Crusaders

Twelve Patriot League titles sit on the Holy Cross record, when the team went through its schedule unbeaten and finished with a share of the national championship for that season. The conference championships that followed have come in clusters rather than a steady drip: a stretch across 1986 to 1991, then a long gap before the club returned to form and took the league six years running, from 2019 through 2024.

The program traces back to 1884, though its first games against other colleges did not come until 1891, and Holy Cross carried the football banner for the college through decades before the Patriot League existed to be won. An appearance in the 1946 Orange Bowl marked the team as a program capable of playing on a stage well beyond Worcester, at a time when Holy Cross football drew a different kind of national attention than it does now as an FCS side.

Fitton Field, known in its current sponsored form as Hanover Insurance Park at Fitton Field, holds 23,500, and it is there that the rivalry with Lafayette gets renewed along with the regular league fixtures against Lehigh and Colgate.

What the Crusaders have not managed is a return to that 1987 undefeated season or anything resembling a national title claim since. The recent Patriot League dominance has kept Holy Cross at the top of its own conference, but a step beyond that level, into the wider FCS championship picture, is still missing from the record.