Football at the Top Colleges

The huge team sizes for college football have resulted in a total of 4,359 football players at the 49 highly selective colleges that play the sport. Football players make up almost 21% of all male NCAA athletes at the 61 highly selective colleges.

The 28 colleges in NCAA Division 1 account for a total of 2,651 players or 60% of all NCAA football players, and the remaining 21 colleges in Division 3 account for 1,708 football players in the 2021/2022 season.

Football NCAA Rules and Calendar for Athlete Recruitment

How do top colleges in Division 1 select their athlete recruits?

Athlete Recruitment to a Top NCAA Division 3 College

List of Highly Selective Colleges with Football Teams

The table below lists the 49 highly selective colleges that offer football as an NCAA sport.

All data is compiled from college athletic websites.

Football at Highly Selective Colleges
	Division
Amherst College	III
Bates College	III
Boston College	I
Bowdoin College	III
Brown University	I
Carleton College	III
Carnegie Mellon University	III
Claremont McKenna College (incl Harvey Mudd)	III
Colby College	III
Colgate University	I
Columbia University (incl Barnard College)	I
Cornell University	I
Dartmouth College	I
Davidson College	I
Duke University	I
Georgetown University	I
Georgia Institute of Technology	I
Grinnell College	III
Hamilton College	III
Harvard University	I
Harvey Mudd College (comb w/Claremont McKenna)	III
John Hopkins University	III
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	III
Middleburry College	III
Northwestern University	I
Pitzer College	III
Pomona College	III
Princeton University	I
Rice University	I
Stanford University	I
Tufts University	III
Tulane University	I
University of California Berkeley	I
University of California Los Angeles	I
University of Michigan	I
University of Chicago	III
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill	I
University of Notre Dame	I
University of Pennsylvania	I
University of Southern California	I
University of Virginia	I
Vanderbilt University	I
Villanova University	I
Wake Forest University	I
Washington and Lee University	III
Washington University in St. Louis	III
Wesleyan University	III
Williams College	III
Yale University	I
Total Players	4359

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