Sprint football

In sprint football, players must weigh less than 178 lb (81 kg) and have a minimum of 5% body fat to be eligible to play.

[3] As of the current 2024 season, nine schools play in the CSFL and seven in the Midwest Sprint Football League.

[4] Of the nine CSFL members, six are private universities (two being schools in the Ivy League) and two are national military academies.

[18] 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 2015, for instance, Navy faced the Longwood Lancers).

[19] Typically, the alumni have to donate a monetary weight penalty (e.g., $2 per pound) for weighing above the 178-pound limit.

On December 7, 2017, St. Thomas Aquinas College was announced as the tenth team in the league, to begin play in the 2018 season.

[15] After that season, Franklin Pierce left to play full-sized football and was replaced by Alderson Broaddus.

[21] However, in 2023, Alderson Broaddus' authorization to grant degrees was revoked, and they were required to drop all athletics, including their sprint football program.

[24] 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 (a tradition due in no small part to the Ivy League schools, who, like the rest of the Ivy League, abstain from all football postseason play to encourage academic performance).

The MSFL was formed in 2021, with play starting in 2022, by six private institutions in the Midwest and Upper South.