Sprint football


Sprint football, formerly called lightweight football, is a varsity sport played by United States colleges and universities, under standard American football rules. The sport is currently governed by the Collegiate Sprint Football League.
In sprint football, players must maintain a weight of 178 lb or less and a minimum of 5% body fat to be eligible to play. The end result of these weight restrictions is that, unlike conventional collegiate football which places a premium on body weight and strength, sprint football emphasizes speed and agility.

Competition

As of 2019, 10 schools field teams in the CSFL; of the 10, seven are private universities and two are national military academies; Mansfield University of Pennsylvania is the only state university or college currently playing sprint football. All of the teams are located in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic United States. Seven schools have joined in the 21st century, one in 2008 and the others in the 2010s; six remain active in sprint football today. Of these new members, only Franklin Pierce University, which joined in 2012, no longer sponsors the sport, having transitioned to full-sized football in NCAA Division II after the 2018 season. Of the 21st-century arrivals, only Alderson Broaddus University, also a Division II member, has a full-size varsity football team. The other four teams have full-size football teams that compete in NCAA Division I—the service academies in FBS, and the Ivy League schools in FCS. Each team plays a seven-game season. It is not uncommon for the CSFL teams to play against full-size junior varsity or club football squads from other schools in the early part of the season. In addition, Army, Cornell, Princeton, and Penn all hold alumni games in which sprint football alumni return to campus for a full-contact scrimmage against the varsity squad. The alumni games serve the dual purpose of raising funds to support the team and maintaining alumni interest in the program. Typically, the alumni have to donate a monetary weight penalty for weighing above the 178-pound limit. In 2017, when Caldwell joined, the CSFL was split into two divisions, the North and the South. On December 7, 2017, St. Thomas Aquinas College was announced as the tenth team in the league, to begin play in the 2018 season. After that season, Franklin Pierce left to play full-sized football and was replaced by Alderson Broaddus.
As of 2019, only one charter member of the league remains, the Penn Quakers. The Princeton Tigers dropped the sport after 2015, following sixteen consecutive years of winless seasons and changes in league membership, and shifted its resources to club football. A number of other Ivy League schools have historically had sprint football teams, including the Yale Bulldogs, Harvard Crimson, and Columbia Lions, all of whom had dropped the sport many years earlier; of the Ivy League schools, only Penn and the Cornell Big Red remain.
For its first 83 seasons, the CSFL did not sponsor playoff or bowl games. The season championship was decided solely by the regular season record; if multiple teams were tied atop the standings, all of them shared the championship. Since Navy's and Army's respective admissions to the league, those two schools have dominated the league; of the 72 seasons of lightweight football since Navy joined, they and/or Army have won at least a share of the league title in 64 of them, including stretches of 20 consecutive seasons from 1955–74 and 17 straight from 1983–99. Since the 2017 season, a championship game has been held on Veterans Day weekend.
Although CSFL teams are considered varsity teams and official school-sponsored sports for the purpose of the NCAA, sprint football teams do not fall into the same divisional structure as other NCAA sports.
In April 2020, the CSFL chose Dan Mara, also Commissioner of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference as Commissioner.

Weight limit

CSFL rules require that players must weigh no more than, a figure that has slowly increased from its original as the weight of the American college student has increased over the course of the league's existence. League rules specify official weigh-ins four days and two days before each game. Players are allowed to weigh-in up to 183 pounds four days before game but in order to be eligible to play they must weigh-in under 178 pounds on the two day weigh-ins. Players are allowed to gain weight back after meeting the weight limit

Notable players and coaches