The 126-year-old California university to bring the football team back

For years, the California universities have attributed football to the figures in sports. But on Monday a California College announced that it will bring the game back after years.

Azusa Pacific, a small Christian university in the eastern Los Angeles County, which was founded in 1899, announced on Monday that she would revive his football program five years after the school was completed in 2020.

The school, which is currently of 5,000 full -time students, will also change your entire sports program from the NCAA Division II, where it is currently competing, to the NCAA Division III, where the school of the South California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference or SCIAC will join.

The Cougars had set up a football team for 55 years, mainly at the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Level before moving over to Division II in early 2010. Asza Pacific even won a Naia National title and produced the former NFL running Christian Okoye.

But in December 2020 the school closed its program and led the decline of college football in California as a factor. When it decided to drop football, Azusa Pacific was one of only four colleges II who played football west of the Rocky Mountains and the only school in California. The Cougars said they were the only school of Division II or III, which flew to all their street games in 2019, their last season of football.

Asza Pacific will only take part in California in the only NCAA College Football League in the only NCAA College Football League. Another SCIAC school, Whittier, will also bring your football program in 2026 in 2022 in 2026. When both start in 2026, they will be the first California colleges that have resumed football at the NCAA level, since Chapman added football after a 62-year absence in 1994.

The reinstatement also reflects an increase in sports at the high school level. The California Interscholastic Federation conducts an annual survey in spring to show the participation of sports to sports in high school athletics. The traditional football figures went back steadily before the pandemic, from over 100,000 players in 2016 to 89,756 in 2020. However, participation recovered to 89,178 players in 2023 and rose again to 89,667 in 2024.

However, the relocation of Division II to Division III is a massive change for the rest of the sport on campus. When the recruiting service broke out as the next student athlete, Colleges of Division II can sometimes offer sporting scholarships to get and take part in their campus. At the level of Division III, schools cannot offer sports scholarships of any kind to tempt recruits to compete, although grants and needy scholarships are permitted.

Asza Pacific said that from the school year 2026-27 it would go to Division III and the SCIAC when the Cougars soccer team rose again in autumn. In its press release, the school announced that it started immediately after a new Cheff football coach.