Pride

Billy "White Shoes" Johnson spent three seasons at Widener before the Houston Oilers took him. He is the name Widener people reach for when the conversation turns to what this programme has sent into the professional game.

The name changed more than once after that. The Cadets became the Pioneers, and the Pioneers did not become the Pride until 2006, more than a century after the program's first kickoff. What did not change was the level of competition once Widener settled into NCAA Division III, where the school built the two seasons that still define it: a 39–36 win over Wabash in 1977 and a 17–10 defeat of Dayton in 1981, both national championships. Between and around those years came conference titles in the Middle Atlantic Conference — 1977 and 1981 among them, a 2014 title decades later — a total that supporters count as high as twenty.

Widener plays now at Leslie C. Quick Jr. Stadium, four thousand seats on Elizabeth J. Hirschmann Field. A national title has not returned since 1981.