Columbia Athletics

The Athletics Department's Lion Logo

The Columbia Athletics Department administers Varsity Sports and Club Sports. It is based in Dodge Physical Fitness Center.

History

The history of Columbia varsity sports is oftened summed up as "futility." An authority no less than David J. Stern, Commissioner of the NBA, former chairman of the Columbia Trustees, and a graduate of the Law School, has admitted that being a Columbia sports fan isn't easy.

Football and basketball

Columbia last won a football Ivy League title in 1961, its only Ivy League title in the history of the conference. The next closest school to Columbia's 45 year title drought is Cornell, which hasn't won since 1990.

The last basketball title claimed by the Lions was in 1968, just before protests rocked campus. This is somewhat more forgivable since a team other than Penn or Princeton has won the league title outright only 6 times since 1956. The last time was in 1988. Even Columbia's '68 title was shared with Princeton.

The depths to which these programs have sunk are awe inspiring. In 2002-2003 the football and basketball teams combined to go 0-21 against Ivy league opponents. The proprams have both since rebounded, with the football team finishing 06-07 at .500 for the first time since Marcellus Wiley played D-End, and the Basketball team finishing .500 in the conference, and over .500 overall for the first time in a long time.

Other teams

These two premier "media" sports tend to obscure Columbia's dominance in other fields. Columbia has won 33 men's fencing titles, either shared, or more often, outright. The women have added 7 more. In addition the men's team has won the NCAA championship on more than one occasion- most recently in 1993, and Columbia fencers routinely appear in the Olympic games. Between 2002-2005 the Women's Cross Country team dominated the competition, with runner Caroline Bierbaum winning the individual title twice, and finishing 2nd at the NCAA championships.

Then there's Columbia's forgotten dynasty- the 1978-1985 Men's Soccer team which captured 8 consecutive titles, highlighted in 1983 with a trip to the NCAA championship which ended with a heartbreaking Double OT loss to Indiana. The women's side captured its first league title in 2006.

Individual athletes not named Lou Gehrig have also been successful. Fencer Jed Dupree has won Olympic Gold, as has swimmer Christina Teuscher.

And of course, if none of that's exciting you can always retell the story of Columbia's 7-0 1934 Rose Bowl victory over Stanford, or the 1947 upset of the powerhouse Army Cadets, who hadn't lost a game in years. Of course there's also Columbia rowing, Columbia's first intercollegiate sport. Columbia rowers won the prestigious Henley Royal Regatta on the Thames in 1878, the first time a non-English team had won a race on English waters.

Columbians in the Sports World

Many Columbians play a major role in the world of sports, some who were athletes at Columbia, and some who weren't:

• Red Auerbach SJLC 1939 - Legendary coach and executive of the Boston Celtics
• Alfred Lerner C '55 - Late owner of the NFL Cleveland Browns
• Robert Kraft C '63 - owner of the NFL New England Patriots
• Gary Cohen C '81 - TV play-by-play announcer for the New York Mets
• Randy Lerner C '84 - Owner of the NFL Cleveland Browns, and English Premiership club Aston Villa F.C.
• Max Kellerman C '98 - Former host of ESPN's "Around the Horn" and host of his own radio show on ESPN radio

External links

• Go Columbia Lions - Columbia Athletics Website
• "Roar, Lion, Roar," from Ric Burns' Documentary "Stand, Columbia"
• Columbia Athletics Highlights
• Comprehensive Wikipedia Article on Columbia Lions Athletics
• Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame
• Columbia's 20 Greatest 20th Century Athletes
• Official Conference Website
• Ivy League Message Board