What is the Union Jack Classic and who is in it?

The Kansas Jayhawks will face the Arizona State Sun Devils at Wembley Stadium in the inaugural Union Jack Classic on Saturday, 19 September.

The fixture, kicking-off at 17:00 BST, is the second time an American college football game has taken place in London, but the first-ever meeting between two teams from the top level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Both teams are part of the Big 12, one of the NCAA Division I FBS conferences, with many players who later make it to the NFL doing so after attending a college in one of those conferences.

About 60,000 tickets have been sold for the game, with around 15,000 fans travelling from the United States.

Organisers hope to make the Union Jack Classic a regular occurrence in future years.

Unlike football in Great Britain and countries around the world, where there are multiple divisions and young players often turn professional by coming through a club's academy, American football uses a system that mirrors other major American sports.

With the NFL being the country's main senior league, players are usually signed from other NFL teams or straight out of a college via a draft.

Universities in the United States are split up into three divisions by the NCAA. These are Division I, Division II and Division III. Each division has multiple smaller conferences.

Division I is then split up further into the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).

The majority of players who earn scholarships and are later recruited by NFL clubs are signed from Division I colleges. Division II colleges do produce some NFL players, but significantly fewer. An even smaller number come out of Division III colleges.

Of the 32 first-round picks in the 2026 NFL Draft, all of them came from colleges in the FBS.

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, who previously worked as the chief executive of NBA outfit Brooklyn Nets, is hoping to grow the conference by taking it on the road.

Big 12 teams played in Dublin last year and last month, and once the Union Jack Classic was arranged, Yormark was keen for his conference to be represented in London.

Many college football teams are based in cities and locations that do not have a nearby NFL franchise, and Yormark hopes to make the most of those gaps in the market, as well as college football's pre-existing high viewership figures.

"In many of our markets we don't have an NFL team so it is the biggest thing in town, if you will, and Saturdays are bigger than Sundays in many of our communities," he told BBC Sport.

"Generally speaking, college football is only number two to the NFL in the sports landscape in the US, when you think about attendances, ratings and all the key metrics, so being able to bring the number two sport in America to the UK is an exciting opportunity for the Big 12, and playing at the historic Wembley Stadium makes it even more special."

Of the 16 teams in the Big 12, half of them produced crowds averaging more than 50,000 fans per home game during the 2025 season. All 16 of them averaged crowds of more than 32,000 spectators per home game.

The Union Jack Classic organisers aim to capitalise on the NFL's growth in London, which has hosted at least one regular-season game since 2007 (with the exception of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic).

They have signed an exclusive multi-year deal with Wembley and are already in talks over which conferences and teams want to be involved in future years.

"This is an ideal opportunity for college football to draft behind the NFL, visit markets that they've opened up, and tap into the 14 million who identify as American football fans in the UK," adds Yormark.

"It's an exciting opportunity for us and we're hoping this isn't just a one-off. That we can continue to do and build upon moving forward.

"We want the game to showcase what we think is one of the greatest sports in America, which is college football."

This article is the latest from BBC Sport's Ask Me Anything team.