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The Eastern Kentucky Colonels football program represents Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) in college football, competing at the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level as a member of the United Athletic Conference (UAC). The school has traditionally had much success on the football field, having won 21 OVC conference titles and two Division I FCS National Championships (then called Division I-AA) in 1979 and 1982, and reaching the finals in 1980 and 1981. Much of the success came during the long tenure of head coach Roy Kidd from 1964 to 2002. In 1990, Eastern honored Kidd by naming the school's football stadium Roy Kidd Stadium. Eastern Kentucky's football team was able to secure 31 consecutive winning seasons before finally posting a losing season record in 2009.

In September 2013, the Lexington Herald-Leader, the daily newspaper of nearby Lexington, reported that EKU was considering moving its program to the top-level Football Bowl Subdivision. However, under NCAA rules, such a move would require that EKU receive an invitation from an existing FBS conference. In the end, no such move was made.

EKU left the OVC for the Atlantic Sun Conference, then officially known as the ASUN Conference, in July 2021. At the time, the ASUN did not sponsor football, but had committed to launching an FCS football league in the near future. During the 2021 season, EKU competed as a de facto associate member of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in a football partnership between the two leagues officially branded as the "ASUN–WAC Challenge". While the ASUN launched its own football league in 2022, it maintained its partnership with the WAC for the 2022 season. Shortly after that season, the two conferences fully merged their football leagues, announcing the new branding of United Athletic Conference in April 2023.