College Football - Patriot Conference
History - Important facts - Teams - Winners
In the early 1980s, a small group of college and university presidents from renowned academic institutions in the Northeast came together in search to produce a flourishing mix of competitive Division I athletics and the highest academic achievement. By 1984, the Colonial League was instituted. After four years of football action, the league hired Carl Ullrich in 1989. A year later, the conference was renamed the Patriot League.
The Colonial League was born as a Division I-AA football conference, featuring six highly selective institutions with storied athletic histories -- Bucknell, Colgate, Davidson College, the College of the Holy Cross, Lafayette College, and Lehigh.
The founding values of the league included student-athletes who were academically representative of the total student body of each institution, financial aid awarded to student-athletes on the basis of demonstrated financial need, and all-league policies and standards to be governed by each institution's president.
The Patriot League has seen its share of membership changes during its 15-year history.
Fordham University was added in 1990 but resigned its full membership in 1994 and remains in the League as an associate member.
Towson University was football-only member of the League from 1997 to 2004, Davidson University dropped in 1989 and Georgetown University became an league associate on football in 2001.
The academic prowess of the league has been well acknowledged. For the past six years, the Patriot League has had the highest graduation rate of scholar-athletes among all Division I athletic conferences that award athletic-related financial aid. Bucknell has been at the forefront of the academic success, leading the entire nation in graduation rates in the 2003 survey and ranking third among all Division I institutions, behind just Nebraska and Notre Dame, with 109 Academic All-Americans since 1970.
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