College Football and the BCS |
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Football Rules Player Positions Football Strategy Football Glossary
College Football is one of the most popular sports in the United States. In college football, teams are made up of students from the schools.
At the highest level, college football is very competitive. Coaches recruit top high school players from around the country to try and get them to come to their college and play on their team. Large stadiums are packed with as many as 90,000 fans each weak to watch each college football game. Students who go to the school as well as people who have graduated from the school (alumni) can be as intense of fans as in all of sports.
NCAA
The NCAA, National College Athletic Association, is an association of most of the colleges in the United States. The NCAA sets rules and regulations to make sure that the players for the teams are eligible students and to keep the rules fair between schools.
The NCAA divides up colleges into divisions for football. The top division is called the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). The next level is called the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).
Major Conferences
Colleges are divided up into conferences. There are certain conferences that are considered the biggest and best. They are the major conferences or the BCS conferences. We'll talk more about what the BCS is in the next section. The teams in the conferences change over time. There is no rule about which conference a school must be a part of. If they want to join, and the conference wants to let them in, then they can join.
Some conferences have a championship game. There is an NCAA rule that says you must have at least 12 teams to have a championship game. This has caused a lot of conferences to add teams and schools so they can have their own championship game.
Here is a list of some of the major conferences in college football.