Columbia Athletics

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The Athletics Department's Lion Logo

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

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.

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.

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 2006-2007, 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 Stamford, 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. CU rowers were the first team not from England to win the Henley Royal Regatta on the Thames in 1878.

External links

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