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Portal:College football

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The College football Portal

College football (French: football universitaire) is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football first gained popularity in the United States.

Like gridiron football generally, college football is most popular in the United States and Canada. While no single governing body exists for college football in the United States, most schools, especially those at the highest levels of play, are members of the NCAA. In Canada, collegiate football competition is governed by U Sports for universities. The Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (for colleges) governs soccer and other sports but not gridiron football. Other countries, such as Mexico, Japan and South Korea, also host college football leagues with modest levels of support.

Unlike most other major sports in North America, no official minor league farm organizations exist for American football or Canadian football. Therefore, college football is generally considered to be the second tier of American and Canadian football; ahead of high school competition, but below professional competition. In some parts of the United States, especially the South and Midwest, college football is more popular than professional football. For much of the 20th century, college football was generally considered to be more prestigious than professional football.

The overwhelming majority of professional football players in the NFL and other leagues previously played college football. The NFL draft each spring sees 224 players selected and offered a contract to play in the league, with the vast majority coming from the NCAA. Other professional leagues, such as the CFL and UFL, additionally hold their own drafts each year which also see primarily college players selected. Players who are not selected can still attempt to obtain a professional roster spot as an undrafted free agent. Despite these opportunities, only around 1.6% of NCAA college football players end up playing professionally in the NFL. (Full article...)

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Two football teams lined up against each other. Nine players wearing white uniforms and blues helmets are visible on one side of the ball (which is being held against the ground by one of the white players) and four players wearing purple uniforms are visible on the other side of the ball.
The 2007 Sheraton Hawaiʻi Bowl was a post-season college football bowl game between the Boise State University Broncos from the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) and the East Carolina University Pirates from Conference USA (C-USA) at the Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi on December 23, 2007. The game was the final competition of the 2007 football season for each team and resulted in a 41–38 East Carolina victory, even though spread bettors favored Boise State to win by 10 1/2 points. Many experts believed East Carolina to be big underdogs to Boise State, which had defeated the Oklahoma Sooners in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. The 2007 Hawaiʻi Bowl paid $750,000 to each team's conference in exchange for their participation.

The game, which was the eighth edition of the bowl, was expected to be an offensive shootout. Boise State averaged 42.4 points during the 2007 season, while East Carolina averaged 31. That expectation turned out to be justified as East Carolina took a 31–14 lead in the first half. The Broncos fought back in the second half, however, tying the score at 38 late in the fourth quarter after East Carolina's Chris Johnson fumbled the ball, allowing a Bronco defender to recover the ball and return it 47 yards for a touchdown. The game remained tied until the final moments as East Carolina's Ben Hartman made a 34–yard game-winning field goal as time expired. The attendance of 30,467 was the largest crowd to attend a Hawaiʻi Bowl game that did not feature the host school. Boise State's loss dropped them to a final 2007 record of 10–3, while East Carolina's final-game win earned them a record of 8–5.

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Aerial view of Harvard Stadium in Boston, in the form of a letter U with a capital H in the center of the field and the words Harvard and Crimson at either end

Yale's original mascot, Handsome Dan

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Credit: John Silks

Oklahoma Sooners football player Ryan Reynolds (American football) tackles a member of the Tulsa Golden Hurricane football team in a 2009 game.

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