Yale Bulldogs

The Yale Bulldogs are the college sports teams that represent Yale University, located in New Haven, Connecticut. The school sponsors 35 varsity sports. The school has won two NCAA national championships in women's fencing, four in men's swimming and diving, 21 in men's golf, one in men's hockey, one in men's lacrosse, and 16 in sailing.

Originally inspired by varsity matches between Oxford University and Cambridge University in England, Yale and Harvard influenced the development of college sports in the United States.

In 1970 the NCAA banned Yale from participating in all NCAA sports for two years, in reaction to Yale—against the wishes of the NCAA—playing Jack Langer in college games after Langer had played for Team United States at the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Israel with the approval of Yale President Kingman Brewster. The decision impacted 300 Yale students, every Yale student on its sports teams, over the next two years.

Major leaguers pitcher Craig Breslow (Oakland A's and Boston Red Sox) and catcher Ryan Lavarnway (Boston Red Sox/Los Angeles Dodgers), among others, played baseball for the Bulldogs. Perhaps Yale's most notable baseball player, however, was future U.S. president George H. W. Bush, who played for the Bulldogs in the late 1940s.

Breslow led the Ivy League with a 2.56 ERA in 2002. Lavarnway led the NCAA in batting average (.467) and slugging percentage (.873) in 2007, set the Ivy League hitting-streak record (25), and through 2010 held the Ivy League record in career home runs (33). In August 2012, Breslow and Lavarnway, playing for the Red Sox, became the first Yale grads to be Major League teammates since 1949.

The men's basketball team has been named national champion on six occasions – in 1896, 1897, 1899, and 1900 by the Premo-Porretta Power Poll, which began retroactive selections with the 1895–96 season; and in 1901 and 1903 by the Helms Athletic Foundation, which began retroactive selections with the 1900–01 season. Penn and Yale played in the First College Basketball game with 5 men on a team in 1897.

Yale has won seven Ivy League championships – 1957, 1962, 1963, 2002, 2016, 2019 and 2020. It also won the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League, the forerunner to the Ivy League, eight times – 1902, 1903, 1907, 1915, 1917, 1923, 1933 and 1949.

The football team has competed since 1876. They have won nineteen national championships when the school competed in what is now known as the FBS. They are perhaps best known for their rivalry with Harvard, known as "The Game". Twenty one former players have been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.