The Wesleyan Cardinals football team represents

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

in the sport of

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

. It is a member of the

Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...

New England Small College Athletic Conference (

NESCAC The New England Small Collegiate Athletic Conference (NESCAC) is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising sports teams from eleven highly selective liberal arts institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. T ...

) and competes against traditional

Little Three The ''Little Three'' is a term started by and used in reference to athletic competition between three private liberal arts colleges in the New England region of the United States: Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Wesleyan University i ...

rivals Amherst and Williams. Wesleyan is one of the 39 founding members of the NCAA. The Cardinals’ home field, Andrus Field, is the oldest continuously used American football field in the world. Andrus Field is also the oldest continuously used baseball field in the world as the Wesleyan baseball team also uses Andrus Field.

Notable players

Bill Belichick William Stephen Belichick (; born April 16, 1952) is an American professional football coach who is the head coach of the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). Additionally, he exercises extensive authority over the Patri ...

: head coach of the New England Patriots of the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) * Eric Mangini: former head coach of the NFL's New York Jets and

Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (A ...

and NFL analyst for

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

and

Fox Sports 1 Fox Sports 1 (FS1) is an American pay television channel owned by the Fox Sports Media Group, a unit of Fox Corporation. FS1 replaced the motorsports network Speed on August 17, 2013, at the same time that its companion channel Fox Sports ...

* Jeff Wilner: first Wesleyan graduate to play for an NFL team; played

tight end The tight end (TE) is a position in American football, arena football, and Canadian football, on the offense. The tight end is often a hybrid position with the characteristics and roles of both an offensive lineman and a wide receiver. Lik ...

for the Green Bay Packers and

Denver Broncos The Denver Broncos are a professional American football franchise based in Denver. The Broncos compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The team is headquar ...

from 1994 to 1996 *

Field Yates Field Minister Yates (born April 23, 1987) is an American sportswriter and analyst, who currently serves as an NFL Insider at ESPN where he provides NFL and fantasy football insight. A graduate of Wesleyan University, where he was two sport athl ...

: analyst on

and former member of the coaching staff of the

Kansas City Chiefs The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The ...

References

External links

* 1875 establishments in Connecticut American football teams established in 1875 {{Connecticut-sport-team-stub