Sprint football, formerly called lightweight football, is a varsity sport played by United States colleges and universities, under rules similar to American football. The sport is currently governed by the Collegiate Sprint Football League.

Unlike conventional collegiate football which places a premium on body weight and strength, sprint football emphasizes speed and agility. Players must maintain a weight of 172 lbs or less and a minimum of 5% body fat to be eligible to play.

As of 2012, there are eight teams in the CSFL; of the eight, five are private universities (three being schools in the Ivy League) and two are national military academies; currently Mansfield University of Pennsylvania is the only state university or college playing sprint football. All eight teams are located in the northeastern United States. Three teams have been added since the 2008 season; none of the new additions have full-size varsity football teams. The other five teams (all of which have been in the CSFL since 1957) have full-size football teams that compete in NCAA Division I—the service academies in the top-tier FBS, and the Ivy League schools in the second-level FCS.. Each team plays a seven game season. In addition, Army, Cornell, Princeton, and Penn all hold alumni games in which sprint football alumni return to campus for a full-contact scrimmage against the varsity squad. The alumni games serve the dual purpose of raising funds to support the team and maintaining alumni interest in the program. Typically, the alumni have to donate a monetary weight penalty (e.g., $2 per pound) for weighing above the 172-pound limit.

Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804 – October 8, 1869) was the 14th President of the United States (1853–1857) and is the only President from New Hampshire. Pierce was a Democrat and a "doughface" (a Northerner with Southern sympathies) who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War and became a brigadier general in the Army. His private law practice in his home state, New Hampshire, was so successful that he was offered several important positions, which he turned down. Later, he was nominated as the party's candidate for president on the 49th ballot at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. In the presidential election, Pierce and his running mate William R. King won by a landslide in the Electoral College. They defeated the Whig Party ticket of Winfield Scott and William A. Graham by a 50 percent to 44 percent margin in the popular vote and 254 to 42 in the electoral vote.

He made many friends, but he suffered tragedy in his personal life; all of his children died when young. As president, he made many divisive decisions which were widely criticized and earned him a reputation as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. Pierce's popularity in the Northern states declined sharply after he supported the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which replaced the Missouri Compromise and renewed debate over the expansion of slavery in the American West. Pierce's credibility was further damaged when several of his diplomats issued the Ostend Manifesto. The historian David Potter concludes that the Ostend Manifesto and the Kansas-Nebraska Act were "the two great calamities of the Franklin Pierce administration.... Both brought down an avalanche of public criticism."^{[citation needed]} More importantly, says Potter, they permanently discredited Manifest Destiny and "popular sovereignty" as political doctrines.