Football Team

Columbia's football team is well-known for its dismal performance in recent decades. However, since the arrival of coach Norries Wilson, things have been looking better.

The football team is the most important sporting component of Columbia's membership in the Ivy League.

Facilities

The team plays its home games at the beautiful, bucolic, bilateral, urbane, multicultural, eleemosynary, yet still iconoclastic Lawrence A. Wien Stadium at Baker Field on 218th Street in the Inwood section of Manhattan.

History

Early football game between Columbia and Harvard. Characteristically, Harvard is winning.

Early Columbia-Yale game.

Early history

Columbia's college football team was formed in 1870. They played against Yale in 1872 in one of the first ever intercollegiate football games. However, University President Nicholas Murray Butler banned the sport from 1905 to 1915, claiming it was too rowdy.

First half of 20th century

During the first half of the 20th century, the Lions enjoyed consistent success on the gridiron. Between at least 1934 and 1947, the team was coached by Lou Little. In 1934, the team won the Rose Bowl against Stanford, in what was the precursor to the national championship. In 1947, the squad won a match agaisnt the cadets of Army, who were the defending national champions and hadn't lost a game in four years. They then won 32 consecutive games, one of the most stunning winning streaks of the century. Famous players included Luckman, an All-American quarterback who went on to lead the Chicago Bears to four NFL championships in the 1940s.

At some period during this project, the football team was even involved with the Manhattan Project, employed to carry uranium on their strong backs.

1960s to 1990s

In 1961, the team shared their only Ivy League title with Harvard. However, since then, the football team has enjoyed just three winning seasons: 6-3 in 1971, 5-4-1 in 1994, and 8-2 in 1996. In the 1980s, the team experienced a record 44-game losing streak. The jubilation that ensued upon the end of this nightmare was possibly the largest outbreak of school spirit ever seen at Columbia.

These losses are attributed to several reasons. First, the practice facilities at Baker Athletics Complex are far away from the main campus in Morningside Heights. Second, there is weak support because the student body is more often interested in all the other diversions in Manhattan. And third, coaches find it hard to recruit potential football players given Columbia's lack of a winning tradition.

Recent history

Liberty Cup and Fordham University

Main article: Liberty Cup

A recent addition to Columbia's storied football history is the annual Liberty Cup game with crosstown rival Fordham University. This tradition was begun in 2002 to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attack which killed significant numbers of alumni from both schools. Columbia and Fordham are the only two I-AA schools in NYC, and Fordham is an associate football member of the Patriot League.

The Liberty Cup series is currently tied up 4-4:

• 2009 Columbia 40, Fordham 28
• 2008 Fordham 29, Columbia 22
• 2007 Fordham 27, Columbia 10
• 2006 Columbia 37, Fordham 7
• 2005 Columbia 23, Fordham 17
• 2004 Fordham 17, Columbia 14
• 2003 Fordham 37, Columbia 30
• 2002 Columbia 13, Fordham 11

Columbia's record against Fordham is now 12-6, which includes a Columbia victory in the first game played between the two schools in 1890.

Bakergate

In 2005, the athletics administration tried to ban alcohol at football games in a scandal that became known as Bakergate. This proved unwise and unsuccessful. (Some say they reintroduced limited alcohol consumption because no one could rationally cheer for Columbia while sober!)

Recent upturn under Norries Wilson

In 2005, Columbia fired the old coach and hired Norries Wilson as his replacement. Wilson had been a runner-up for national assistant coach of the year while at the University of Connecticut in 2004. He is the latest head coach brought in to try to turn the program around. In his first season, the squad had vastly improved and notched a 5-5 campaign, with two victories to close out the year against Cornell and at defending Ivy-Champ Brown. This was the program's first .500-or-better season in 10 years. Wilson, along with his staff, have restored pride in the Columbia football program and, by all indications, have the proverbial ship pointed in the right direction.

Columbia has had five graduates on NFL rosters in the last year – more than any other Ivy school. They are: Marcellus Wiley '97, Steve Cargile '04, Jeff Otis '05, Wade Fletcher '05 and Michael Quarshie '05.

Notable players

• Bill Campbell
• Brian Dennehy
• Marty Domres
• William Joseph Donovan
• Stuyvesant Fish
• Matthew Fox
• Paul Governali
• Jack Kerouac
• Sid Luckman
• Johnathan Reese
• Archie Roberts
• Gene Rossides
• Bill Swiacki
• Russell Warren
• Marcellus Wiley
• John Witkowski

Trivia

• An early Columbia-Princeton game was the first live televised sporting event.
• Football players sometimes come back to speak at Columbia College Class Day.

External links

• Columbia Football
• Roar Lions Roar: a Columbia football blog with far better coverage than Spec