Bellarmine Creates Lightweight "Sprint" Football Team

Those “Bellarmine Football: Still Undefeated” t-shirts may soon be out of style.

Monday afternoon the small Catholic school in Louisville announced it is putting together a football team for the first time in the school’s 71 -year history. This football team will not be competing against the likes of Kentucky and Louisville. This football team will be significantly smaller than its neighbors.

The Knights will play a brand of football called “Sprint Football.” Like pee wee or Pop Warner, the Midwestern Sprint Football League has a weight limit. Players must not exceed 178 pounds.

Aside from the weight restriction, sprint football has the same rules as regular American Football. Popularized on the east coast and played by schools in the Ivy League and in military academies, sprint football offers a safe, faster alternative to the football we all know and love. Now sprint football is coming to six midwestern schools in the fall of 2022.

This sprint football league will not be an NCAA sanctioned sport. The Knights hope to have 40 to 50 players for the MSFL’s inaugural season, but are still seeking out a facility to host games. This is the next step in Bellarmine’s athletic expansion a year after they moved into the Division I ranks by joining the Atlantic Sun Conference.

This new brand of football in the Bluegrass has me intrigued. It’s one thing to have a weight limit, but 178 pounds? That sounds like a weight limit for 8th graders, not 20-year-olds. I do not know what type of athlete the sport will attract to Bellarmine, but I am happy to see that under-sized kids in the area will now have an opportunity to play the world’s most spectacular sport.