Builders

Homer L. Ferguson founded the school in 1919 to train apprentice shipbuilders at Newport News Shipbuilding, and the football team that took the field that year still carries the trade in its name. "Shipbuilders" was the obvious tag, but it stuck awkwardly in the mouth, so it was shortened to Builders, in maroon and gold. The team has played every season since, aside from a break in 1944 and 1945, and its players remain full-time shipyard employees who draw a wage while working through their coursework, an arrangement that has outlasted most of what once surrounded it in college football.

The current home ground, Builders Field, opened in the mid-1980s with shipbuilding motifs worked into its decoration, holding 1,500 for a program that has never chased bigger crowds. Christopher Newport University supplies the rivalry, contested as the James River Rumble or the War on Warwick depending on who is telling it, and since 2023 the two schools have also met for the Anchor Bowl. The Builders compete in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association, which stages no official football tournament, so their 2018 national title came by way of Balladeer's Blog rankings rather than a bracket; they had finished runners-up two years earlier, in 2016.

Norm Snead's name carries the most weight at Builders Field. He spent 16 seasons at NFL quarterback and made four Pro Bowls before taking the Builders' head coaching job in the late 1970s, staying a decade and lending an apprentice-school program a level of pedigree it had no obvious right to.