Patriot League - Football

Football

League champions
  • 1986 Holy Cross
  • 1987 Holy Cross
  • 1988 Lafayette
  • 1989 Holy Cross
  • 1990 Holy Cross
  • 1991 Holy Cross
  • 1992 Lafayette
  • 1993 Lehigh
  • 1994 Lafayette
  • 1995 Lehigh
  • 1996 Bucknell
  • 1997 Colgate
  • 1998 Lehigh
  • 1999 Colgate and Lehigh
  • 2000 Lehigh
  • 2001 Lehigh
  • 2002 Colgate and Fordham
  • 2003 Colgate
  • 2004 Lafayette and Lehigh
  • 2005 Colgate and Lafayette
  • 2006 Lafayette and Lehigh
  • 2007 Fordham
  • 2008 Colgate
  • 2009 Holy Cross
  • 2010 Lehigh
  • 2011 Lehigh


Patriot League football was non-scholarship until the league presidents voted to approve football scholarships starting with the 2013 recruiting class. Each school will be allowed no more than the equivalent of 15 scholarships to incoming football players. The total number of scholarship equivalents cannot exceed 60 in any season, three short of the NCAA FCS maximum.

Until 1997, Patriot League teams did not participate in the NCAA Division I Football Championship playoffs. The policy was in step with the Ivy League's policy of not participating in the playoffs since the Patriot League was founded with the Ivy League's athletics philosophy. The league champion receives the automatic playoff berth. If there are co-champions, a tie-breaker determines the playoff participant.

Colgate was the first team to receive the league's automatic berth in 1997. The following year, Lehigh won the league's first playoff game. It is also the only year where a Patriot League team, Colgate, received a playoff invitation without being a league co-champion. The 2003 Colgate team advanced all the way to the National Championship game before falling to the University of Delaware. It is the only time a Patriot League team has advanced beyond the second round and played in a championship game.

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Famous quotes containing the word football:

    “In this dream that dogs me I am part
    Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
    Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
    All moving the same way.”
    —Philip Larkin (1922–1986)

    “In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
    —Donald Hall (b. 1928)

    “You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
    —Frank Zappa (1940–1993)