The WPI Engineers football team represents

Worcester Polytechnic Institute The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is a Private university, private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1865, WPI was one of the United States' first engineering and technology universities and now h ...

(WPI) in the sport of

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

. The Engineers compete in

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 Third ...

(DIII) of the

National Collegiate Athletics Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and 1 in Canada. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps ...

(NCAA) and the

NEWMAC The New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) is an intercollegiate athletic conference affiliated with the NCAA's Division III. Member institutions are located in the northeastern United States in the states of Connecticut, Mas ...

. WPI's football program is one of the oldest in the country. The team has been coached by Chris Robertson since the 2010 season. WPI plays its home games at

Alumni Stadium Alumni Stadium is a college football stadium on the lower campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. It is about west of downtown Boston, just inside the Boston city limits near the border with Newton, Massachusetts, Newton. It i ...

, located on the campus in

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Massachusetts, second-most populous city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the list of United States cities by population, 113th most populous city in the United States. Named after Worcester ...

, with a capacity of 2,000.

History

Prior to competing in collegiate football, WPI played association football (now known as the sport of soccer) from 1874 to 1876 and American rugby from 1877 to 1881. Starting in 1882, WPI attempted to play football as a sport. It was not until 1885 that the football team was taken seriously. The 1887 season was the first in which the team competed as a varsity sport. Following their outstanding performance in the 1888 season, the Engineers were invited to join a football league of small New England colleges, but the faculty refused the idea and barred the team from playing any away games. The Institute's opinion of football would improve by the turn of the century and give more support to the team.

Bowl games

WPI has appeared in four

bowl game In North America, a bowl game, or simply bowl, is one of a number of postseason college football games primarily played by NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams. For most of its history, the FBS did not use a playoff tourname ...

s and has a 2–2 record.

References

External links

* American football teams established in 1887 1887 establishments in Massachusetts {{collegefootball-stub