Fightin' Blue Hens

Joe Flacco played quarterback for Delaware for two seasons before the Baltimore Ravens made him a first-round pick, and by the time he was named Super Bowl XLVII MVP, Newark had already produced an NFL MVP in Rich Gannon a generation earlier. Both wore the royal blue and gold of a program that traces its nickname not to the university itself but to a Revolutionary War militia company under Captain John Caldwell, men remembered for their ferocity and nicknamed "The Blue Hen's Chickens." The university took up the Blue Hen as its symbol in 1911, though the full "Fightin' Blue Hens" did not appear in print until 1949.

By then the team, which first took the field in 1889, was already building toward the identity it would carry for decades under Bill Murray, whose tenure from 1940 to 1950 delivered the program's first national title in 1946. Delaware won the College Division championship three more times through the 1960s and '70s, added a Division II crown in 1979, and closed the run with a Division I-AA title in 2003 — six national championships spread across four different classifications, a record few programs outside the top tier can match.

None of it means as much locally as the Battle of the Blue, the rivalry with Villanova that has been renewed every year since 1895. Delaware Stadium, known to generations of fans as Tubby Raymond Field, holds 18,500 for it.

The program is now leaving the Coastal Athletic Association, where it won conference titles as recently as 2020, and stepping up to the FBS as a member of Conference USA from the 2025 season — the biggest structural shift the Blue Hens have made in more than a century.