Every county starts with the nearest FBS stadium. Win, and you take everything the loser holds. Lose it all, and the only way back is beating somebody who still owns dirt. This is the 1887 season, played to its final whistle.
Final conquests
Standings
3 landholders · final
The standings
Lehigh won the 1887 season on the college football imperialism map with 2,859,751 mi² across 1,867 counties, the largest empire when the last game went final on November 25, 1887. Yale finished second with 684,560 mi², ahead of MIT (61,150 mi²). 3 empires held land at the end, across 3,142 counties.
Final ·
Articles of war
Before a down is played, every county in the fifty states is dealt to the FBS program with the nearest stadium, measured as the crow flies from the county's geographic center. Nobody starts landless in the FBS; nobody outside it starts with anything.
When a game goes final, the winner takes everything the loser holds at that moment: home soil and every prior conquest alike. Games are replayed in kickoff order, so an empire can rise and fall inside a single Saturday.
A team with no land has nothing to lose, but it can beat any landholder and take the lot. That is how FCS, Division II and Division III programs raid their way onto the map, and land taken downward can stay there all season.
Ties, unfinished games and games without a score are ignored. Territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands) are off the map. Neutral-site games overseas do not yet award foreign soil. A week appears in the timeline once its first game goes final. The current map is refreshed automatically every morning during the season. The 1887 campaign is complete. Stadium coordinates, colors and logos are today's; conference and division come from each season's own results. The full rules and methodology have the details.