Drexel University. Dept. of Athletics.

Athletic competition began informally at Drexel in 1892, when students organized their own intramural games. By 1896, an athletic association for men's sports had been formed; the women's athletic association would form later, around 1908. Athletics first received funding from the school under the tenure of Hollis Godfrey in 1914. In 1920, the Drexel Institute hired its first full-time paid coach, W.J. McAvoy, to coach men's competitive sports. Originally governed by a faculty council, athletics became part of the Department of Physical Education in 1945, and it was elevated to department status under the dean of the faculty. After an unsuccessful attempt to begin awarding athletic scholarships in the early 1930s, a more successful program was introduced in 1948. Drexel became a member of the Middle Atlantic States Conference Athletic Association in 1920 and the East Coast Athletic Conference in 1977.

The football team had its unofficial beginning at the Drexel Institute in 1892 as a student-organized sport and began receiving funding from the institute in 1914. In 1920, W.J. McAvoy was appointed coach of major sports, including football, making him the first paid, full-time football coach. Football was suspended during World War II due to a drop in enrollment, but became more popular and more competitive after the war, leading to the team's first and only undefeated season in 1955. Attendance at games dwindled in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Drexel's Board of Trustees voted to discontinue the football program in 1973.