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 |