, the conference title is the ultimate goal for the season, as it is all but impossible for non-blue bloods to compete for a national championship. For most of college football history, this honor just went to the program with the best record (sometimes considering tiebreakers, sometimes not). With so few regular season games and even fewer in-conference, this often resulted in co-champions, which proved dissatisfying for fans and was a headache for bowl scheduling. In 1991, the SEC dug up a Suddenly Significant Rule approved by the NCAA at the request of two D-II conferences that would allow any conference with 12 members to split into two divisions and hold a conference championship game.^note For further background, see Tod Eberle and Dick Yoder, listed together in the "Administrators" folder of the "Non-Player Figures" page. The SEC promptly scooped up South Carolina and Arkansas to reach that number, and in 1992 held the first conference championship game the week after the end of the regular season.

Most of the other conferences swiftly followed suit, which had the side effect of a massive reshuffling of conference alignment, as conferences that didn't have 12 members and couldn't host this high-profile game were at risk of being left behind in competing with their peers for ticket sales, TV coverage, prestige, and consideration for the top spot on the polls. This competition also led to some conferences who were eligible for a conference championship game losing said eligibility if their members were poached. Ironically, this most prominently happened to the Big 12, which kept its name despite only having ten teams following Nebraska and Colorado getting poached in 2011. When this led to the Big 12 losing a spot in the first ever College Football Playoff (more on that later) because their best teams couldn't compete in the extra game that other conferences could, the NCAA removed the "12-member" requirement in 2015. By 2018, all of the FBS conferences had a championship game.

As with all things college football, deciding the conference champion via a game rather than standings is something fans love to grumble about. Besides the above-mentioned conference realignment and national championship issues, the NCAA's old requirement that the conferences had divisions also introduced the rare but not unheard of possibility of the champion having a worse record than multiple other teams in the same conference if they won a tightly contested division with multiple mediocre teams while the other one was top heavy. In 2022, the NCAA allowed the conferences to have complete control over who participates in the game, leading some conferences to immediately scrap the division system and just pick the two best teams; by 2024, all FBS conferences except the Sun Belt had eliminated football divisions. The other issue for schools with national title aspirations is that the extra game can put them at a disadvantage for playoff selection; several teams have been within striking distance of a Top 4 selection only to lose or receive key injuries in the extra game and get knocked out, while other teams^note 2016 and '22 Ohio State, '18 Alabama (who won the natty), and '19 Notre Dame have made the playoffs despite not even being eligible to play in one and getting a longer rest period. With the expansion to 12 teams, it is now expected that multiple teams every year will make it to the playoffs without playing in a conference championship game; while the system is meant to incentivize winning one (giving high-powered conference winners a bye and low-ranked ones a chance at sneaking in), neither of the finalists in the first year played in a title game, and only one did so in the second year. Additionally, while divisions were never very popular, the growing size of conferences like the Big Ten and SEC has made it increasingly likely that really great teams can be left out of the championship game purely due to scheduling quirks out of their control. In fact, with momentum building for further CFP expansion in the near future (likely to 24 teams), there's a good chance that conference championship games will go away entirely after that expansion.

The term "bowl game" comes from the earliest (and still most famous) one, the Rose Bowl Game, which was named after the bowl-shaped stadium where it's played.^note Which in turn got its name from Yale's stadium, the Yale Bowl; the Rose Bowl was designed as simply a bigger version of the Yale Bowl in the better wintertime climate of Pasadena, California. The Rose Bowl was first played on New Year's Day 1902 as part of the Tournament of Roses, a popular festival held in Pasadena, which also boasts a famous parade. This "Tournament East-West" game invited the best teams from the East and West, a real novelty in the years before mass air travel. The time required for the Eastern teams to travel by train is also indirectly the reason bowl games are still held nearly a month after the end of the regular season. The Rose was the only postseason bowl game for three decades;^note "bowl" is also used as a term for special regular-season games, particularly annual rivalry games, like the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn a few more started to spring up in the 1930s, sharing the goal of bringing together teams that would normally never play each other, and promoting the economies of their host cities. While bowls' recognition by the polls in deciding a national champion contributed to more games springing up after the 1960s, the expense of hosting a bowl and a lack of prime timeslots for telecasts kept the number of bowls under 20 up until The '90s, when bowls got into the lucrative business of selling their naming rights (the USF&G Sugar Bowl, sponsored by an insurance company, kicked off this trend in 1986), and the rise of ESPN created more possible TV exposure for bowls. At that point the number began ballooning toward today's tally of more than 40. Today, a team must have at least as many wins as losses (at least six wins for a typical twelve-game schedule) in order to participate in a bowl game, although the NCAA can make exceptions. Also, before 2026, teams transitioning from FCS to FBS were ineligible regardless of their records. However, if there weren't enough teams to fill all available bowl slots, second-year transitional teams got first dibs on any open slots if they were otherwise eligible. In 2023, this gave bowl bids to Jacksonville State and James Madison,^note Respectively 8–4 and 11–1 after the regular season. and in 2025 Delaware and Missouri State benefited from this rule. A proposal to allow transitional teams to play in bowls from Day One was approved during the 2026 offseason. It's probably not a coincidence that said proposal came in the wake of (1) 10-time FCS champ North Dakota State making the jump in 2026 and (2) the choice of the vast majority of FCS schools to opt into the House settlement, nominally putting them under the same scholarship rules as FBS.

The "New Year's Six" games hold the highest prestige and are associated with the CFP (more on that in the next folder). They are:

• Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl – The four games that were part of the BCS.
• Cotton Bowl, Peach Bowl – Added to the mix when the CFP began.

These games historically had conference tie-ins, giving certain conference champions automatic invitations (when they were available). The Rose Bowl invited the Pac-12 and Big Ten champions (an arrangement that began in 1946) before 2024, when the CFP expanded and the Pac-12 imploded. The Sugar Bowl invited the SEC and Big 12 champions (it had officially been tied in with the SEC since 1975), and the Orange Bowl invited the ACC champion (formalized in 2007). The Orange and Cotton Bowls had strong historical tie-ins with the Big 8 and Southwest Conference, respectively, when those leagues existed. In the current 12-team CFP, the Rose Bowl retains the right to host the Big Ten champion if that team reaches the relevant playoff round.

The second tier of games consists of lower profile bowls such as the Pop-Tarts Bowl^note Formerly the Blockbuster Bowl, Carquest Bowl, MicronPC Bowl, Tangerine Bowl, Champs Sports Bowl, Russell Athletic Bowl, Camping World Bowl, and Cheez-It Bowl, Citrus Bowl^note Originally the Tangerine Bowl; later the Florida Citrus Bowl, CompUSA Bowl, Outhouse.com Bowl, and Capital One Bowl, since 2015 reverted to "Citrus Bowl" with a name sponsor, currently Cheez-It, ReliaQuest Bowl^note Formerly the Hall of Fame Bowl and Outback Bowl, Sun Bowl^note Briefly renamed the John Hancock Bowl, but reverted to its original name five years later; now sponsored by WK Kellogg Co, consisting of the North American cereal business that the former Kellogg's (now Kellanova) spun off shortly before the 2023 game. Several years before said spinoff, Kellogg's chose to put the name of its Frosted Flakes advertising character Tony the Tiger in the title position., Gator Bowl^note returned to its historic name after having been called the TaxSlayer Bowl, though still retaining TaxSlayer as name sponsor, and Alamo Bowl^note now with a name sponsorship by San Antonio-based oil refiner Valero which are treated with some respect but usually feature matchups among the teams in the middle of the pack of their conferences, with mid-major conference champions and major-conference runners-up making the occasional appearance. Like the BCS and CFP bowls, these second-tier bowls also have conference tie-ins, but for second/third place teams in the conferences in question. Most of the tie-ins are to the major conferences, making it rare for a mid-major team to play in one of these bowls.^note Another reason this is rare is because mid-major teams often play, and lose to, power conference teams near the beginning of the season, making it more likely that they won't have enough wins to be eligible to play in a bowl game. Which of these games is the most prestigious is debatable.

The lower tier of bowl games exists solely as a cash grab and Padding for ESPN (and the stadiums and cities the games are played in) during the traditionally quiet holiday week in sports; ESPN actually runs many of these bowls themselves nowadays. Since most bowls have a lot of discretion in who they invite, and how much money the bowl thinks they'll make is often the deciding factor rather than trying to get the best team, sometimes actual good teams from small markets will get screwed over by the higher-tier bowls and be forced to settle for beating the hell out a scrub team in a bottom-tier bowl. These games are usually sponsored by Names to Run Away from Really Fast, such as the DirecTV Holiday Bowl, Quick Lane Bowl^note Successor to the Motor City Bowl, later known as the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, TaxAct Texas Bowl^note Originally just the Texas Bowl, then the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas, AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl, and Academy Sports + Outdoors Texas Bowl, the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl^note Historically just the Independence Bowl, and for a while the Poulan/Weed Eater Independence Bowl, notable only because the 1979 edition was the first college football game broadcast on cable (WTBS) and the 1982 edition was ESPN's first live college football game, simulcasting Mizlou's First-Run Syndication feed. or the Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl^note Historically the St. Petersburg Bowl; "Gasparilla" is the name of an annual pirate festival in the Tampa Bay Area. This game spent a couple of years as the Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl St. Petersburg, then the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl.. Many of these bowls used to have less embarrassing names before the trend of sponsors using their own name as the sole name of the bowl instead of just tagging their name to the front or back; this trend is near universally derided by fans, but the lack of attendance of many of these games due to their featuring smaller and out-of-market teams tends to make it necessary for the bowl to make a profit.^note This also means that when a sponsorship expires, the bowl will pick up an entirely new name, so these games also don't even have a consistent identity. These games are solely of interest to the universities playing in them (or will be a future Old Shame if your team is invited to the not-very-prestigious-at-all 68 Ventures Bowl^note formerly the GMAC Bowl, GoDaddy Bowl, Dollar General Bowl, and LendingTree Bowl), and about the only accomplishment to be earned by the players (outside of a unwanted trip to Detroit, Boise, Shreveport, or Birmingham) is a Cosmetic Award which means nothing. Unless the team lucks out and gets invited to a bowl in a nice vacation spot, such as the Hawaii Bowl or Bahamas Bowl,^note Renamed for 2023 only to the Famous Toastery Bowl after its corporate sponsor; that edition was moved to North Carolina because its regular stadium in The Bahamas was being renovated. of course. Some sponsors at least recognize the low stakes of the competition and play the names for laughs: the aforementioned Cheez-It Citrus Bowl, Famous Idaho Potato Bowl^note Founded as the Humanitarian Bowl, then called the MPCComputers.com Bowl before picking up a sponsorship from the Idaho Potato Commission, Duke's Mayo Bowl^note Formerly the Queen City Bowl, Continental Tire Bowl, Meineke Car Care Bowl, and Belk Bowl, Scooter's Coffee Frisco Bowl, and Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl respectively feature a Drench Celebration for the winning coach of said brand of snack crackers, french fries, mayonnaise, coffee, and said brand of frosted corn flakes. Not to mention that the Holiday Bowl began giving the winning coach a shower of eggnog in 2023. Also, the Pop-Tarts Bowl lets the winning team eat the mascot... literally. (It's not what you think; the live costumed mascot goes into a toaster prop and is replaced by a replica consisting of a giant Pop-Tart for the award ceremony.) The now-defunct Starco Brands LA Bowl Hosted by Gronk (i.e., Rob Gronkowski) had a unique prize to the winner—from its first edition in 2021 to its last in 2025, the winning team received a championship belt, with the game's offensive and defensive MVPs also receiving their own belts.

The extent of ESPN's control of the bowl system was illustrated in 2021. There were 41 bowls scheduled, but 83 teams were bowl-eligible (plus a 6-7 Hawaii squad who qualified to host their home bowl), which meant that one bowl-eligible team would have to stay home. Then ESPN had the bright idea to create a 42nd bowl on the Thursday before bowl bids would be finalized. The NCAA fast-tracked the approval process, and by Sunday the first (and as it turned out, only) Frisco Football Classic was scheduled for later in December in Frisco, Texas, outside Dallas, which is already the home of the Frisco Bowl and the FCS Championship Game.

There now so many lower-tier bowl games that almost two-thirds of the FBS will play in a bowl game every year, a fact widely ridiculed by fans. In the 2010–11 season, there was even some worry that there wouldn't be enough bowl eligible teams to play all the bowl games (despite out-of-conference games making it easier for middling Power Five teams to post winning records), which would have required teams with losing records to be invited to fill the remaining slots; two years later, this worry resurfaced when four separate teams that would have been bowl eligible had postseason bans. While ultimately this didn't happen, it illustrates what a meager accomplishment being invited to a minor bowl has become. The proliferation of bowls got so ridiculous that the NCAA called time out on it in 2016, imposing a three-year freeze on certification of new bowl games; a few more have been added since that freeze, most notably the LA Bowl, the first to be named after a living person—before Rob Gronkowski became the host (and Starco the new corporate sponsor), it was the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl.^note Technically, it was sponsored by his show, but that still didn't mean fans loved there being a bowl named after someone who's not even directly involved in the sport. Long-time youth football coach Snoop Dogg sponsoring the Arizona Bowl in 2024 went over slightly better. There are also conference tie-ins for these bowls, but they tend to be a lot less strictly enforced than in higher-tier bowls (especially since a conference might not have enough eligible teams to fill all its tie-ins, but also because a major conference probably doesn't care all that much about the tie-in for its 6th place team and a minor conference lacks the influence to do anything about it if their tie-in is ignored).

Obviously, as stated above, this system is far from perfect, or even comprehensible, but it's also difficult for fans to agree on what exactly would constitute a fair system, not to mention the difficulty in untangling the tens of millions of dollars in contracts made between the power conferences and the bowls themselves. The discussion is Serious Business; even the United States Congress has gotten involved in recent years, in college football's own version of Executive Meddling.^note In the Congress' defense, trainloads of money are involved, which can have a huge effect on local and state economies. There's also some definite examples of corruption among the bowls, and the executives of the ostensibly non-profit organizations that run them get ludicrously huge salaries. The future of the bowl system with the playoff expansion in 2024 remains hazy. Bowl Season (formerly the Football Bowl Association), the trade association for the bowls, has floated a possible reduction in the number of games and stiffening bowl eligibility to seven wins in a season (which would've eliminated 19 teams if this had been in place in 2022, and 22 in 2023).

Fans of the bowl system (and of non-blue blood programs) tend to downplay the importance of the national championship, emphasizing instead how the bowls add a degree of special ceremony to the FBS postseason that is unique to major college football and gives each game a "winner-take-all" urgency that it might not otherwise have if the winner had another game left to play. However, just as many fans want college football to be more like other sports, and high-level teams and their fans have asked for decades (if not longer) for a method of determining a single annual champion. Complaining about these systems is as cherished a pastime as football itself. The current system is the College Football Playoff (CFP), launched in 2014, with the survivor being recognized as national champions.

Due to the logistical difficulties of staging multiple games in the years before commercial air travel, national champions was first decided by polls. The Associated Press began a weekly poll of journalists in 1936, with the school ranked #1 at the end of the season regarded as the "national champion". United Press International instituted a similar poll of coaches starting in 1950, and the coaches' poll has gone through a number of different sponsors over the decades, with USA Today as the current publisher and US LBM^note a distributor of specialty building materials as the current sponsor. These and numerous other ranking systems competed with each other for decades over who got to decide the best team in football, resulting in many seasons where multiple schools claimed to be the "national champion". Some bowls that attempted to pair up the #1 ranked team with the #2 or #3 program became de facto national championship games. Since those games got great ratings, the bowls began to collaborate with each other to try to make that an annual occurrence in the early 1990s.

Prior to the CFP, the most successful system for selecting a definitive national champion was the Bowl Championships Series (BCS), which formed in 1998 to succeed a few other less organized systems. In the BCS, the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10/Pac-12, and SEC were known as the "Automatic Qualifying" conferences. The champion of a non-AQ conference (an FBS conference other than those six) could be guaranteed a spot in a high profile bowl against another similarly high-profile team if they were in the top 12 in the year's final BCS ranking or in the top 16 and ranked higher than the champion of at least one AQ conference (in practice, usually the Big East).^note If Notre Dame was in the top 8 of the final BCS ranking, they were guaranteed a BCS bowl. Non-AQ teams who met these qualifications were referred to as "BCS busters".^note Utah in 2004 (beat Pitt in the Fiesta Bowl), Boise State in '06 (beat Oklahoma in an epic Fiesta Bowl), Hawaii in '07 (curbstomped by Georgia in the Sugar Bowl), Utah in '08 (beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl), Boise State and TCU in '09 (controversially matched against one another in the Fiesta Bowl, which BCS critics declared the "Separate But Equal Bowl", with Boise State winning), TCU again in '10 (beat Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl), and Northern Illinois in '12 (thrashed by Florida State in the Orange Bowl). Two of these schools later joined AQ conferences—Utah joined what would become the Pac-12 in 2011 (and would move to the Big 12 in 2024), and TCU joined the Big 12 in 2012. However, this system still ultimately just picked two teams to compete in the National Championship Game; this resulted in a split 2003 championship, as the AP Poll voters protested USC being kept from competing for the BCS title by voting them the victor instead. Things finally came to a head for this system in 2011, when the BCS selected LSU and Alabama, two teams from the SEC West (the same division of the same conference, meaning that officially one of them was the third-place team of the SEC), as the #1 and #2 participants in the championship game, effectively snubbing every other FBS conference. After this, discussion of implementing a playoff system accelerated greatly and, after numerous negotiations between the "power" conferences, a new (but still very limited) "College Football Playoff" model was formally drawn up and adopted in 2014.

The four-team CFP model had a selection committee (as in the NCAA basketball tournaments) pick the teams instead of the polls. The sites for the first two semifinal games were played at a rotation of the major bowls, and the Championship game (much like the NFL's Super Bowl) is awarded to a city based on a bid. Almost immediately after its announcement, the new system was met with various criticisms from fans, ranging from concerns that the new selection committee would be no more unbiased in selecting teams as the old BCS formula (which mixed human polls with a set of complicated computer algorithms that nobody outside the programmers actually understood) to complaints that having only 4 teams compete is nowhere near enough to fairly decide a true champion in the 138-team FBS.^note FCS has a 24-team playoff, while Divisions II and III respectively have 32- and 40-team playoffs, significantly more than anyone has seriously suggested for FBS. The NAIA playoff features 20 teams. Thus, it's been demonstrated that leagues with considerably less resources than FBS can handle a larger playoff. Additionally, this limited selection remained dominated by the SEC, largely excluded participation from many conferences (even an undefeated 2017 UCF team, which defiantly claimed a natty even when they were excluded from the playoff and not ranked #1 by any polls), and further devalued the other bowl games. In response, the playoff expanded in 2024 from four teams to 12, with guaranteed spots for the five highest-ranked conference champions (usually allowing one or two low-ranked teams to sneak their way into the mix), a new four-round system (with the first being new games scheduled at the home stadiums of the higher ranked teams and the New Year's Six bowls comprising the second and third rounds), and first-round byes for the top four conference winners. The new system ran fairly smoothly its first year, with the main criticisms being over some lopsided games in the early rounds (which is fairly standard for postseason play in any sport) and the way the first-round byes were handled; the teams with byes went 0-for-4 in their bowls, leading to suggestions that reserving them for conference champs was misguided. The CFP organizers soon responded to this by announcing that from 2025 on, seeding will be based solely on the committee rankings, though the five highest-ranked conference champs would still receive automatic bids. However, that change didn't do much to help the teams with first-round byes—of the four teams that got byes in 2025, only top seed and eventual champ Indiana won, and two of the other three lost by double digits (with Texas Tech being shut out).^note That said, this story argues that the emerging narrative about byes being a "kiss of death" is flawed and very lacking in context. For 2026, the 12-team bracket stayed in place; all Power 4 conference champs will get autobids, Notre Dame will get in if it's in the top 12 in the CFP rankings, and the top Group of 6 team gets in even if it's not a conference champ.

The lower divisions of the NCAA (and the NAIA) have long not bothered with this nonsense, having conducted association-operated national championship playoff tournaments for decades (since 1973 for D-II and D-III, 1978 for I-AA/FCS, and the NAIA started its multi-team playoff in 1958). Of course, the average casual fan pays little attention to these divisions, which tend to have fanbases consisting of students and alumni, though NFL scouts also keep a keen eye on them—Super Bowl MVPs Terry Bradshaw (pre-FBS Louisiana Tech), Harvey Martin (East Texas A&M, then known as East Texas State), Richard Dent (Tennessee State), Phil Simms (Morehead State), Doug Williams (Grambling), Jerry Rice (Mississippi Valley State), Kurt Warner (Northern Iowa), Joe Flacco (pre-FBS Delaware), and Cooper Kupp (Eastern Washington) all played at lower division schools. The expansion of the CFP had the side effect of allowing the FCS championship game to move into the early January Monday night timeslot previously occupied by the CFP title game, and as the only football game played that night, the first game in the new slot almost doubled its TV ratings from the previous year. There's currently one FCS bowl: the Celebration Bowl in Atlanta, which pairs the champions of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), two conferences of historically black colleges who've elected to forgo playing in the FCS playoffs. Divisions II and III have a handful of bowls (played either at campus sites or in off-the-beaten-path neutral locations like Corsicana, Texas or Sun Prairie, Wisconsin) which function as a Consolation Prize for teams who didn't make the official NCAA playoffs.

• Princeton vs. Rutgers – The first rivalry in college football, as the two New Jersey schools played each other in the first recognized college football game in 1869. Rutgers won the first match... and Princeton won the next 33, not losing again until 1938, still one of the longest such streaks in the history of the sport. This intrastate "public vs. private" rivalry persisted and was played almost annually for several decades after that, with Princeton mostly continuing to dominate. However, when the Ivy League began to pull back from prioritizing athletics, Rutgers began to start consistently winning... at which point Princeton canceled the rivalry in 1980, and the two schools haven't played in football since.
• Harvard vs. Yale – The Ur-Example, first held in 1875, though no longer of much national importance except to students at the respective schools. Known as "The Game" until the more relevant Ohio State vs. Michigan rivalry usurped that name (though the Harvard and Yale communities still call it that). It is traditionally the final scheduled game for each team and often decides the Ivy League championship. In the early days of college football, where the Ivy League schools were dominant powers, it frequently decided the national champion as well. The only breaks in the series were caused by the World Wars and the COVID-19 Pandemic. The matchup still has enough of a mystique to get an annual live ESPNU telecast and draw huge crowds (51,000 fans attended the 2023 game at Yale). It is also notable for the pranks each school plays on the other in the lead-up to the game, and it remains relevant enough that it hosted College GameDay in 2014. Yale holds a 72–61–8 edge in the series as of 2025.^note Interestingly enough, Harvard is not Yale's most played adversary—that would be Princeton, who they started playing three years earlier, but for whatever reason never became as major a rival.
• Lafayette vs. Lehigh ("The Rivalry") – A matchup between two lower-level FCS teams, both members of the Patriot League and located in the Lehigh Valley of eastern Pennsylvania. It's notable here as the most-played matchup in college football history (the 2025 meeting was the 161st) and the longest uninterrupted rivalry (since 1897) in all of college football.^note The Patriot League didn't play any fall sports, including football, in 2020, but played an abbreviated conference-only season in spring 2021. The Leopards and Mountain Hawks first played in 1884; the large number of games is because the teams played twice each season from 1884 to 1901 (except 1896, when they didn't play at all, and 1891, when they played three times), as well as in the war years of 1943 and 1944. The game is so old that it predates rivalry trophies—the winning team just gets to keep the game ball.
• Amherst vs. Williams ("The Biggest Little Game in America") – These two D-III teams in western Massachusetts have the most-played rivalry in their division, with the 139th meeting in 2025. First played in 1884, It's Personal for both schools: Amherst was founded in 1821 when a group of Williams administrators, professors and students seceded to form a new college (and allegedly stole some library books before they left). The game has attracted national media attention over the years, including hosting College GameDay in 2007.
• Cincinnati vs. Miami (OH) – First played in 1888 (where it was the first official college football game in the state of Ohio), the longest-running current non-conference rivalry in the United States (though they were briefly in the same conference in the late 1940s and early 1950s), the most-played active FBS rivalry between teams from the same state, and the oldest rivalry west of the Allegheny Mountains. They play for the Victory Bell, the oldest rivalry "trophy" in the sport, which was originally a bell on Miami's campus that was rung after Miami victories. Since Cincinnati moved to the Big East in 2005, however, the rivalry has been rather one-sided (though they only have a two-game lead as of 2025). Miami's two most recent wins were in years in which UC changed conferences: 2005 and 2023. Both schools have announced that the annual rivalry will end after 2026 but left the door open for later meetings as non-conference schedules allow.
• Wisconsin vs. Minnesota ("Paul Bunyan's Axe") – The oldest annual rivalry in FBS football, having been first played in 1890 and every year since 1907. Its status was nearly a COVID-19 casualty, with their originally scheduled 2020 matchup canceled due to an outbreak in the Minnesota program, but the teams were able to make the game up on the season's final weekend. It is also one of the most balanced rivalries, with Minnesota leading by one game after the 2025 meeting (although the Badgers have a solid lead since the current trophy was introduced in 1948).
• Army vs. Navy vs. Air Force (for the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy) – The Army–Navy Game has been played since 1890 and annually since 1930, though the roots of the rivalries between the two services run much deeper than football. The Air Force Academy wasn't established until 1954; Air Force first played Army in 1959 and Navy in 1960. The three-way rivalry (and its trophy) wasn't established until 1972, the first season in which Air Force played both of the other academies. The Army-Navy Game is treated with an immense deal of respect, even when, as is usually the case in the modern era, neither team is nationally relevant. In some ways, it is the most "romantic" college sporting event, since few if any of the players on each team will have any pro prospects, evoking the old tradition of playing for "the love of the game" that has largely faded from college sports; since it is traditionally the last regular-season game of the year, this also means that it is usually the last game of competitive football the seniors on either team will ever play before going to serve their country.^note Though in recent years, Army and Navy have made fairly regular bowl appearances. Army joined the American Conference for football only in 2024, aligning it with Navy, but the Army–Navy Game continues to be played as a nonconference matchup at its traditional date.^note The academies can meet before the traditional date only in the conference championship game. Navy has the lead in the series with Army, 64–55–7 as of 2025, but both have a losing record to Air Force, which has claimed the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy far more than its peers. Fun fact #1: The first use of instant replay was by CBS during its coverage of the 1963 Army–Navy Game. Fun fact #2: With the planned 2020 Navy–Notre Dame game being a COVID-19 casualty, the Air Force–Army game is now the longest continuous intersectional rivalry in FBS, with a game in each season since 1971.
• Kansas vs. Missouri ("The Border War"/"Border Showdown") – Dates back to 1891 and grew out of the considerable animosity that already existed between the states, giving this rivalry an uglier edge than most.^note The states fought over slavery before and during the The American Civil War. Both schools' nicknames even refer to that era. "Jayhawks" is a contraction of "Jayhawkers", anti-slavery guerrillas who fought against pro-slavery militants, many from Missouri. "Tigers" is a homage to the "Fighting Tigers of Columbia", a militia that protected the pro-Union town from its pro-Confederate neighbors. Some Missouri students infamously had T-shirts made in 2007 that depicted the burning of Lawrence, Kansas with the text "Scoreboard" underneath, with a quote by pro-slavery militant William Quantrill (who carried out the burning) on the back. Kansas students responded by making their own T-shirts featuring an image of abolitionist leader John Brown with the text "Kansas: Keeping America Safe From Missouri Since 1854." The tamer "Border Showdown" name was introduced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, on the premise that it was inappropriate to refer to a sporting event as a "war" when the nation was actually at war... despite the old name having been used through every other war the United States fought in the past century. Like most attempts to rename rivalries, it never caught on.^note Former Kansas coach Don Fambrough responded to the attempted renaming by saying "It's a goddamn war. And they started it!" Though it had been played for 120 years, interrupted only by the 1918 flu pandemic, the annual rivalry ended when Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC in 2012, holding a very narrow lead of three games in the series. Inevitably, fans of each school accused the other of having "surrendered". The rivalry resumed with a home-and-home in 2025 and 2026, with another home-and-home following in 2030 and 2031.
• Iowa vs. Minnesota ("Floyd of Rosedale") – These Big Ten rivals from neighboring states have played each other regularly since 1891. They are most notable for their trophy, which originates from a bet placed between the governors of the respective states at a 1935 game to try to lighten the mood around a tense matchup (essentially, Iowa fans had threatened to attack the all-white Minnesota roster on the field if they targeted their black running back). The winner of the game would get a pig from the loser's state; Iowa lost, handed over a pig from Rosedale Farms named "Floyd" after Minnesota's governor, and created a bronze pig statue exchanged between the winners of subsequent games. Minnesota has the all-time lead, but Iowa narrowly leads the series since the trophy was introduced.
• Indiana vs. Purdue ("Old Oaken Bucket") – Played between the biggest public-school programs in the state of Indiana since 1891; Purdue dominates the series.
• Auburn vs. Georgia ("The Deep South's Oldest Rivalry") – First played in February 1892^note Predating "The South's Oldest Rivalry" by eight months. and became an annual game in 1898, though interruptions for World War I and World War II prevented it from being the oldest continuous rivalry in FBS. It is the tied for the second most-played FBS rivalry behind Minnesota/Wisconsin and is the oldest rivalry to be played in a major conference championship game, with the schools meeting for a second time in 2017 in the SEC Championship Game. (Auburn won the regular season matchup but Georgia won the conference championship game.) It's also a fairly balanced rivalry; Georgia has the lead as of 2025, 66–56–8, and it will continue to be an annual rivalry when the SEC goes to a 9-game conference schedule in 2026.^note The "permanent" matchups will be revisited after the 2029 season, but this rivalry will very likely continue.
• North Carolina vs. Virginia ("The South's Oldest Rivalry") – Also played since 1892, but only continuously since 1919. It is tied for the second most-played FBS rivalry.^note It was second outright until Auburn/Georgia met twice in 2017 due to being in the SEC Championship Game. It is believed to be the first college football game to be attended by a sitting US president, with Herbert Hoover attending the game on Thanksgiving Day in 1928.^note It is possible that previous sitting presidents observed other games during campus visits, but Hoover attended specifically as a spectator for the game. While neither program is especially high profile nationally, this is historically one of the more balanced rivalries, with North Carolina having a 66–60–4 lead as of 2025.
• California (Berkeley) vs. Stanford ("The Big Game") – First played in 1892, it is often considered the modern version of Harvard vs. Yale, being played between a pair of very academically prestigious schools, and is the oldest rivalry on the west coast. Their proximity in the San Francisco Bay Area and the "public vs. private school" dynamic ensures that this rivalry remains very intense, even in eras when one or both schools have chosen to deemphasize football. Also famous for being the game that spawned "The Play", the downright surreal ending to the 1982 edition that saw the Stanford band come onto the field early, believing the game was over, allowing Cal to seize the victory amidst the chaos. Stanford still has the edge in the series. The two schools became notable for a different reason after they were two of the four schools left behind after the Pac-12 imploded and were taken in by the ACC effective in 2024. Yes, Pacific coast schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
• Michigan vs. Minnesota – This very old rivalry, first played in 1892, has been laughably one-sided (Michigan leads 76–25–3 as of 2024, and Minnesota hasn't had consecutive victories since 1963), but it's notable for its extremely historic trophy. While the Territorial Cup between Arizona and Arizona State technically predates it by several years, the "Little Brown Jug" has been in active use for far longer, exchanged between the schools (well, mostly kept in Ann Arbor) since 1903, when it was just a water jug that Michigan coach Fielding Yost left on the Minnesota field after a bizarre and chaotic tie game.
• Kansas vs. Nebraska – This matchup between neighboring state schools was among the oldest and most lopsided in the sport's history, with Nebraska having a 4:1 advantage and winning 36 straight games from 1969-2004, the second-longest such streak ever behind only Notre Dame-Navy. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for the Jayhawks), conference realignment caused this series to end after 2010.
• Colorado vs. Colorado State ("The Rocky Mountain Showdown") – The main intrastate rivalry in Colorado, played for the Centennial Cup. Dates back to February 10, 1893 but was discontinued in the 1960s and 1970s due to how one-sided it was in Colorado's favor (a nearly 3-1 edge, which has remained since its 1980s revival). It was played at a neutral site in Denver (home of the NFL's Broncos) throughout the 2010s, but went on pause during COVID; the first post-COVID game in 2023 was in Boulder, and Colorado State hosted in 2024 (for the first time since 1996). The next games are set for 2029–30.
• Auburn vs. Alabama ("The Iron Bowl") – The "real" Super Bowl for Alabamans played annually between the state's most prestigious programs. First played February 22, 1893, it is easily the most important sporting event in the state every year, and is named after the iron industry of Birmingham (where the game was played for decades at a neutral stadium prior to 1999). It goes without saying that when the SEC announced its "permanent" opponents for each team from 2026, the Iron Bowl was preserved as an annual matchup. The Crimson Tide have the edge, but not by nearly as steep a degree as one might expect from college football's most dominant program; the Tigers have often proven a stumbling block for the Tide, even in its best years (see: the "Kick Six" in 2013, where a missed FG returned for a touchdown effectively decided which of them would go to the BCS National Championship that season).
• Kentucky vs. Tennessee – A very old rivalry dating to October 21, 1893 between the neighboring state schools and SEC charter members. Also one of the more lopsided rivalries, especially between schools that have played each other for so long and so often. Tennessee leads 85–26–9 overall as of 2025, with the series being only more skewed since conference play began, complete with a 26-game win streak for the Vols from 1985-2010.^note UK's streak-breaking win in 2011 was also the Cats' first home win in the series since 1981. It was also one of the more improbable wins in recent college football history when considering the circumstances; see Tennessee football's description in Audience-Alienating Era: Sports for more background. The winner of the game used to win a "Beer Barrel" trophy painted in the schools' colors until the death of two Kentucky football players in a drunk-driving incident shortly before the rivalry game. Fortunately for UT and unfortunately for UK, this will also be a "permanent" SEC rivalry from 2026 on.
• Georgia vs. Georgia Tech ("Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate") – As the name indicates, this is a particularly intense rivalry, not just because these are the two oldest and most prestigious programs in the football-crazed state of Georgia but because of their relative proximity and the urban/suburban divide between the fanbases. First played November 4, 1893 and every year since 1925 (only being interrupted in 2020 due to COVID) despite Tech leaving the SEC in 1964 and the rivalry becoming much less competitive, with the Bulldogs dominating for decades. Since the SEC will mandate that each member school play at least one Power Four team out-of-conference from 2026, this rivalry will almost certainly remain an annual affair.
• Penn State vs. Pitt ("The Keystone Classic") – A matchup dating back to November 6, 1893 between the two most powerful football programs in Pennsylvania. In the 1980s, Penn State legend Joe Paterno masterminded what would have been the "Eastern Conference", centered around these two long-time independent schools with a few others from the northeast^note Boston College, Maryland, Rutgers, Syracuse, Temple, and West Virginia. Pitt allegedly bailed at the last minute and opted to join the Big East as a full member (they were already a member for non-football sports), while Penn State was prevented from joining the Big East by a single vote. Paterno was livid, refusing to schedule Pitt again beyond what had already been agreed to, while Penn State joined the Big Ten and the acrimonious series ended in 2000, leaving Penn State with the edge in the series. Following Paterno's death in 2012, the two schools agreed to another four-game series from 2016-2019, but it fell apart once again after Penn State demanded that they get a 2-1 home game advantage in their next proposal. There are currently no plans to resume the series, which ended with exactly 100 total meetings and Penn State holding a ten-game lead.^note Pitt is still Penn State's most played opponent, while Penn State is second for Pitt behind its other neighbor, West Virginia.
• New Mexico vs. New Mexico State ("Rio Grande Rivalry" or "Battle of I-25") – This intrastate rivalry was first played on January 1, 1894, nearly 20 years before New Mexico became a state. Since statehood, it's been an annual affair, interrupted only by the Spanish flu, WWII, and COVID. While neither school has an especially storied football history (both are more noted for basketball), the football rivalry has been spirited to this day. The rivalry started out as fairly competitive until UNM won 18 straight from 1938–58, taking a lead it's never come close to relinquishing (though State did have a strong run in the '60s), currently with a better than 2-to-1 series lead. For most of the rivalry's history, it didn't have a trophy; a new one made from a tabletop chile roaster was created in the days before the 2025 game.
• Iowa vs Iowa State ("Cy-Hawk Trophy", a portmanteau of the two team's mascots) – This intrastate rivalry was first played on October 1, 1894, though it has never been an intraconference series and took a long pause from the 1930s to the '70s before becoming an annual contest. Iowa has a dominant 2:1 lead in the series.
• Texas vs. Texas A&M ("Lone Star Showdown"^note They're the two largest schools in Texas, the Lone Star State.) – Dates back to October 12, 1894 and was a long-standing traditional Thanksgiving Day game, but like the Border War it ended after 2011 because of conference realignment. Both fanbases seem to simultaneously blame the other school for the ending of the game and then claim they didn't really want to play it that much anyway (for the record, Texas dominated the series for most of its run). A significantly less tradition-filled game between Texas and either Baylor or Texas Tech (or TCU since their joining the Big 12) stood in for Thanksgiving until 2024, when UT^*or, to hardcore Aggies, "t.u." joined A&M in the SEC, with the Lone Star Showdown cemented as a permanent matchup after 2025.
• Oregon vs. Oregon State ("The Civil War") – First played on November 3, 1894, this intrastate rivalry between the two Willamette Valley schools is typically the final game of both schools' seasons and has been played more than any other series between West Coast schools. Though Oregon usually insists that its "real" rival is the more successful Washington, their record in this series is not quite as dominant as one would think when comparing the general strength of the two programs. While the rivalry continued even after the implosion of the Pac-12, it lost some edge with Oregon in the Big Ten and OSU in (temporary) conference limbo, and the 2025 edition was its last as an annual matchup. The next game is, however, scheduled for 2027, and both schools are working to make the game annual once again.
• Black Hills State vs. South Dakota Mines ("Black Hills Brawl") – These two D-II teams in the Black Hills region have the most-played rivalry outside of D-I, with the 140th meeting in 2025. Its history is a little unusual in that the starting date is in dispute—when the rivalry began in 1895, Mines approached Black Hills State (then known as Spearfish Normal) for a game, but was turned down; Mines instead played the now-defunct Black Hills College, also in that same region. Both modern schools include this game in the rivalry's chronology, but not in their records; the first official game, between the schools that eventually became BHSU and SD Mines, was played in 1900. While the teams skipped a few seasons in the early 20th century, they imitated Lafayette and Lehigh by frequently playing two games a season, and even three in 1917. While they've normally played only one game a year since WWII, they have played two games as recently as 2011, and planned to play two in the COVID-affected 2020 season before the virus put the season on ice (they did play the first game). It's a fairly balanced rivalry, with Mines holding a 5-game lead after the 2025 matchup.
• West Virginia vs. Pittsburgh ("The Backyard Brawl")^note The two campuses are less than a two-hour drive away from each other. WVU also draws a significant number of students from the Pittsburgh area. – A bitter regional rivalry dating back to 1895 that took a decade-long pause in football after WVU left to join the Big 12 in 2012. The men's basketball rivalry resumed in 2017–18; the football series returned from 2022–25 with the next games from 2029–36. Pitt has a solid lead in the series.
• Virginia vs. Virginia Tech (Battle for the Commonwealth Cup)^note Virginia is legally known as the "Commonwealth of Virginia". – An intrastate rivalry that dates back to 1895, though it only became an annual contest in 1970. Tech has a very solid lead in the series.
• Henderson State vs. Ouachita^*WASH-i-tah Baptist ("Battle of the Ravine") – These D-II teams are tied with the participants in the Black Hills Brawl for the oldest D-II rivalry, though unlike BHSU and SD Mines, they've never played twice in a season. In another parallel with the Black Hills Brawl, the first game in this rivalry wasn't official, having been unsanctioned; the first official game was in 1907. This rivalry is personal on steroids and acid for both schools: they're located literally across the street from one another^*A small part of HSU's campus, including one of its dorms, is on OBU's side of the street. in the small town of Arkadelphia, Arkansas (permanent population about 10,000). The rivalry name comes from the ravine that cuts through both campuses. Students at the two schools regularly cross the street to attend classes, social activities, and Bible study groups at the other... and have a long history of pranks against one another during rivalry week, which went so far as to cause a 10-year break in the rivalry (1952–1962). The stadiums are within sight of one another (the HSU golf coach claims to have hit a ball from one stadium's end zone to the other's in two strokes), and the away team traditionally walks in full uniform from its own locker room to the home team's stadium. On the field, nearly half of the games have been decided by a TD or less. No wonder Sports Illustrated called this "college football's most intimate rivalry". OBU has a narrow lead in the series.^note 2 games officially, 3 if the 1895 game is counted.
• Alabama vs. Georgia – Though not an annual rivalry, these powerhouses have played each other since 1895 and have often competed with each other for SEC and national dominance. The feud has recently become even more bitterly contested thanks in large part to Georgia football coach Kirby Smart (a former Alabama DC under the Nick Saban regime) leading his team to become the dominant team in the SEC East; his team has seriously challenged his old boss's squad as they battled in numerous SEC title games over the years and battled for two CFP Championships, splitting the trophies (though Alabama still has a very large lead in the series). This will also be a guaranteed SEC matchup after 2025.
• NC State vs. Wake Forest – The second-oldest uninterrupted rivalry in FBS, being played annually since 1910 after first meeting in 1895. Its longevity and consistency is really the only notable thing about the rivalry—both programs are traditional underachievers, it's not especially competitive between the two (NC State has a solid lead), and it doesn't even have a fancy nickname or trophy!
• Clemson vs. South Carolina ("The Palmetto Bowl") – Before COVID-19, it had been the second-oldest uninterrupted FBS rivalry by just two years, dating back to 1909 after they first played in 1896. It probably would be the longest uninterrupted FBS rivalry if a riot didn't almost break out following the 1902 game, causing the game to be suspended for 7 years. The intrastate rivalry between the schools predates their even having football teams and indeed traces back to before Clemson actually existed, having originally been fueled by post-Civil War South Carolina politics. The 2004 edition is perhaps the most notable in this series, as a day after the "Malice at the Palace" in the NBA, a massive on-field altercation occurred that resulted in both schools turning down bowl bids and overshadowed the last game of Lou Holtz' illustrious career. It resulted in a slew of suspensions as well as the 2005 edition forcing both programs to meet at midfield to shake hands. Clemson has a dominant lead in the series.
• BYU vs. Utah ("The Holy War") – The most hotly contested intrastate rivalry in Utah, dating back to 1896 and fought between two universities both founded by Mormon religious leader Brigham Young. The "public vs. private" and "secular vs. religious" dynamics of the rivalry add to the intensity. Utah State joins in for a three-way rivalry fought over the "Beehive Boot". Utah has a very solid lead in the series. The Holy War has become even hotter since the two schools were reunited in the Big 12 in 2024. It's one of only four "protected" (guaranteed annual) Big 12 football rivalries following the conference's 2024 expansion.
• Illinois vs. Missouri ("The Arch Rivalry"^note During the 2000s, it was played in St. Louis, whose metro boasts large alumni bases of both schools and is roughly equidistant from the campuses.) – This interconference rivalry was first played in 1896, but the two didn't become regular opponents until the late 1960s; Missouri has the edge in the series. The schools did play six straight seasons from 1975–80, which led to the creation of "Braggin' Rights", a men's basketball rivalry between the schools, in 1976. While the football rivalry was off-and-on, with the last game to date being in 2010 (shortly before Mizzou left for the SEC), the basketball rivalry has been an annual affair, skipping only the 1982–83 season.^note All of the basketball games since 1980 have been in St. Louis except for the 2020 edition; COVID disruptions led to the schools flipping a coin to determine the host, with Mizzou winning the toss (and eventually the game). The schools plan to renew the rivalry with on-campus games from 2026–29.
• Ohio State vs. Michigan ("The Game") – Voted the #1 rivalry in North American sports by ESPN in 2000 and often the most watched college football game of every season. First played in October 1897, became an annual game in 1918, and then was scheduled as the final game of their regular season since 1935; outside of the division era, it was usually the de facto Big Ten championship game, while during the division era it decided who would compete in the de jure one. Like many big rivalries, this one grew out of existing animosity between the bordering states: Specifically, the "Toledo War", a dispute over ownership of the economically vital Great Lakes port of Toledo. Ohio got Toledo, but Michigan generally had the upper hand in the football rivalry early on. Ohio State was more dominant in the 21st century until the annual series was interrupted in 2020 due to a COVID-based cancellation; Michigan flipped the switch afterwards and still leads the series. The rivalry also has its share of quirky idiosyncrasies, like Ohio State banning use of the letter M on campus during the rivalry week.
  Ohio State: Oh, we don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan
  The whole state of Michigan, the whole state of Michigan
  We don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan
  We're from O-hi-o!
  Michigan: Fuck Ohio.
• Montana vs. Montana State (the "Brawl of the Wild" or "Cat–Griz Game") – One of the tentpole rivalries in FCS, matching the state's liberal-arts flagship and its land-grant school, each on opposite sides of the Continental Divide. First played in November 1897, the rivalry featured two annual games in its early years before becoming a (mostly) annual affair in the 1910s. Since 1925, it's only been interrupted for WWII and COVID. Since 1993, it's been the final regular-season game for both teams and often has implications for the Big Sky Conference's FCS autobid. The "Brawl of the Wild" nickname was introduced in 1997, four years before the introduction of the Great Divide Trophy, a 300-pound sculpture of a mountain with bobcat (State) and grizzly (UM) paws on separate sides. College GameDay came to Montana State for the 2022 edition. Montana has a strong overall lead, due largely to having played at a higher level than State for four decades (1924–63).^note From 1924–49, UM was in the Pacific Coast Conference, the officially recognized precursor to the Pac-12, and from 1950–62 was in the Skyline (aka Mountain States) Conference, which consisted almost entirely of programs now in FBS. State was either at the NCAA small-college level or the NAIA during that period. However, when the teams have played at similar levels, State leads 38–37, and also has a 12–11 lead in the trophy era.^note Montana's 2011 win was later vacated and is not counted by either team. Also, the trophy isn't at stake in the playoffs; State won the teams' first-ever playoff meeting in the 2025 FCS semifinals. The trophy is planned to be retired at the end of the 21st century, with the leader in trophy games at that time taking permanent possession.
• Michigan vs. Michigan State ("The Battle for the Mitten"^note Michiganders frequently call the Lower Peninsula, home to both schools and the vast majority of the state's population, "The Mitten", from its appearance on a map./"Paul Bunyan—Governor of Michigan Trophy") – Played since 1898 and was an almost annual series since well before State joined the Big Ten. Michigan has mostly dominated the series and is usually more focused on Ohio State than the Spartans, meaning the rivalry is taken more seriously by MSU in a "what are we, chopped liver?" kind of way. The OSU thing leads to a lot of conflicted emotions for MSU fans, since on the one hand Michigan is the great rival... but on the other hand OSU is from Ohio and most MSU fans are Michiganders, leading one to recall Henry Kissinger's comment about the Iran–Iraq War: "It's a shame they can't both lose." Also a protected post-2023 Big Ten matchup. One notable matchup in 2001 resulted in the Big Ten changing its timekeeping rules, as Michigan State won on a controversial last-second play. The 2015 edition, won by Michigan State off of a walk-off touchdown from a Michigan fumbled punt attempt, became iconic for its hysterical play-by-play and emblematic of how the rivalry became much less one-sided in the 2010s.
• TCU vs. Baylor ("The Revivalry"^note so named not only because Baylor is Baptist and TCU is Disciples of Christ, "revival" being an important idea of Christianity, but also because the rivalry was "revived" upon TCU joining the Big 12) – The most played rivalry in the state of Texas, dating back to 1899. Sectarianism plays a role in the rivalry, with the added enmity that Baylor allegedly played politics to keep TCU out of the Big 12.^note Then-Texas Governor Ann Richards was a Baylor alum and had allegedly lobbied heavily to allow Baylor to join the new conference over other potential schools from the SWC. With TCU joining the Big 12, this rivalry has now come full circle. The series has been closely fought throughout its history; the sides were dead even as recently as the 2015 edition, but a dominant stretch by TCU has given the Horned Frogs a modest lead. It's another of the Big 12's four protected football rivalries.
• Arizona vs. Arizona State ("The Duel in the Desert") – Notable for being played for the Territorial Cup, so named because when it was instituted, the schools were in the Arizona Territory, which wouldn't become a state for another 13 years. The cup has been certified as the oldest rivalry trophy in college football, having first been awarded in 1899... before the two schools even "officially" played each other.^note Back in 1899, Arizona State was the Arizona Territorial Normal School football team and were awarded the first Territorial Cup after winning the "Arizona Territorial Football League Championship" after defeating the Phoenix Union High School, the Phoenix Indian School, and the University of Arizona. The cup wouldn't be rediscovered until 1980 and wouldn't serve as a traveling trophy until 2001, somewhat dulling its status as a truly historic object. Arizona has the slight edge over State, but mainly because it got a 20-2 head start in the early years; the Sun Devils have significantly narrowed the gap. The rivalry shifted from the Pac-12 to the Big 12 in 2024, and became a protected rivalry in that conference.
• Texas vs. Oklahoma ("The Red River Rivalry"^note Formerly the "Red River Shootout", with the old name still frequently used by fans. The Red River forms much of the border between the two states.) – Played at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, a "neutral" site almost exactly halfway between the two campuses of these two traditional powers of college football, around the midpoint of the season rather than the finale, usually serving as the marquee game of that week. This matchup started in 1900 and was a non-conference game for decades until becoming a conference rivalry in 1996 with the formation of the Big 12; it remained a conference rivalry after the two schools left the Big 12 for the SEC in 2024. Texas has the slight edge in the series.
• Washington vs. Washington State (The Apple Cup)^note Washington is famous for its apples. – The Cascade Ranges keep everything civil during most of the year, with U-Dub fans to the west and Wazzu fans to the east. Many Washington fans consider Oregon to be their "true" rival, as they absolutely dominate this series since their first meeting in 1900. Further cementing this sentiment is that when the Pac-12 imploded, U-Dub and Oregon moved together to the Big Ten, leaving Wazzu and Oregon State to an uncertain future. Though the schools worked out a deal to continue to play the Apple Cup annually, it only came by moving the game to the "neutral" site of the NFL's Seattle Seahawks stadium... which is only 15 minutes away from where Washington plays its home games, likely making the game even more unbalanced. Surprisingly, Wazzu won the first game after the collapse of the Pac-12.
• Oregon vs. Washington ("Cascade Clash", and more frequently "Border War" since Kansas/Missouri went on hiatus) – One of the most heated West Coast rivalries, played between the two most esteemed programs of the Pacific Northwest since 1900. Washington has the all-time lead, but Oregon's been pretty dominant since the late '90s.
• Minnesota vs. Nebraska – A regional rivalry played since 1900. Minnesota dominated Nebraska until around 1960, when Nebraska flipped the switch. The schools stopped playing regularly in the late '70s and didn't play at all from 1991 until Nebraska joined the Big Ten in 2011. The Gophers have mostly dominated the Cornhuskers since and still have a strong lead in the series due to having not really played Nebraska during the program's late century peak. This rivalry is thus something of a joke, with neither modern fanbase really caring that much about it, which is commemorated by the series' afterthought trophy: "The $5 Bits of Broken Chair".
• Mississippi State vs. Ole Miss ("The Battle for the Golden Egg"/"The Egg Bowl")^note The "Golden Egg" is the official name of the trophy, first awarded in 1927, consisting of a football-shaped brass piece attached to a wood base. The "Egg" name came about years later—footballs in the 1920s had a much more oval shape than those used today, which means that to more modern eyes, the trophy resembles a large egg. – An annual matchup between the two biggest football programs of their football-crazed state, played since 1901, one would expect this to be on par with the neighboring state's Iron Bowl in terms of intensity. It is, but for different reasons; unlike Alabama and Auburn, neither program has been competitive for national titles in half a century (and, in Mississippi State's case, has a lifetime losing record), making the Egg Bowl typically the most important game for both teams' seasons (and often the final game for at least one). In the 21st century, the game has also become notable for often being the only FBS game played on Thanksgiving. Ole Miss has a solid lead in the series.
• Tennessee vs. Alabama ("The Third Saturday in October"^note An Artifact Title, as in the last decade it's usually been played on the fourth Saturday in October.) – Notable for having long winning streaks by whichever team is ascendant in a given decade; Alabama still has a pretty decisive lead in this series of Southern powers that's been played since 1901. The annual rivalry will be preserved in the SEC's post-2025 scheduling format.
• LSU vs. Arkansas ("The Battle for the Golden Boot"^note The winner brings home the "Golden Boot", a massive solid-gold trophy shaped like a map of Arkansas and Louisiana, thus roughly resembling a boot.) – Played since 1901 between the flagship programs of these neighboring states; LSU has an extremely dominant lead. Another protected annual SEC rivalry after 2025.
• LSU vs. Auburn ("The Tiger Bowl"^note Both teams are nicknamed "Tigers".) – While not an annual rivalry until SEC division play was instituted in the early '90s, these Southern powers have played each other many times since 1901 in matches that are well known for being downright weird, from a 1988 "Earthquake Game", where LSU fans set off an on-campus seismograph after narrowly delivering Auburn its sole regular season defeat, to the 1996 "Barn Burner", where the old "Barn" arena outside Auburn's stadium was burned down during the game by tailgaters (the game was not delayed). LSU leads 30–24–1 as of the most recent meeting in 2023. After 2025, the two sets of Tigers will alternate on and off the SEC schedule every two years.
• Kansas vs. Kansas State ("The Sunflower Showdown"^note Kansas's official nickname is "The Sunflower State") – First played in 1902 and played annually every year since 1911 (one of the longest uninterrupted series in FBS), this is an especially important game for two programs that usually underperform in football. Kansas got off to an early head start, going 17–1–3 to start the series, and still has a pretty comfortable lead. However, the arrival of Bill Snyder in the '90s and K-State's subsequent turnaround has flipped the script, and Kansas hasn't won a Governor's Cup since 2008. This is the last of the Big 12's four current protected football rivalries.
• Arkansas vs. Texas A&M – An old Southwest Conference rivalry first played in 1903, it was played annually from 1934 until Arkansas left the SWC in 1992. The series was revived in 2009 as a non-conference game played at the Dallas Cowboys' stadium in Arlington (Cowboys owner Jerry Jones played at Arkansas) and was entrenched annually when Texas A&M joined the SEC and placed in the same football division as Arkansas. Even though the SEC eliminated football divisions after 2023, the teams initially continued to play annually. However, the 2024 edition was the last in Arlington, and the two teams will not be permanent opponents in the post-2025 SEC format. Arkansas leads 42–36–3 as of 2024, but the Aggies have dominated the series for the last decade.
• Colorado vs. Utah (The "Rumble in the Rockies") – First played in October 1903, it was one of the hottest rivalries in the West for the first half of the 20th century but stopped after 1962. Revived in 2011 when Colorado and Utah joined the Pac-12 and were placed in the same football division; it remained a conference rivalry when both schools moved to the Big 12 in 2024, though the expansion of that conference means it will no longer be annual after 2026. Utah has dominated the series since the revival, going 12–3 in that period to give the Utes a narrow series lead at 36–33–3 as of 2025.
• North Dakota State vs. South Dakota State (for the Dakota Marker) – Another FCS tentpole rivalry before NDSU's 2026 FBS move, involving the Dakotas' land-grant schools. While the first game was played in November 1903, the trophy only dates to 2004, when NDSU and SDSU joined FCS and temporarily separated from their respective in-state rivals, which remained in D-II until going FCS in 2008. The trophy is a replica of the boundary markers placed when the Dakota Territory was split into the two modern states in 1889. Played annually since 1917 except during the World Wars, the rivalry has been marked by two long periods of dominance—first SDSU's into the early 1960s, and then an even more dominant NDSU run through the 2010s, giving the Bison a solid overall lead. The rivalry has been streaky in the 2020s, with the Jackrabbits winning the first five games (including the 2022 natty) followed by the Bison winning the next three. After the 2025 matchup, the Bison lead only 12–10 in the trophy era.^note The Marker was not at stake in playoff games; SDSU's 2022 FCS natty was the Jacks' only win in their six FCS playoff matchups. College GameDay visited SDSU for the 2019 edition. Given NDSU's move to Mountain West Conference football, there's a good chance this will become intermittent
• Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State ("Bedlam Series"^note Actually originated as a rivalry between the schools' wrestling teams, with the name derived from raucous home crowds at OSU's arena. But between football being a much higher-profile sport and OSU's utter domination in wrestling, the football rivalry has become the main attraction.) – Through 2023, it was tied with NC State–Wake Forest for the second-longest uninterrupted annual series in FBS, with both games having been played every year since 1910. However, the rivalry has officially ended with OU's SEC move. While OU has been overwhelmingly dominant in football (with a series record of 91–20–7, including three winning streaks of more than 10 games), OK State came away with the last laugh for the immediate future, narrowly winning the final 2023 matchup.
• Nebraska vs. Oklahoma – A historic and hard-fought matchup between the flagship sports programs of two Plains states that ran from 1912-2010, when Nebraska left the Big 12 - because the Big 12 wouldn't schedule the game every season.^note There were other reasons, too. The highlight was the 1971 "Game of the Century", with #1-ranked Nebraska narrowly beating out #2-ranked Oklahoma. The rivalry returned in 2021 and '22 with two specially-scheduled games, where Oklahoma widened its already solid lead; they're next scheduled to play in 2029.
• Kentucky vs. Louisville ("The Governor's Cup") – Although hard-fought on the football field, this matchup is much better known as a men's basketball rivalry. It's also a relatively recent rivalry—after the first half of the 1920s, UK steadfastly refused to schedule U of L in either sport for decades (they had beaten Louisville in every prior football matchup). The modern basketball rivalry began in 1983 (after no regular-season games for over 60 years), but the modern football rivalry had to wait until 1994, after a 70-year absence.^note Perhaps not coincidentally, U of L's head coach when the football rivalry resumed, Howard Schnellenberger, had played at UK. It's been a close series since, with Louisville leading by three games since the revival. The future of the football rivalry, which had been uncertain in the first part of the 2020s, became more secure with the SEC's mandate that each team play at least one Power Four team out of conference from 2026.
• Southern Methodist and Texas Christian ("The Iron Skillet") – Played fairly consistently between the two schools since 1915. Both are in the same metro area and both are affiliated with different Protestant denominations (SMU with the United Methodist Church and TCU with the Disciples of Christ). TCU (Fort Worth) has been more victorious since 1987, since SMU's (Dallas) infamous Death Penalty judgment, though the rivalry flared up in recent years, especially after TCU hired away SMU's head coach Sonny Dykes at the end of the 2021 season and the Frogs immediately played in the national championship game the next year. Even with all of the rancor, Dykes had publicly called for the series to end, and the final edition (at least for now) was won by TCU in 2025. Apocryphally, the skillet trophy refers to the dish an SMU tailgater once used to cook frog legs.
• Florida vs. Georgia ("The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party"^note Officially the "Florida vs. Georgia Football Classic" or "Georgia vs. Florida Football Classic" on a rotating basis depending on who the designated home team is, though it's almost always at a neutral site.) – Played on a theoretically neutral field in Jacksonville (located in Florida but close to the Georgia border), this has been a fairly competitive rivalry, first played in 1904 and played annually since 1926 (Georgia has a decent lead in the series). Needless to say, it's being maintained as an annual matchup post-2025. The schools, the SEC, the NCAA, and sportscasters have all tried and failed to remove "Cocktail" from the nickname, seeing it as promoting underage drinking of alcohol.
• Army vs. Notre Dame – Two of the most powerful programs of the early 20th century, particularly in the 1940s, these two programs first faced off in 1913 and played semi-regularly for decades. Playing Army played a major role in raising Notre Dame's national profile, but the Irish rather quickly eliminated any pretense that the rivalry was even; Notre Dame leads the series 39-8-4, and Army hasn't beaten them since 1958. The long-independent programs stopped playing each other regularly soon after that, but Notre Dame has kept up an annual rivalry with another service academy...
• Tennessee vs. Florida – One of the "newer" rivalries, first played in 1916 but only becoming an annual matchup with the introduction of divisions in the 1990s. This coincided with a period where both programs were very strong, making it the de facto SEC (and in some cases national) championship game. It remains bitterly contested, especially among Tennessee fans. Despite the Vols winning the first eight matchups in the series, Florida has a decisive lead in the series, a testament to how often the Gators have ruined Tennessee's seasons for years (notably, even the legendary Peyton Manning never managed to beat the Gators while playing QB for the Vols). However, it lost its status as annual matchup after the SEC ditched divisions.
• Iowa State vs. Kansas State ("Farmageddon") – For now, second only to Minnesota–Wisconsin as the longest uninterrupted series in FBS; these two traditionally underachieving programs first faced off in 1917 and have played each other every year since. Despite this consistency, the historic irrelevance of both programs for decades meant that the rivalry received little attention until a marketing push in the late 2000s that introduced the cheesy nickname and had the teams face off in a few neutral site games at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City; they returned to a neutral site matchup in 2025 when they traveled to Dublin, Ireland. Unfortunately, the annual series is set to expire in 2027 due to the Big 12's recent growth. Iowa State has mostly been dominated in the series since Bill Snyder turned around Kansas State in the '90s, but the Cyclones still hold a narrow lead in the series.
• Florida vs. Kentucky – An extremely lopsided SEC rivalry, with Florida having a nearly 3:1 lead in the series and winning their annual matchup for over three decades (1987–2017), the longest such streak in conference history.^note The Cats' streak-breaking win was their first in Gainesville since 1979. Despite Florida's dominance, former Gator HC Steve Spurrier famously got a huge kick out of running up the score and openly mocking Kentucky during this win streak. If that's not bad enough for Big Blue Nation, the Cats will have to play the Gators every year after 2025.
• Akron vs. Kent State – These two underperformers from the MAC are located 15 minutes apart (Kent is in the Akron metro area) and fight over the "Wagon Wheel" trophy. They first played in 1923 and started out very streaky (Akron won eleven with one tie to start the series, and Kent State won the next eleven with one tie); Akron currently holds the lead.
• Alabama State vs. Tuskegee ("Turkey Day Classic") – Though these two Alabama HBCUs have not regularly played since the early 2010s, with Alabama State now FCS and Tuskegee now D-II, this is the Ur-Example of the HBCU "classic"—a game between historic rivals often (but not always) played at a neutral site, with numerous events in the lead-in. Unlike many other HBCU classics, Alabama State has always hosted. The rivalry was dominated by Tuskegee before it aligned with D-II in the 1970s; Alabama State has dominated since. In recent years, the Turkey Day Classic has often featured an HBCU other than Tuskegee, most recently Arkansas–Pine Bluff in 2022.
• USC vs. Notre Dame ("The Battle for the Jewelled Shillelagh"◊) – Played annually from 1926–2025 (save for WWII and 2020), this started out as a chance for Notre Dame to recruit on the West Coast but quickly evolved into a matchup of the greatest private university football teams of the East and West. The series tends to be pretty streaky, though Notre Dame has a comfortable all-time lead. The rivalry temporarily ended because (1) the programs couldn't agree on in-season scheduling (SC preferred early season, ND late season) and (2) SC's new Big Ten commitments got in the way; they're hoping to resume in 2030.
• Navy vs. Notre Dame – Played annually since their first meeting in 1927 until COVID broke the streak in 2020, this was one of the longest uninterrupted series in college football history. The two schools have kept up this relationship despite very different levels of academic success due to Notre Dame owing the Navy for paying them to operate as a training school during World War II, which kept the school afloat through those lean years. The Irish have repaid that kindness by utterly dominating the Midshipmen; from 1964–2006, Notre Dame beat Navy every year, a 43-game win streak unmatched in the history of college football (the 2007 streak-breaker went into triple overtime). As of 2025, Notre Dame leads Navy 83–13–7.
• UCLA vs. USC ("The Battle for the Victory Bell"/"The Battle of Los Angeles") – First played in 1929 and becoming an annual contest soon afterwards, the crosstown rivalry games of these historic Pac-12 powers are notable for having neither team wear their white uniforms, regardless of who hosts, as the contrasting red and blue of their home uniforms is seen as sufficient to tell them apart and both Los Angeles teams are playing for their home market as it is. Though USC has a substantial lead in the series, both L.A. schools are intensely competitive in a variety of sports, being two of the most acclaimed non-football athletic schools in the country, and their proximity and the "public vs. private school" dynamic of the rivalry has made the enmity and pranks especially intense. The rivalry transferred to the Big Ten in 2024.
• Appalachian State vs. Georgia Southern ("Deeper Than Hate") – A battle between schools that have much in common despite their physical (and climatic) separation^note GS, in Georgia's coastal plain, routinely sees summer temperatures of 90°F and above with oppressive humidity, and winter lows rarely drop to freezing. App State, almost 4 degrees of latitude north and more than 3,000 feet higher in elevation, rarely sees summer highs above the mid-80s, and a winter low above freezing is quite rare.—both started football in the 1920s, developed from teachers' colleges, have 20,000-range enrollments, and most significantly were I-AA/FCS powerhouses, having nine national titles between them. While the football rivalry started in 1932 and was played semi-regularly in that decade, it took a decades-long pause when GS dropped football in 1941. The rivalry was rekindled in 1987 when App State beat GS in the I-AA quarterfinals and escalated in 1992 when GS joined App State's Southern Conference. GS would get the playoff win back in the 2001 quarterfinals, and both continued to battle for SoCon supremacy until moving together to FBS and the Sun Belt Conference in 2014 and also being placed in the same SBC football division. The nickname refers to the above-mentioned name for the much older rivalry between Georgia and Georgia Tech. App State has a narrow lead.
• Grambling State vs. Southern (the "Bayou Classic") – The most famous HBCU classic, it features Louisiana's two largest HBCUs, which more or less had the pick of black talent in the state in the Jim Crow era. First played in 1932, and was more or less as annual affair (except for WWII) through 1948, but a brawl during that year's game led the rivalry to be put on ice until 1959. It officially became the "Bayou Classic" in 1974, when the game moved from campus sites to Tulane Stadium in New Orleans. The game moved to the Superdome when it opened in 1975 and has been held there ever since (except in 2005, when the game was moved to Houston due to Hurricane Katrina damage, and the 2020–21 season, when COVID-19 led to a move to Shreveport). Since 1990, it has been held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving (except in 2020–21, when most FCS schools moved their seasons to the spring). From 1991–2014, and again since 2022, it has been nationally televised by NBC (the intervening years saw the game moved to NBCSN, which was shut down at the end of 2021 before being revived in late 2025).
• Coast Guard vs. Merchant Marine (the Secretaries Cup) – Division III's answer to the Army–Navy Game, featuring the other football-playing service academies, located at opposite ends of Long Island Sound (Coast Guard in New London, Connecticut, Merchant Marine in Kings Point, New York). First played in 1949, it started out as intermittent, but has been annual since 1974 (only skipping 1980). The current rivalry trophy was introduced in 1981 as the "Secretary's Cup", reflecting both academies being under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Transportation. The current name was adopted in 2003, after the Coast Guard was moved to the Department of Homeland Security. Notably, it was one of very few D-III games played in calendar 2020—the academies played the game even after the NCAA moved the D-III season to spring 2021 before canceling it entirely thanks to COVID. It has been a conference game from 1991–2005 and again since 2017 (when Merchant Marine moved football to Coast Guard's full-time home of the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference). Merchant Marine has dominated the series, with a better than 2-to-1 lead, and Coast Guard hasn't won consecutive games since 1995–97. The 2025 game was played at Fenway Park.
• Miami (FL) vs. Florida State – In addition to being a intrastate rivalry, both teams often vie for the ACC championship (and, in the '90s, the national championship). First played in 1951, Miami very narrowly leads the series, though Seminole fans will point out that this lead is due to five different matchups where Florida State kickers missed potential game-winning or tying field goals.
• Florida vs. Florida State ("Sunshine Showdown") – Traditionally the last game of their regular season every year for these Florida powers, though not played in 2020 thanks to COVID-19, with both the SEC and ACC going to conference-only schedules. Starting in 1958, Florida had a dominant early run in the series that gives it a comfortable all-time lead, but it's leaned slightly more towards State since Bobby Bowden reached Tallahassee. The winner of this game played for a national title six times from 1993-2000.
• Claremont-Mudd-Scripps vs. Pomona-Pitzer ("6th Street Rivalry") – This rivalry of two SoCal D-III teams is also a case of two teams from the same town (Claremont, CA) with adjacent campuses, but there's an added wrinkle: it involves two teams that represent a combined total of five colleges. Both teams are part of the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five undergraduate colleges and two graduate schools located on interconnected campuses with numerous shared resources. For NCAA athletic competition, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, and Scripps Colleges all compete together as one program, while Pomona and Pitzer Colleges form a second program among the consortium. As the name of the rivalry suggests, the teams' two stadiums are located about a 5-minute walk from one another on the same street. The proximity has also led to a long history of colorful pranks, from Pomona stealing all the trophies from Claremont's trophy case to Claremont breaking into Pomona's locker room and scrawling expletives in marker on Pomona's jerseys.
• Nevada vs. UNLV ("Battle for Nevada") – One of the newer rivalries in the sport, having only started in 1969, the year after UNLV started its program. The trophy is the heaviest and most expensive of all college rivalry trophies—the Fremont Cannon, a replica of a cannon that explorer and politician John C. Fremont brought with him during an 1840s expedition to the American West, including Nevada. The cannon and its carriage are painted in the main color of the winning team. It's also notable as one of the most vitriolic rivalries off the field—red "FUNR"^note University of Nevada, Reno and blue "FUNLV" T-shirts are often worn by students on rivalry day, and fights in the stands (often alcohol-fueled)^note Until most FBS schools relaxed their alcohol sale policies in the late 2010s and early 2020s, Nevada and UNLV were among the few FBS schools to sell alcohol to all spectators of legal age during games. Most schools either sold no alcohol, or sold it only to occupants of luxury boxes and/or special club seating. are a regular feature. Nevada still has the all-time lead, but UNLV has noticeably narrowed the gap since the mid-Tens, and has an ongoing streak of three wins by more than two scores.
• Houston vs. Rice (sometimes the "Bayou Bucket Classic") – The geographically closest FBS rivalry that's regularly played, with the programs' on-campus stadiums separated by less than 5 miles.^note Georgia State and Georgia Tech's stadiums are slightly closer to one another, but those teams didn't play their first game until 2024, and the original contract between the two was only for 2024 and 2025. Also one of the newest ones, with the first official game being played in 1971, shortly after UH was invited to the Southwest Conference.^note The two teams played an unofficial scrimmage in 1946, UH's first football season. While UH was invited to the SWC in 1971, it didn't start conference competition until 1972 in most sports and 1975 in football. By the time of the first official game, UH had greatly surpassed Rice in football, and the rivalry record shows it—the Cougars have a better than 2-to-1 series lead, with Rice having won consecutive games only twice (1993–94 and 2000–01). An added historic note: Houston's 1995 win was the very last SWC football game. Since then, the two teams have mostly been in different conferences, except when both were in CUSA from 2005–12, meaning that the football rivalry is now intermittent (though it's more active in other sports).
• Boston College vs. Notre Dame (also "The Holy War") – Played between the only two Catholic schools in FBS, the teams only began playing semi-regularly in 1975, though enmity between the two programs dates back to when Notre Dame poached BC's greatest head coach, Frank Leahy, in the 1940s (the trophy for the series is named in his honor). Notre Dame has a comfortable lead.
• Florida Atlantic vs. Florida International ("Shula Bowl") – This South Florida rivalry is one of the newest in college football, having begun in 2002. It is called the Shula Bowl, both because of the influence of Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula over the South Florida region's football culture and because both team's first head coaches had connections to him (Howard Schnellenberger for FAU was an assistant for Shula in the 1970s and Don Strock for FIU was a player for Shula at around the same time). This rivalry has a history of long winning streaks for FAU, as well as high-scoring bouts.
• UCF vs. USF ("The War on I-4") – This is the extension of a more general sports rivalry between Orlando and Tampa Bay, with its origins in the now-defunct Arena Football League (Predators and Storm, respectively). In this branch, there was considerable bad blood between the two schools, with accusations that USF blocked UCF from joining the Big East, at that point one of the "power" conferences. There was a four-game series from 2005-08 that USF swept during their ascendance in the late 2000s. Since they found themselves together in The American, UCF has gotten the upper hand; as of 2022, UCF is now 8-6 in the series. Some of the bad blood was muted after the 2018 contest when UCF star quarterback McKenzie Milton suffered a catastrophic leg injury during the game in Tampa. These days, UCF fans tend to see their western rivals more with amused pity, as the USF sports programs have seen setbacks in recent years, while UCF has seen its own rise through The New '10s and beyond, culminating with its 2023 move to the Big 12. Of course, that move also temporarily put the rivalry on ice, as USF has been left in the American, and UCF doesn't have very many open OOC dates.
• UCF vs. UConn ("The Civil ConFLiCT") – Textbook case of Unknown Rival. When The American spun off from the Big East and (finally) picked up UCF, UConn tried to stoke a rivalry with them. They even had a trophy made for it. Officially, UCF disavows this rivalry at all levels, from fans to administration, going so far as to leave the trophy at UConn's stadium after winning the "rivalry" game for the first time in 2016. With UConn going back to the Big East and becoming an FBS Independent in football after 2020, this "rivalry" died after a final out-of-conference meeting in 2021.
• Georgia State vs. Georgia Southern ("Modern Day Hate") – Another fairly recent rivalry in football as State only founded its football program in 2010, though it's been going on for longer in other sports. The two universities debate over who is "the real GSU", with further fuel added in 2014 when State hired away the AD of Southern's bitter rival App State. The name also refers to that of the Georgia–Georgia Tech rivalry. In 2024, the schools tried to distance themselves from the historic rivalry name, entering into a partnership with the Georgia Department of Agriculture to establish the Georgia Grown Bowl.^note The department markets state-produced agricultural products as "Georgia Grown". YMMV on whether this change will stick. As of 2025, the football series is dead even.

• Heisman Memorial Trophy Award (aka "The Heisman"): The top award a college football player can hope to receive. It is given out annually to the "most outstanding" player in college football. It is also the oldest award on the list, with the first being presented in 1935.^note It wasn't called the Heisman Trophy until its namesake John Heisman died in 1936. Also, eligibility was originally restricted to players at colleges east of the Mississippi River; that also changed in 1936. While any player at any position is eligible to win the award, it has historically been awarded to quarterbacks and running backs by a wide margin. The winner is chosen by thousands of voters consisting of "informed, competent, and impartial" sportswriters (some of which, controversially, don't primarily cover college football) along with every living recipient of the award. 2025 winner: Fernando Mendoza, QB, Indiana^note Led the nation in passing touchdowns and several other stats while leading the best campaign in program history.
• Academic All-America Team Member of the Year: A scholar-athlete award voted on and presented by College Sports Communicators,^note known before the 2022 season as College Sports Information Directors of America going to the top selection of their selected teams in each of four divisions.^note A D-I team combining FBS and FCS, plus D-II, D-III, and NAIA. It's not a guarantee that CSC's choice will match that of the more-famous Campbell Trophy committee; for example, the Campbell Trophy recipients in three of the last four seasons (2022, 2024–25) weren't even on CSC's D-I second team. 2025 D-I winner: Blake Horvath, Navy
• AP Player of the Year: For the best overall player, voted on by the same writers who vote for the weekly AP Poll. Usually (but not always) overlaps with the Heisman results. 2025 winner: Mendoza
• Bronko Nagurski Trophy: For the best defensive player. 2025 winner: Jacob Rodriguez, LB, Texas Tech^note Led the Red Raiders to their first Big 12 title and best record in school history while also scoring several offensive touchdowns on trick plays.
• Buck Buchanan Award: For the best defensive player in FCS. 2025 winner: Andrew Zock, DE, Mercer
• Burlsworth Trophy: One of the newer awards (first presented in 2010), which is given to the most outstanding player who began his college career as a "walk-on" (not offered a scholarship). 2025 winner: Drew Mestemaker, QB, North Texas^note In his first full season after walking on at UNT in 2024, having last started at QB on his 9th-grade junior varsity team, led FBS in passing yards.
• Butkus Award: Traditionally given to the top linebacker in college football. Starting in 2008, the award has expanded to include a professional and high school player each year as well. 2025 winner: Rodriguez
• Campbell Trophy: Presented to the top scholar-athlete in all of (four-year) college football—not only the FBS, but also including the FCS, Divisions II and III, and the NAIA. Uniquely among nominal all-divisions awards, the Campbell Trophy has actually been won once by a D-III player. 2025 winner: Eli Stowers, TE, Vanderbilt
• Chuck Bednarik Award: For the defensive "player of the year" in college football. The Nagurski Trophy recipient frequently gets this award as well. 2025 winner: Rodriguez
• Davey O'Brien Award: For the best quarterback. Whenever a QB wins the Heisman, there is a good chance that he will win this award as well. 2025 winner: Mendoza
• Disney SPIRIT Award: Given to the most "inspirational" figure in college football, usually a player who has endured a great deal of hardship. 2025 winner: Jeremiyah Love, RB, Notre Dame^note Led all power conference players in touchdowns and used his platform to share his experiences with being on the autism spectrum.
• Doak Walker Award: For the best running back. Whenever a running back wins the Heisman, there is a good chance that he will win this award as well.^note The one time this didn't happen was in 2009, when Toby Gerhart of Stanford won the Doak but Mark Ingram II of Alabama narrowly won the Heisman. 2025 winner: Love
• Fred Biletnikoff Award: For the best receiver. Although the award rules state that anyone who catches the ball on offense is eligible (including tight ends), every winner to date has been a wide receiver. (Which makes sense, given that the award's namesake played that position.) 2025 winner: Makai Lemon, USC^note Led power conference players in receiving yards.
• Gagliardi Trophy: For the "most outstanding" player in D-III football. 2025 winner: Kaleb Blaha, QB, Wisconsin–River Falls^note Led all of NCAA football in passing and total offense, eventually leading the Falcons to the natty.
• Gene Upshaw Award: For the best senior or graduate lineman, offensive or defensive, in D-II football. 2025 winner: Tim Anderson, OT, Ferris State
• Harlon Hill Trophy: For the "most valuable" player in D-II football. 2025 winner: Curtis Allen, RB, Virginia Union^note After running for over 2,400 yards and 30 TDs, became the first HBCU player ever to win this award.
• Jerry Rice Award: One of the newer major US-based awards (first presented in 2011). Presented to the top freshman player in FCS football, making it the first recognized national award for first-year players in any division. 2025 winner: Braden Atkinson, QB, Mercer
• Jet Award: Another relatively new US-based award (first presented in 2011^note While the award was created in 2011, winners for each season from 1959–2010 are being retroactively chosen, one year at a time.), which is given to the top return specialist in college football. "Jet" comes from the nickname of legendary 1970s Nebraska receiver/return man Johnny Rodgers. 2025 winner: Kaden Wetjen, Iowa^note The first-ever back-to-back winner; had 40% more combined kick return yards than anyone else in FBS, and led FBS in combined kick return TDs and punt return average.
• Jim Thorpe Award: For the top defensive back. 2025 winner: Caleb Downs, S, Ohio State
• Joe Moore Award: A "unit" award for the best offensive line. Named for Joe Moore, a long-time OL coach at Notre Dame and Pitt, the award is voted on by the OL coach from all FBS schools, media members who played OL, and a panel made up of Moore's former players and colleagues. 2025 winner: Iowa
• John Mackey Award: For the "most outstanding" tight end. 2025 winner: Stowers
• Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award: For the best upperclass quarterback (junior or senior). Originally, only seniors were eligible, but eligibility was expanded first to redshirt juniors and more recently to all juniors, probably because many top QBs now leave for the NFL before their fourth season. 2025 winner: Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt^note Set multiple program single-season records while leading the Commodores to their first-ever 10-win season.
• Jon Cornish Trophy: One of the newest significant awards in college football, first presented for the 2017 season. Unlike any of the other awards listed here, it's a specifically Canadian award, presented to the outstanding player of that nationality in NCAA football. The voting body consists of Canadian media, CFL scouts, and former NCAA players with a connection to the country. The award's namesake is CFL star Jon Cornish, who played college ball in the States at Kansas. Another unique distinction of this award is that the winner doesn't get to keep the official trophy beyond the award ceremony—it's permanently displayed at the Canadian Football Hall of Fame at Hamilton Stadium, home of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.^note The winner does get a separate trophy to take home, which features an image from that player's trophy season. Still another unique tradition is being established around the official trophy, namely that the winner signs its back. 2025 winner: Antwan Raymond, RB, Rutgers
• Lombardi Award: From 1970-2016, this award, named after legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi, was presented to the top lineman or linebacker. Originally presented by the service club Rotary International, it came under the control of the Lombardi Foundation in 2017 and became yet another "best college player" award. In 2022, it reverted to its original role of honoring the best lineman or LB. Throughout the award's history, the criteria have included leadership and character. 2025 winner: Rodriguez
• Lott IMPACT Trophy: A award that recognizes defensive players with on-field success and high off-field character. ("IMPACT" standing for "Integrity, Maturity, Performance, Academics, Community, and Tenacity".) 2025 winner: Downs
• Lou Groza Award: For the top placekicker. 2025 winner: Tate Sandell, Oklahoma^note Led the nation in field goal percentage and was perfect over 50 for an Oklahoma offense that struggled without his contributions, though many thought the award should have gone to Hawaii's Kansei Matsuzawa, a self-taught kicker from Japan who tied the NCAA mark for consecutive field goals to start a season and would have been perfect on the year had he not missed his last attempt of the season in near garbage time.
• Manning Award: Another award given to the best quarterback; named after the Manning QB family.^note Archie and his sons Peyton and Eli Whenever a QB wins the Heisman, there is a good chance that he will win this award as well. Like the now-defunct awards presented by the Touchdown Club of Columbus, it's not awarded until after the bowl games; in fact, the award specifically takes bowl game performances into account, and the voting deadline is deliberately set after the CFP title game. 2025 winner: Mendoza
• Maxwell Award: For the "best football player in the United States." Predictably, the winner of this award is frequently the Heisman winner as well. 2025 winner: Mendoza
• Outland Trophy: For the best "interior lineman". This includes any offensive linemen, as well as defensive tackles. 2025 winner: Spencer Fano, OT, Utah
• Patrick Mannelly Award: The most recent significant award (first given in 2019), presented to the best long snapper. Named after the longtime Chicago Bears long snapper. 2024 winner: Rocco Underwood, Florida
• Peter Mortell Award: A tongue-in-cheek "award" presented since 2015 to the best holder, created by then-current Minnesota punter/holder Mortell, who named himself its first winner. His "acceptance" video went viral and ESPN has since included the "award" in its annual college football awards show. Each recipient records a comedic video to be shown at the ESPN show, and a foundation is set up for the recipient to help raise money for a charity of his choosing. 2024 "winner": Noah White, Louisiana Tech
• Paul Hornung Award: Another relatively new award (first given in 2010), presented to the most versatile player. 2025 winner: KC Concepcion, WR/RS, Texas A&M^note Finished the regular season in the national top 10 in six different statistical categories as a receiver and punt returner.
• Ray Guy Award: For the top punter. 2025 winner: Brett Thorson, Georgia^note The latest of the many Australians to have won this award in this century.
• Rimington Trophy: For the top center in FBS. Notable in that the award winner is not determined by vote of a designated committee, but instead on a points system based on placement in four specific All-America teams. Not to be confused with the Rimington Award, presented by the same body (though awarded based on an actual vote) to the outstanding centers in FCS, D-II, D-III, and the NAIA. 2025 FBS winner: Logan Jones, Iowa
• Shaun Alexander Award: Another of the more recent awards (first presented in 2018), and the FBS equivalent to the Jerry Rice Award, awarded to distinguished freshmen. Presented by the Maxwell Football Club (as in the Maxwell Award) and named for the former Alabama and Seattle Seahawks star.^note Ironically, Alexander didn't have an earth-shattering freshman season—except for one game, in which he set a still-standing school record for single-game rushing yardage. 2025 winner: Julian Sayin, QB, Ohio State
• Ted Hendricks Award: For the top defensive end in all levels of college football. 2025 winner: Rueben Bain Jr., Miami^note After an All-American regular season, had an even more dominant postseason, helping bring the Canes to the brink of a natty. He became the first winner of this award from Hendricks' alma mater.
• Walter Camp Award: For the college football "player of the year". Predictably, the winner of this award is also frequently the Heisman winner as well. 2025 winner: Mendoza
• Walter Payton Award: For the "most outstanding" offensive player in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) of college football. Originally given to the most outstanding player on either side of the ball, but restricted to offensive players since the Buchanan Award was established in 1995. 2025 winner: Beau Brungard, QB, Youngstown State
• Wuerffel Trophy: Presented for outstanding community service by an FBS player; named after 1996 Heisman winner Danny Wuerffel. 2025 winner: Michael Taaffe, DB, Texas

Unlike the situation with player awards, in which the Heisman Trophy is undeniably the most prestigious, no single award for head coaches is considered to be the most prestigious. All awards in this section are for HCs unless otherwise indicated.

• AFCA Coach of the Year: The oldest annual award for head coaches, first presented in 1935 (the same year in which the Heisman was introduced). Voted on and presented by the American Football Coaches Association, the trade organization for college football coaches. This award is presented at each level of play—FBS, FCS, D-II, D-III, NAIA, and juco. 2025 FBS winner: Curt Cignetti, Indiana^note After winning this award with a spectacular first season in Bloomington, he improved on that, winning the Big Ten title, going into the CFP unbeaten, and achieving the first #1 poll ranking in program history. Cignetti is the first back-to-back FBS winner in the award's history.
• AFCA Assistant Coach of the Year: The AFCA added this award in 1997 and also hands it out at each level of play. The award criteria include not only coaching success, but also community service, AFCA involvement, and "commitment to the student-athlete". 2025 FBS winner: Bryant Haines, DC, Indiana^note Produced one of the most dominant defenses in the nation and the greatest in program history without the benefit of any Top 25 recruiting classes.
• AP Coach of the Year: Presented by the Associated Press, and voted on by the same media members who vote in the weekly AP Poll during the season. 2025 winner: Cignetti^note Also the first-ever back-to-back winner of that award.
• Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year: Presented since 1976 by the Peach Bowl organizers, with a panel of college football experts as the voting body. Named after longtime Georgia Tech coach Bobby Dodd. Candidates are judged not only on their teams' on-field success but also their teams' academic success and community involvement. Winners from the previous two seasons, plus coaches in their first season at their current programs, are ineligible. 2025 winner: Cignetti^note An award he couldn't win in 2024 by rule.
• Broyles Award: The most prestigious award for assistant coaches, first awarded in 1996 and named after Frank Broyles, longtime Arkansas head coach and later the school's men's athletic director. Chosen by a committee of 17 prominent retired college coaches. 2025 FBS winner: Haines
• Eddie Robinson Award: Presented since 1987 to the top I-AA/FCS head coach by the publisher of the most widely recognized FCS poll—originally The Sports Network (not the Anglophone Canadian equivalent to ESPN, but rather a wire service), now the sports analytics company Stats Perform. One of two major coaching awards named after Grambling State coaching legend Eddie Robinson. 2025 winner: Kevin Cahill, Lehigh^note Led the Mountain Hawks to an unbeaten regular season and a first-round bye in the FCS playoffs.
• Eddie Robinson Coach of the Year: Presented since 1957 by the Football Writers Association of America, the trade association for college football writers. Originally known just as the FWAA Coach of the Year, but has been named after the aforementioned Eddie Robinson for the last few decades. The FWAA also presents the Nagurski and Outland Trophies. 2025 winner: Clark Lea, Vanderbilt^note Led the Commodores to their first-ever 10-win season, also featuring the same number of wins against ranked opponents that the Dores had achieved in the previous 16 seasons combined.
• George Munger Award: Presented since 1989 by the Maxwell Football Club, named after longtime Penn head coach George Munger, and awarded after the bowl games. Infamously changed its name to the Joseph V. Paterno Award in 2010, one year before the Jerry Sandusky scandal forced them to revert to the former name and rescind his three awards. '2025 winner: Cignetti^note Make that three awards for which he's the first-ever back-to-back winner.
• Home Depot Coach of the Year: Presented since 1994 by ESPN, with the voting body being college football analysts for the various ESPN networks (including ABC, whose sports operations are unified with ESPN). 2025 winner: Cignetti^note Yet another award for which he's the first-ever back-to-back winner.
• Paul "Bear" Bryant Award: Presented since 1986 by the American Heart Association, with the National Sports Media Association, a trade association for sports media members of all outlets, as the voting body. Of course, named after the legendary Alabama coach; the AHA connection comes from the family's support of that charity (relevant because The Bear died of a heart attack). The Bryant Awards program also includes coach of the year awards for each power conference; a single award to the top Group of Six coach; a lifetime achievement award (presented since the 2000 season) to a prominent head coach; and a "Newcomer Coach of the Year Award" added in 2023, with eligibility restricted to those in their first season as HC at the FBS level. 2025 winner: Cignetti^note Duh. Not a back-to-back winner, however.
  • 2025 Newcomer Award winner: Jerry Mack, Kennesaw State^note Took the Owls from a 2–10 season in 2024 to the CUSA title and a 10-win season.
  • 2025 Group of 6 winner: Bob Chesney, James Madison^note Led the Dukes to 12 wins, the Sun Belt title, and the conference's first-ever CFP berth before being hired away by UCLA.
• Walter Camp Coach of the Year: Presented since 1967 by the same body responsible for the Walter Camp Award. 2025 winner: Cignetti^note Make that five awards for which he's the first-ever back-to-back winner.