The Boogie Down
September 18th, 2015, 10:19 AM
Lions-44, Christians-0
That's what Archie Bunker's favorite read screamed on its back cover after Columbia's thrashing of Fordham in 1972. The pasting, played under a torrential downpour, offered a light crowd of 7,000 fans although the media was well represented. Aside from the Daily News, WMCA-AM aired the contest on tape delay (following the Notre Dame game and a later Yankees game) while an early era cable outfit, TelePrompTer, also made the clash available to Manhattan's Upper West Side. Well, to those on the Upper West who knew what cable was.
It was a different age although some things were eerily similar. To paraphrase Gerry Meagher, then a sports editor for The RAM student newspaper, the Columbia University Marching Band (aka the CUMB), greeted Maroon fans by graciously welcoming Fordham for providing New York with a second big time college football team. After pausing for effect, they asked when Fordham would provide New York with a second big time college?
Perhaps, as described by Meagher, the "hairy and kinetic" counterculturalists were misinformed but by 1972 Columbia was no longer truly "big time." Back then the Ivies were playing at a level comparable to today's Mid-American Conference, if not worse, and Columbia was certainly the Kent State of the group. Then again, having come off a positive 1971 campaign and well over a decade from truly delving into the darkest of downtrodden depths, the CUMB was still the most comedic act coming out of Baker Field. Whether actually big time or not, the Lions had far more than enough to crush a Division-III collection and did so with scrubs playing for most of the second half. Despite the throttling, both sides left feeling somewhat good about themselves. Columbia got to run some plays in preparation for what appeared to be a promising autumn. Fordham got to test themselves against what was still considered Division-I competition. Even if by then the Ivies had already shied away from the rest of the Division-I scene while competing inside their own exclusive, little bubble.
Starting with the 1956 season, the previously quasi-independent assemblage of Ancient Eight universities united to formally form the Ivy League. Back then regular seasons were only 9 games long so the league's 7 in-conference games greatly limited each team's opportunities at scheduling traditional non-Ivy rivals like Army, Navy or any of the Big Ten schools. The Ivies didn't seem to mind. In fact they went the extra step in almost exclusively scheduling their 2 non-conference games against smaller, weaker, Ivy-Light types who'd later form the Patriot League. Even then, most of that group (Holy Cross, Colgate, Lehigh, Lafayette, Bucknell and at the time, Rugters) was Patsier than ever.
At the time, Fordham wasn't even good enough to hang with the Ivy-Lights. Aside from Holy Cross, they also had no link to any other Patsy. Even that one Jesuit connection had been dormant for nearly two decades by 1972. Instead, after dropping their D-I program in 1954, Fordham was slowly trying to make it back onto the main stage after reinstating varsity status in 1970. Coincidentally, while Fordham was adding football, SUNY-Buffalo, a low-level D-I, was dropping the sport. Back in 1958 Buffalo had been the very last non-Ivy or Ivy-Light Columbia had ever scheduled. That matchup, staged off the banks of Lake Erie, was won by the Bulls 34-14. To show how low Columbia had fallen, a week earlier Buffalo had been shutout 26-0 by Baldwin Wallace. Further research confirms that Baldwin Wallace is neither person nor law firm but indeed a school. Just not a prolific one in terms of football although they were at the time coached by Lee Tressel (Jim's dad) and did win a D-III national championship in 1978. Meaning the tiny, rural, liberal arts college might have beaten "big time" Columbia in both 1958 and 1978. Not that the Lions wanted to find out. It would be another 14 years before they'd even schedule a rematch with Buffalo, this one set for the banks of the Hudson. But with the SUNY institution temporarily out of the football business (they returned as a D-III in 1977, elevated to I-AA in 1993 and then to D-I in 1999 as a member of the Mid-American Conference) Columbia had a blank date for their 1972 opener.
In the spring of 1971, and fresh off the basketball team's surprising Sweet 16 run, Fordham's athletic director, Pete Carlesimo (PJ's dad), was probably feeling on top of the world. As a Fordham student, Carlesimo had played alongside Vince Lombardi during the school's greatest gridiron glory. As its AD, he was asked to bring back some glory, but on the hardwood. He later hired Richard "Digger" Phelps who in one season did just that. The Rams had always been a solid local group, but for one spring Phelps turned them into a national power. Mission seemingly accomplished (Phelps later abruptly abandoned Rose Hill for Notre Dame and started a process that sent Fordham hoops into an epic free fall), Carlesimo set his sights towards the gridiron. He called Columbia's AD, Ken Germann, with the hopes of filling in for the open Buffalo date. Germann, who coincidentally had also once played football for the athletic program he was now running, generously accepted Carlesimo's offer. Emphasis on the word generously. At the time Fordham was nothing more than a low-level startup who certainly would have been clocked by even a Baldwin Wallace law firm, let alone the school. Carlesimo wasn't concerned. Date set, he later hired Glenn "Dean" Loucks, a former Yale QB who had also gotten his Masters at Columbia, to prepare the ragtag roster for their first D-I foray in nearly two decades. Back when Fordham was amongst the last surviving newbies.
Many smaller, Catholic newbies had dominated the D-I landscape during the Depression Era. Following the 1936 regular season for instance, Santa Clara won the Sugar Bowl, Duquesne won the Orange Bowl and Marquette appeared in the Cotton Bowl. The Pope might have found it all fitting but elite private schools, like Chicago, and large state schools, like Michigan, were stunned. A decade earlier none of those commuter colleges were even classified as major, or University Division, programs. But they all came out of nowhere in an attempt at being the next Notre Dame. Of the dozens of newbies, none was as successful as Fordham. Starting with the "Sleepy" Jim Crowley years, the Rams even replaced their maroon helmets with gold ones which shined just as brightly as those from South Bend. But by the early 1950s that gold had lost its luster. Like many other former newbies, Fordham dropped football during the postwar era. Like many other discontinued programs, students helped bring it back on the club level over a decade later. By the early 1970s most of those different clubs managed to gain official varsity status. From Georgetown (participants in the 1940 Orange Bowl) in the east, to St. Mary's (winners of the 1938 Cotton Bowl and participants in the 1945 Sugar Bowl) out west, former national powers were reemerging. Sorta. Unlike in the 1930s, they were doing so from nondescript on-campus fields in what we'd now call the D-III ranks. Fordham was far from the best of that less than stellar lot. Still, maybe thanks to previous laurels, or simply a personal connection between two old-time gridders in Carlesimo and Germann, Fordham was the only D-III given an invite onto Baker Field.
For most at Rose Hill that invite was a significant moment. According to Meagher, only an unrelenting rain, Fordham's lone defense of the entire afternoon, more than halved the expected crowd of 15,000. For the rest of New York City however, the Columbia-Fordham fray was one which came about four decades too late.
Thanks in part to the NFL's "Greatest Game Ever Played" in 1958, New York became a Sunday pigskin town. It hasn't looked back since. Big time college football, whether it be the CUMB's definition, or the actual one, was relegated to secondary status. Sticking with the actual definition, this was even more true of the Ivies. In the case of Columbia, severing ties with then powerhouses, Army and Navy, and replacing them with pre-Patriot League teams, and on one occasion, Buffalo, was the final blow in removing Gotham off the major college football grid. Between Columbia's insulation, Fordham's termination as well as the termination of NYU's once proud football program in 1952, college football became an afterthought in the city. The dominance of the Yankees and Dodgers on the diamond, and to a lesser extent the baseball Giants too; the city's full embrace of roundball, aka the City Game; the steady growth of the NFL, as well as a population shift due to White Flight, left only a very few looking back.
As for those very few however, the 1972 affair was a brief throwback to a time when the greater New York area was a college football Mecca. That famously first Princeton-Rutgers soccer match of 1869? Took place about 40 miles southwest of Manhattan. That Walter Camp guy who in 1882 introduced a downs system, a gridiron and a line of scrimmage? Took place about 40 miles to the northeast of Manhattan. The legalization of a forward pass in 1906? Engineered by President Roosevelt, himself a New Yorker, while forming a commission in Manhattan itself to open up the often deadly clashes. But even with all that said, the sport still wasn't quite there. It still needed a few more tweaks before becoming a viable link to the modern game. The steak still needed sizzle. Once again, enter some New York strips.
While Europe was climbing out of deadly trenches, America spent the Roarin' Twenties celebrating its first true entertainment age. Speakeasies, jazz, film, flappers and a budding sports industry all dominated pop-culture. A new national media, led by Gotham, was there to hype it. Through movie theater newsreels, national network radio broadcasts, and an endless array of tabloids, the New York media made college stars larger than life. The decade that gave us names like Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Clara Bow, Louis Armstrong, Amelia Earhart, Al Capone and even Mickey Mouse also gave us stories like the tragic death of George "the Gipper" Gipp. Thanks to the Herald Tribune's Grantland Rice, it later gave us the triumphant rise of the Four Horsemen. As different legendary tails involving Notre Dame spread, working class Catholics, specifically Irish ones, found a rooting interest in the previously blue blooded game. About 750 miles east of Indiana, a subway alumni composed largely of immigrants, many of whom never even graduated high school, was born. They made sure to fill Yankee Stadium during Our Lady's annual pilgrimages for crusades against West Point's mostly WASPy sides.
But long before Notre Dame introduced an ethnic presence, the city's passion for the vicious yet upper crust sport was already present. As early as the 1883 Harvard-Yale showdown, staged at the original Polo Grounds in front of a then football record 15,000 fans, the big city proved itself a big time destination for big time events. There was no doubting New York's love of pageantry, even if it had little use for mediocrity. Unfortunately for local fans, mediocrity was all it was getting from local colleges. Schools like Columbia and NYU only offered "meh" type encounters against the likes of Stevens Tech, Trinity, Union, Wesleyan and Williams. Others like Manhattan College, St. John's of Brooklyn, St. Francis of Brooklyn, and CCNY, the one public school in that mix, did even less to excite crowds. Of the lightweights, Fordham stood out but only somewhat. They'd often schedule a stronger collection of minor programs like Boston College, Holy Cross, Villanova and Georgetown. Together they were part of a "Big Five" of northeastern Catholic universities. Still, even combined, that so-called "Big Five" couldn't come close to drawing what the actual "Big One" Catholic power provided when rolling into Yankee Stadium. While 75 to 80,000 would jam the House That Ruth Built for the Irish, none of the locals except Columbia could even touch the 10,000 mark on a consistent basis. And that probably had more to do with the prestigious university's name recognition than anything else. Then suddenly, between 1926 and 1930, it all changed.
Big named coaches (John "Chick" Meehan to NYU; Frank Cavanaugh To Fordham; Lou Little to Columbia) came to the Big Apple to give it big time teams. Meehan, from Syracuse, was the first to arrive. Immediately smaller rivalries, including Columbia, who NYU always struggled with anyway, were replaced with a more national lineup featuring Tulane, Carnegie Tech and Nebraska. By 1927 NYU stood undefeated and was inline for an invite to Pasadena. Only a season finale loss to Nebraska squashed those plans. In 1928 Nebraska again kept NYU out of the Rose Bowl but later wins against Missouri and Georgia maintained NYU's clout. Not counting occasional on-campus scrums, the Violet averaged over 40,000 fans per game each year from 1926 until 1931. To this day no other New York City school has enjoyed such a streak. Aside from being the first local to aim nationally, NYU also had the advantage of an open door policy with regard to enrollment. It was established in the 1830s as one of the country's first non-denominational schools and up until the 1960s had a mostly local, working class student body. Conversely, Columbia, established as King's College by the Church of England prior to the country's independence, was tied to New York's upperclass, Episcopalian community. Even their campus was built in the shadow of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, the world's largest Anglican church. Columbia had the pedigree but NYU quickly gained a Notre Dame-like subway alumni, particularly amongst Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who had communities near both NYU's Greenwich Village and Bronx campuses.
The Violet's success, both on the field and at the gate, got other locals taking notice. None more than tiny Manhattan College who hired Meehan away in 1932 to work his magic up in Riverdale. The Bronx school with the Manhattan name moved their games off-campus to Brooklyn's Ebbet's Field while jumping up in classification. Once again Meehan brought in a big time schedule although the crowds never really materialized in the baseball-obsessed borough. On the field the Jaspers had their moments, including wins over Michigan State and NC State during Meehan's final season in 1937, but locally, attention reverted back to Columbia in the 1930s. Oh, and Fordham too.
Even before Meehan's Manhattan transfer, it could be said that NYU had already passed the baton to Fordham as the city's team following their 1930 skirmish. For Catholics at least. Three years earlier the Rams matched Chick Meehan's arrival by bringing over their own maestro in the Iron Major, Frank Cavanaugh. In 18 years at Cincinnati, Holy Cross, Dartmouth and Boston College (the last two stints broken up by years volunteering in the Great War), Cavanaugh had only suffered one losing season and that was back in 1904. At the time of his hiring he was one of only about a dozen coaches with over 100 career wins. Age and declining health however left the Iron Major looking a bit rusty during his first two campaigns at Rose Hill. Speculation about the hire was put to rest in 1929 when Cav's Crew bounced back to go undefeated. Beefing up their schedule the following season, the Rams then posted an even more impressive 8-1 tally. Their showdown with NYU, at the time both were undefeated, brought in a throng that even iconic Notre Dame couldn't top. According to some estimates, 85,000 crammed Yankee Stadium as Fordham prevailed 7-0. Big time college football at the local level had arrived.
Fordham confirmed their arrival in 1933 with a victory over Alabama. Unfortunately, the Iron Major was already gone by then. A gradual loss of eyesight forced him into retirement after a strong 1932 season which concluded with a win over Oregon State. He died less than a year later blind and, by some accounts, broke as well. The school mourned but had already taken a different route while hiring a young successor, in "Sleepy" Jim Crowley. Already an accomplished coach at Michigan State, Crowley's true claim to fame came as a member of Notre Dame's Four Horsemen. His ties to the subway alumni's team of choice took Fordham to heights even NYU had never experienced. While in Notre Dame-like helmets, Crowley led the Rams to wins over Tennessee in 1934 and Vanderbilt in 1935. 1935 also featured a season ending win against previously undefeated NYU at a sold out Yankee Stadium.
In their first and last bit of post-Meehan glory, NYU was led by fullback, Ed Smith. Between games the big bruiser took time off to pose for an artist friend not too far off NYU's more Bohemian, Greenwich Village campus. That friend, Frank Eliscu, was sculpting a clay prototype which would later become a bronze, 25 pound statuette for the Downtown Athletic Club. When finished, and in honor of the private club's recently deceased president, who had earlier been a longtime coach at Georgia Tech, it was named the John Heisman Memorial Award Trophy. Smith didn't win "The Heisman" himself, nor did he even know he was posing for what would become America's most prized trophy, but he was later named the 20th pick at the first ever NFL draft. Still, he probably would have traded his brief NFL tour for a spot at the Rose Bowl. Fordham's triumph cost NYU that spot and aside from one Saturday the following year, NYU football was never the same. That one Saturday came in a rematch against a group Grantland Rice dubbed the Seven Blocks of Granite. NYU penetrated what had been described as impenetrable blocks and returned the favor in stealing Fordham's tickets to Pasadena. Vince Lombardi called it the toughest loss of his life although he later befriended Ed Smith as the two played together on the semi-pro circuit during the late 1930s. Future scraps between the rivals were one sided. Following the back-to-back upsets of 1935 and 1936, Fordham made light work of their Bronx neighbors as battles against national powers like Pitt proved far more consequential.
As NYU faded, the Rams fielded an even greater collection in 1937. Wins over TCU, UNC, Purdue and a third straight scoreless tie against top-ranked Pitt propelled the Rams to a 3rd place finish in the AP's final poll. In fact, starting with the nation's first ever season-ending national poll in 1935 (conducted by the United Press for one season and the Associated Press thereafter) Fordham was the only school in the country aside from Duke to make an appearance in each and every season-ending list for the first seven years of their existence. During that same span only Notre Dame, Alabama and the aforementioned Dukies had higher winning percentages than the Maroon. La belle époque cumulated with some bon temps on the French Quarters of the Big Easy. The Big Apple team won the 1941 Sugar Bowl, cementing itself as the Beast of the East. Only a depleted roster in 1942 due to WWII and a suspension of the program for the remainder of the war ended the run. As late as 1942 however, Fordham still had enough to breeze past West Virginia and Missouri. By then the Rams had long proven to be a clear notch above locals like NYU and Manhattan. Columbia however, may have offered competition. Like the Rams, the Lions too found their greatest success throughout the 1930s and for parts of the 1940s.
For the Light Blue it started with hiring away of Luigi "Lou Little" Piccolo from Georgetown in 1930. Little already had a reputation of taking down not so little teams while in DC. During his five seasons with the Hoyas, all winning ones, Georgetown beat majors like Syracuse, Duke and West Virginia, tied Navy and Pitt, and even went 2-0 vs. Meehan's NYU bunch. Although by the time of Little's arrival the school choose to play their home games at Baker Field and away from the bright lights of the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, Columbia was quietly proving to be amongst the region's best. Following three straight winning seasons, Little put together the greatest squad Columbia had ever seen. Wins in 1933 over Virginia, Navy and Syracuse left the Lions roaring like never before. Their only loss came to Princeton but since the Tigers didn't partake in bowls, Columbia was invited to the Rose Bowl instead. There they defeated Stanford to become the last ever Ancient Eight to win the Grandaddy of 'em All. Columbia kept on winning the following season and finished 7th in the country according to the final Dickinson Ratings System, a precursor to the first UP writers' poll of 1935 (UP, later known as UPI, went on to sponsor a coaches' poll from 1950-1990) and the first AP writers' poll of 1936.
After a mediocre 1935, the Lions bounced back while being QB'd by sophomore sensation, and future NFL Hall of Famer, Sid Luckman. Once again a win over Stanford, still considered the Best of the West, highlighted a successful year. Despite Luckman's powerful arm however, he finished third in the 1938 Heisman count, Columbia dropped back down a bit in the late 1930s. Part of their problem probably had to do with Little's insistence on maintaining strong schedules as the school insisted on maintaining strict admission policies. Part of it probably had to do with Baker Field itself. The wooden structure was not only exceedingly inferior to the available MLB parks, but as is still the case today for its successor, Wien Stadium, a harder trek for most. Even so, and while somewhat hidden up in Inwood, the Lions did enough to stay relevant. Still, despite staging tilts against the likes of Michigan, Columbia never tangled with Fordham during the 1930s and early '40s. With NYU no longer a player without Meehan and with Manhattan College not quite one with Meehan, the city had become a two team town. Somehow, aside from an early encounter in 1890 (back when the Fordham Rams were still known as the St. John's College Invincibles and their arch rival was West 16th Street's Xavier High School) and another mismatch in 1902, the two schools stayed clear of each other.
Fordham wasn't too much better than those early "Invincible" days upon war's end. They returned in 1946 without many of their previous starters. Many followed Crowley to the North Carolina Pre-Flight Officer's School, where they used up their remaining college eligibility. Others moved on with life. One starter, Alex Santilli, never returned. He was killed by Japanese fire while fighting on the island of Saipan. Two years earlier Santilli had been the hero of the Sugar Bowl. His blocked punt through the end zone was the difference in a 2-0 win played in a monsoon setting in front of 73,000 at Tulane Stadium. Although it could possibly be argued that deaths like Santilli's and the war itself put sports in its proper perspective for Fordham, the school was already struggling to define its mission. Earlier in the decade the joke had been that Fordham wanted to be Harvard from Monday through Friday but Ohio State on Saturdays. By 1946 the Jesuits decided to place less emphasis on Saturdays even while the postwar years made sports bigger than ever. From Major League Baseball's footprints creeping west, to the creation of what would become the NBA, to college hoops becoming big enough for New York mobsters to interfere with, to the rise of not only the NFL, but a successful competitor, the AAFC, to the return of massive state schools again dominating college football, the sports industry blossomed in ways not seen since the '20s. Many of the Notre Dame wannabes could no longer compete with rising costs. While newbies like Manhattan dropped out completely, more affluent schools like Columbia experienced a brief renaissance.
With Little still at the helm, the Lions finished in the Top-20 in 1945 and again in 1947 thanks in part to transfers like Ventan "Vinnie" Yablonski who came from Fordham and Bill Swiacki who came from Holy Cross. Their signature victory came against three-time defending national champs, Army in 1947. Trailing 20-7, Columbia's Gene "The Golden Greek" Rossides (a Sid Luckman disciple from Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall) used the long ball to engineer two late drives. Swiacki made the catches and each drive finished with touchdown runs by halfback, Lou Kusserow. Fullback and kicker Yablonski also gained a key first down during the final push but more importantly, kicked home the deciding extra point. Later Swiacki, Kusserow and Yablonski all spent time in the NFL while Rossides entered the world of law, and later, under President Nixon, government.
While Columbia improved, Fordham's resumption of football saw them drop from region's first to region's worst. Even NYU beat the Rams in 1946. Vying for the title of most minor major the following season, the two played to a predictable tie in 1947. Eventually NYU regained their sole position at the bottom until mercifully dropping football in 1952. In 1973 they dropped out of The Bronx, another victim of urban decay. Before abandoning The Bronx and fully centering itself in Greenwich Village, NYU was still committed to other sports. They remained a roundball power throughout the 1950s and were nationally ranked as late as 1965. In the spring of 1969 their baseball team finished one game away from winning the College World Series and later that fall the Violet advanced to the Sweet 16 of the soccer championships. Although all remaining sports were relegated to D-III status upon leaving the neoclassical, green campus, football had never quite recovered from the loss of Chick Meehan in 1932. For Fordham the school never quite recovered from the loss of twice not hiring Vince Lombardi.
Lombardi was added to the Maroon staff in 1948. Having previously coached the school's freshman team, he had a better knowledge of the sophomore class than even head coach, Ed Danowski. Before long the two Rams were locking horns. It was a power struggle Lombardi couldn't win. Back then he was simply the smallest part of the famed Seven Blocks of Granite. Danowski was the former QB who led Fordham to their 1933 victory over Alabama, the win which truly put the school on the national map. From there, Big Ed went on to a long career with the football Giants where he led the league in passing and led the team to two NFL championships. Lombardi left and later went on to become arguably the most successful and inarguably the single most famous football coach the game has ever known. Danowski stayed to empty seats at the Polo Grounds. In fairness, he did lead Fordham back to three straight winning seasons between 1949-1951. His aerial assaults also had the Rams leading the country in passing yards in both 1949 and 1952. They again came close to leading the country in 1953 thanks to the quarterbacking platoon of Roger "The Rahjah" Franz and Vinnie Drake. Franz was the speedy, playmaking scrambler. Drake, one of the nation's first African Americans allowed to QB a major college team, was the big pocket flamethrower. But for all their yards in an era where conflicts were still decided on the ground, overall results were only mediocre.
Things completely fell apart with a fresh cast in 1954. Never more so than in a 75-7 debacle at Miami. The administration, rumored to be on the verge of bringing back Lombardi to fix the calamity, instead pulled the plug. Players like Chuck Zimmerman and Jim Reese, who'd go on to be the starting quarterbacks at Syracuse and Minnesota respectively, left. What would become football's biggest name was never given the chance to return. Columbia remained as the city's only "major" team although by most accounts their 1954 group was even worse than Fordham's. In fact, following the Golden Greek's tenure, Columbia slipped into a stretch from 1948 to 1960 where they had only one winning season and four one win seasons. Included in that mix, their disastrous setback at Buffalo. Only in shocking their Ivy brethren while capturing the 1961 league crown did the Lions again roar. Not that many outside the insulated bubble could hear them. Nevertheless, after more losing seasons, seven in a row headed into 1971, they almost did it again. Despite falling short, their 6-3 mark in 1971 relieved previous misery. It added drama too as their first seven contests were all decided by three points or less.
Thanks to the many last second wins, the '71 team was labeled the Cardiac Kids by reporters who still recalled the 1947 Army comeback. Not that the rest of the city, or even the student body, fresh off setting fires and occupying buildings during Vietnam era, seemed to care. Still, on the field, Columbia had a chance of building on their light success. Instead, a slew of injuries brought them back to being Columbia. Before those injuries however, the Lions finally took on Fordham's startup. For at least a few diehards, New York finally got the showdown they should have gotten in 1932, 1942, or even 1952. Despite Pete Carlesimo's hopes of creating a series between the locals, one never materialized. Both took separate paths before reuniting in 1991.
For the Lions, that path meant slipping to the point of being one of the worst of all D-I teams of the 1970s. After the NCAA demoted the entire Ivy bubble into the I-AA subdivision, Columbia slipped further in becoming the single worst I-AA team of the 1980s. Only a ruthless 44 game losing streak managed to bring any media attention back to Baker Field's replacement, Wien Stadium. Early on in that streak long time NFL assistant, Jim Garrett, was hired to rectify the abysmal mess. Helping him, his three sons, John, Jason and Judd, each born a year apart and each holding NFL potential. Each transferred in from Princeton. After his first game, where a 17-0 halftime lead turned into a 49-17 loss to Harvard, Garrett infamously laced into his team as "drug-addicted losers." The tirades continued, so did the losses. Garrett left after one winless season and later became a scout for the Dallas Cowboys. His three boys all transferred back to Princeton for the spring semester. Each finished their respective careers as Ivy League stars. Each later got the chance to wear the Dallas Cowboy star during different stints with the club in the 1990s. Later still, they each worked for the Dallas organization that Jason currently coaches. For all of their later success, Columbia got the last laugh on the Garrett family. The Light Blue beat Princeton to finally end the 44 game losing streak in 1988. Despite Jason's 200+ yards in the air and Judd's 100+ yards on the ground, the Lions pulled out a 16-13 squeaker which ended with most of the 5,420 fans in attendance racing onto the field to pull down the goalposts. That night the campus was again occupied, this time by rabid football fans, as wild celebrations lasted into the wee hours of the morning. Local and national TV crews covered the drunken festivities although even that jubilation went south fast. Upon season's end, head coach Larry McElreavy resigned amidst rumors that he was showing up to practices drunk.
For the Rams, that path meant more obscurity. Following their one encounter with Columbia they returned to being a mediocre group in the lowest of all NCAA divisions. Carlesimo couldn't elevate the program. Worse yet, the basketball power he had imagined collapsed shortly after the acrimonious departure of Digger Phelps. Things were even more hostile amongst administrators who, during "The Bronx Is Burning" days, threatened to follow NYU out of the widely neglected ghetto. Carlesimo didn't survive the multiple levels of chaos and was replaced by Dave Rice who had previously replaced Loucks as football coach. Despite allegations of playing fast and loose with their "student athletes" in the late 1970s, Fordham did briefly prosper. Rice saw an opportunity to jump up to the I-AA level, or at least to the Division-II ranks, after a 1978 win over Davidson. The school, almost as cash-poor as the crumbling city itself, couldn't afford either venture. It would take another decade, and coincidentally, two more wins over Davidson, as well as back-to-back trips into the D-III postseason before the Maroon was finally ready for promotion in 1989.
Fordham joined the Patriot League (then known as the Colonial League) to ironically replace Davidson, who chose to downsize their program after briefly filling in to replace William & Mary, who backed out of the loop upon its creation in 1986. Even William & Mary was only beckoned into the northeastern-based club because Rutgers had already fully transitioned itself into a D-I program in 1978. Still, despite not being the Patsies' first choice, after a 34 year absence, Fordham was finally a partner on the main stage. Well, the largest stage after the main one to be more exact. Frank McLaughlin, Dave Rice's successor, got a new administration to do what Rice couldn't in 1978 and what Carlesimo had only dreamed of in 1972. A dream which began with simply getting on the field with Columbia. Despite the mismatch, getting back on the pages of New York's biggest tabloid (even as a punchline), getting covered by a commercial radio station (even on tape delay), getting on cable TV (even if very few understood what cable was), showed that there was potential for what the CUMB suggested, a second "big time" college football team. Since joining the I-AA slate Fordham has seen its shares of ups and (mostly) downs.
As I-AA equals, both were equally horrific, the two locals did square off again in 1991. Fordham took that tussle but an improved Columbia squad which, for a time featured future NFL All-Pro Marcellus Wiley, swept the next five leading to their 2001 encounter. The murderous attacks of 9/11 postponed that game although the two schools stood together refusing to cancel the contest outright. Instead, the affair was eventually rescheduled for Thanksgiving morning. The following year the Liberty Cup was born to honor the memories of the 3,000 killed. But even the 9/11 tribute did little to garner I-AA interest amongst most New Yorkers. In fact, the most memorable part of the game involved the CUMB's halftime show which featured a joke about Fordham "going down like alter boys." Columbia's administration apologized, the CUMB did not. On the field the schools split wins for an 8 year spell until Fordham decided to add athletic scholarships for the 2010 season. It's been all Maroon ever since. Following a 52-7 thumping in 2013 and a 49-7 one in 2014 the Lions begged for Christian mercy. They asked out of the series which even 9/11 couldn't stop. The 2015 Liberty Cup marked the end of a rivalry that should have started in the 1930s. With history on its side, including the presence of future NFL All-Pros like Danowski and Swiacki, as well as future NFL Hall of Famers like Luckman and the greatest of all Granite Blocks, Alex Wojciechowicz, it could have become a part of the city's rich sporting tradition. Instead, the 2015 encounter, like the 1972 one, was played almost exclusively for students and alums by teams headed down separate paths.
Thanks to exponentially superior talent, Fordham again prevailed in 2015 in front of a homecoming crowd of over 8,000 fans. Oddly (or not considering the rivalry's poor background), that was the largest crowd to ever witness a Columbia-Fordham contest. The 44-24 final score however didn't do justice to what for three quarters had been a tight battle. In just his opening game with the Lions, new coach and old skipper, Al Bagnoli, added some life to a dying program. Entering the contest with a 21 game losing streak, Columbia brought Bagnoli in from Penn as a savior. On campus there were already rumbles of dropping the program which never gained the lovable losers moniker of years past. Of course, for those in the know, dropping football wasn't an option for any Ivy League member. Not with the vast political pull and massive multibillion dollar endowments that each Ancient Eight banks. That said, in a way, the league is currently dropping itself. A recent break of alliances with the Ivy-Lights after they all (minus newer football addition, Georgetown) chose to join Fordham in adding football scholarships in 2013 has left the exclusive Ivy bubble smaller than ever. In fairness, some rivalries, like Cornell-Colgate or Harvard-Holy Cross, will in all likelihood last forever. Others, like Penn-Lafayette, are already on hiatus. Others still, like Columbia-Fordham, never really came about at the right time to begin with.
After the final Liberty Cup game ever, Columbia's streak reached 22. Although halfway to tying the infamous 44 game losing streak, the combination of Bagnoli and even weaker future schedules should keep things from ever approaching "drug-addicted losers" levels of futility. As for Fordham, the future is also murky. Coach Joe Moorhead has done much more than use athletic scholarships and his own brilliant technician skills to create a nice, little team. Aiming for a third straight I-AA playoffs appearance, he's instead created the foundation for another Beast of the East. Well, for I-AA (now known as "FCS" as opposed to D-I's current "FBS" label) standards. Still, wins over Temple in 2013 and Army in 2015 have inched the Rams closer to the "big time." Perhaps they're only as "big time" as the CUMB thought their football team was in 1972. Perhaps Moorhead, a former Rams quarterback who played at a time when Fordham was mired in their own 14 game losing streak, will stick around long enough to build the I-AA facsimile of what Lombardi once envisioned. Either way, as Lombardi's teammate Pete Carlesimo would say, it all started with the Lions-Christians clash of 1972.
That's what Archie Bunker's favorite read screamed on its back cover after Columbia's thrashing of Fordham in 1972. The pasting, played under a torrential downpour, offered a light crowd of 7,000 fans although the media was well represented. Aside from the Daily News, WMCA-AM aired the contest on tape delay (following the Notre Dame game and a later Yankees game) while an early era cable outfit, TelePrompTer, also made the clash available to Manhattan's Upper West Side. Well, to those on the Upper West who knew what cable was.
It was a different age although some things were eerily similar. To paraphrase Gerry Meagher, then a sports editor for The RAM student newspaper, the Columbia University Marching Band (aka the CUMB), greeted Maroon fans by graciously welcoming Fordham for providing New York with a second big time college football team. After pausing for effect, they asked when Fordham would provide New York with a second big time college?
Perhaps, as described by Meagher, the "hairy and kinetic" counterculturalists were misinformed but by 1972 Columbia was no longer truly "big time." Back then the Ivies were playing at a level comparable to today's Mid-American Conference, if not worse, and Columbia was certainly the Kent State of the group. Then again, having come off a positive 1971 campaign and well over a decade from truly delving into the darkest of downtrodden depths, the CUMB was still the most comedic act coming out of Baker Field. Whether actually big time or not, the Lions had far more than enough to crush a Division-III collection and did so with scrubs playing for most of the second half. Despite the throttling, both sides left feeling somewhat good about themselves. Columbia got to run some plays in preparation for what appeared to be a promising autumn. Fordham got to test themselves against what was still considered Division-I competition. Even if by then the Ivies had already shied away from the rest of the Division-I scene while competing inside their own exclusive, little bubble.
Starting with the 1956 season, the previously quasi-independent assemblage of Ancient Eight universities united to formally form the Ivy League. Back then regular seasons were only 9 games long so the league's 7 in-conference games greatly limited each team's opportunities at scheduling traditional non-Ivy rivals like Army, Navy or any of the Big Ten schools. The Ivies didn't seem to mind. In fact they went the extra step in almost exclusively scheduling their 2 non-conference games against smaller, weaker, Ivy-Light types who'd later form the Patriot League. Even then, most of that group (Holy Cross, Colgate, Lehigh, Lafayette, Bucknell and at the time, Rugters) was Patsier than ever.
At the time, Fordham wasn't even good enough to hang with the Ivy-Lights. Aside from Holy Cross, they also had no link to any other Patsy. Even that one Jesuit connection had been dormant for nearly two decades by 1972. Instead, after dropping their D-I program in 1954, Fordham was slowly trying to make it back onto the main stage after reinstating varsity status in 1970. Coincidentally, while Fordham was adding football, SUNY-Buffalo, a low-level D-I, was dropping the sport. Back in 1958 Buffalo had been the very last non-Ivy or Ivy-Light Columbia had ever scheduled. That matchup, staged off the banks of Lake Erie, was won by the Bulls 34-14. To show how low Columbia had fallen, a week earlier Buffalo had been shutout 26-0 by Baldwin Wallace. Further research confirms that Baldwin Wallace is neither person nor law firm but indeed a school. Just not a prolific one in terms of football although they were at the time coached by Lee Tressel (Jim's dad) and did win a D-III national championship in 1978. Meaning the tiny, rural, liberal arts college might have beaten "big time" Columbia in both 1958 and 1978. Not that the Lions wanted to find out. It would be another 14 years before they'd even schedule a rematch with Buffalo, this one set for the banks of the Hudson. But with the SUNY institution temporarily out of the football business (they returned as a D-III in 1977, elevated to I-AA in 1993 and then to D-I in 1999 as a member of the Mid-American Conference) Columbia had a blank date for their 1972 opener.
In the spring of 1971, and fresh off the basketball team's surprising Sweet 16 run, Fordham's athletic director, Pete Carlesimo (PJ's dad), was probably feeling on top of the world. As a Fordham student, Carlesimo had played alongside Vince Lombardi during the school's greatest gridiron glory. As its AD, he was asked to bring back some glory, but on the hardwood. He later hired Richard "Digger" Phelps who in one season did just that. The Rams had always been a solid local group, but for one spring Phelps turned them into a national power. Mission seemingly accomplished (Phelps later abruptly abandoned Rose Hill for Notre Dame and started a process that sent Fordham hoops into an epic free fall), Carlesimo set his sights towards the gridiron. He called Columbia's AD, Ken Germann, with the hopes of filling in for the open Buffalo date. Germann, who coincidentally had also once played football for the athletic program he was now running, generously accepted Carlesimo's offer. Emphasis on the word generously. At the time Fordham was nothing more than a low-level startup who certainly would have been clocked by even a Baldwin Wallace law firm, let alone the school. Carlesimo wasn't concerned. Date set, he later hired Glenn "Dean" Loucks, a former Yale QB who had also gotten his Masters at Columbia, to prepare the ragtag roster for their first D-I foray in nearly two decades. Back when Fordham was amongst the last surviving newbies.
Many smaller, Catholic newbies had dominated the D-I landscape during the Depression Era. Following the 1936 regular season for instance, Santa Clara won the Sugar Bowl, Duquesne won the Orange Bowl and Marquette appeared in the Cotton Bowl. The Pope might have found it all fitting but elite private schools, like Chicago, and large state schools, like Michigan, were stunned. A decade earlier none of those commuter colleges were even classified as major, or University Division, programs. But they all came out of nowhere in an attempt at being the next Notre Dame. Of the dozens of newbies, none was as successful as Fordham. Starting with the "Sleepy" Jim Crowley years, the Rams even replaced their maroon helmets with gold ones which shined just as brightly as those from South Bend. But by the early 1950s that gold had lost its luster. Like many other former newbies, Fordham dropped football during the postwar era. Like many other discontinued programs, students helped bring it back on the club level over a decade later. By the early 1970s most of those different clubs managed to gain official varsity status. From Georgetown (participants in the 1940 Orange Bowl) in the east, to St. Mary's (winners of the 1938 Cotton Bowl and participants in the 1945 Sugar Bowl) out west, former national powers were reemerging. Sorta. Unlike in the 1930s, they were doing so from nondescript on-campus fields in what we'd now call the D-III ranks. Fordham was far from the best of that less than stellar lot. Still, maybe thanks to previous laurels, or simply a personal connection between two old-time gridders in Carlesimo and Germann, Fordham was the only D-III given an invite onto Baker Field.
For most at Rose Hill that invite was a significant moment. According to Meagher, only an unrelenting rain, Fordham's lone defense of the entire afternoon, more than halved the expected crowd of 15,000. For the rest of New York City however, the Columbia-Fordham fray was one which came about four decades too late.
Thanks in part to the NFL's "Greatest Game Ever Played" in 1958, New York became a Sunday pigskin town. It hasn't looked back since. Big time college football, whether it be the CUMB's definition, or the actual one, was relegated to secondary status. Sticking with the actual definition, this was even more true of the Ivies. In the case of Columbia, severing ties with then powerhouses, Army and Navy, and replacing them with pre-Patriot League teams, and on one occasion, Buffalo, was the final blow in removing Gotham off the major college football grid. Between Columbia's insulation, Fordham's termination as well as the termination of NYU's once proud football program in 1952, college football became an afterthought in the city. The dominance of the Yankees and Dodgers on the diamond, and to a lesser extent the baseball Giants too; the city's full embrace of roundball, aka the City Game; the steady growth of the NFL, as well as a population shift due to White Flight, left only a very few looking back.
As for those very few however, the 1972 affair was a brief throwback to a time when the greater New York area was a college football Mecca. That famously first Princeton-Rutgers soccer match of 1869? Took place about 40 miles southwest of Manhattan. That Walter Camp guy who in 1882 introduced a downs system, a gridiron and a line of scrimmage? Took place about 40 miles to the northeast of Manhattan. The legalization of a forward pass in 1906? Engineered by President Roosevelt, himself a New Yorker, while forming a commission in Manhattan itself to open up the often deadly clashes. But even with all that said, the sport still wasn't quite there. It still needed a few more tweaks before becoming a viable link to the modern game. The steak still needed sizzle. Once again, enter some New York strips.
While Europe was climbing out of deadly trenches, America spent the Roarin' Twenties celebrating its first true entertainment age. Speakeasies, jazz, film, flappers and a budding sports industry all dominated pop-culture. A new national media, led by Gotham, was there to hype it. Through movie theater newsreels, national network radio broadcasts, and an endless array of tabloids, the New York media made college stars larger than life. The decade that gave us names like Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Clara Bow, Louis Armstrong, Amelia Earhart, Al Capone and even Mickey Mouse also gave us stories like the tragic death of George "the Gipper" Gipp. Thanks to the Herald Tribune's Grantland Rice, it later gave us the triumphant rise of the Four Horsemen. As different legendary tails involving Notre Dame spread, working class Catholics, specifically Irish ones, found a rooting interest in the previously blue blooded game. About 750 miles east of Indiana, a subway alumni composed largely of immigrants, many of whom never even graduated high school, was born. They made sure to fill Yankee Stadium during Our Lady's annual pilgrimages for crusades against West Point's mostly WASPy sides.
But long before Notre Dame introduced an ethnic presence, the city's passion for the vicious yet upper crust sport was already present. As early as the 1883 Harvard-Yale showdown, staged at the original Polo Grounds in front of a then football record 15,000 fans, the big city proved itself a big time destination for big time events. There was no doubting New York's love of pageantry, even if it had little use for mediocrity. Unfortunately for local fans, mediocrity was all it was getting from local colleges. Schools like Columbia and NYU only offered "meh" type encounters against the likes of Stevens Tech, Trinity, Union, Wesleyan and Williams. Others like Manhattan College, St. John's of Brooklyn, St. Francis of Brooklyn, and CCNY, the one public school in that mix, did even less to excite crowds. Of the lightweights, Fordham stood out but only somewhat. They'd often schedule a stronger collection of minor programs like Boston College, Holy Cross, Villanova and Georgetown. Together they were part of a "Big Five" of northeastern Catholic universities. Still, even combined, that so-called "Big Five" couldn't come close to drawing what the actual "Big One" Catholic power provided when rolling into Yankee Stadium. While 75 to 80,000 would jam the House That Ruth Built for the Irish, none of the locals except Columbia could even touch the 10,000 mark on a consistent basis. And that probably had more to do with the prestigious university's name recognition than anything else. Then suddenly, between 1926 and 1930, it all changed.
Big named coaches (John "Chick" Meehan to NYU; Frank Cavanaugh To Fordham; Lou Little to Columbia) came to the Big Apple to give it big time teams. Meehan, from Syracuse, was the first to arrive. Immediately smaller rivalries, including Columbia, who NYU always struggled with anyway, were replaced with a more national lineup featuring Tulane, Carnegie Tech and Nebraska. By 1927 NYU stood undefeated and was inline for an invite to Pasadena. Only a season finale loss to Nebraska squashed those plans. In 1928 Nebraska again kept NYU out of the Rose Bowl but later wins against Missouri and Georgia maintained NYU's clout. Not counting occasional on-campus scrums, the Violet averaged over 40,000 fans per game each year from 1926 until 1931. To this day no other New York City school has enjoyed such a streak. Aside from being the first local to aim nationally, NYU also had the advantage of an open door policy with regard to enrollment. It was established in the 1830s as one of the country's first non-denominational schools and up until the 1960s had a mostly local, working class student body. Conversely, Columbia, established as King's College by the Church of England prior to the country's independence, was tied to New York's upperclass, Episcopalian community. Even their campus was built in the shadow of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, the world's largest Anglican church. Columbia had the pedigree but NYU quickly gained a Notre Dame-like subway alumni, particularly amongst Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who had communities near both NYU's Greenwich Village and Bronx campuses.
The Violet's success, both on the field and at the gate, got other locals taking notice. None more than tiny Manhattan College who hired Meehan away in 1932 to work his magic up in Riverdale. The Bronx school with the Manhattan name moved their games off-campus to Brooklyn's Ebbet's Field while jumping up in classification. Once again Meehan brought in a big time schedule although the crowds never really materialized in the baseball-obsessed borough. On the field the Jaspers had their moments, including wins over Michigan State and NC State during Meehan's final season in 1937, but locally, attention reverted back to Columbia in the 1930s. Oh, and Fordham too.
Even before Meehan's Manhattan transfer, it could be said that NYU had already passed the baton to Fordham as the city's team following their 1930 skirmish. For Catholics at least. Three years earlier the Rams matched Chick Meehan's arrival by bringing over their own maestro in the Iron Major, Frank Cavanaugh. In 18 years at Cincinnati, Holy Cross, Dartmouth and Boston College (the last two stints broken up by years volunteering in the Great War), Cavanaugh had only suffered one losing season and that was back in 1904. At the time of his hiring he was one of only about a dozen coaches with over 100 career wins. Age and declining health however left the Iron Major looking a bit rusty during his first two campaigns at Rose Hill. Speculation about the hire was put to rest in 1929 when Cav's Crew bounced back to go undefeated. Beefing up their schedule the following season, the Rams then posted an even more impressive 8-1 tally. Their showdown with NYU, at the time both were undefeated, brought in a throng that even iconic Notre Dame couldn't top. According to some estimates, 85,000 crammed Yankee Stadium as Fordham prevailed 7-0. Big time college football at the local level had arrived.
Fordham confirmed their arrival in 1933 with a victory over Alabama. Unfortunately, the Iron Major was already gone by then. A gradual loss of eyesight forced him into retirement after a strong 1932 season which concluded with a win over Oregon State. He died less than a year later blind and, by some accounts, broke as well. The school mourned but had already taken a different route while hiring a young successor, in "Sleepy" Jim Crowley. Already an accomplished coach at Michigan State, Crowley's true claim to fame came as a member of Notre Dame's Four Horsemen. His ties to the subway alumni's team of choice took Fordham to heights even NYU had never experienced. While in Notre Dame-like helmets, Crowley led the Rams to wins over Tennessee in 1934 and Vanderbilt in 1935. 1935 also featured a season ending win against previously undefeated NYU at a sold out Yankee Stadium.
In their first and last bit of post-Meehan glory, NYU was led by fullback, Ed Smith. Between games the big bruiser took time off to pose for an artist friend not too far off NYU's more Bohemian, Greenwich Village campus. That friend, Frank Eliscu, was sculpting a clay prototype which would later become a bronze, 25 pound statuette for the Downtown Athletic Club. When finished, and in honor of the private club's recently deceased president, who had earlier been a longtime coach at Georgia Tech, it was named the John Heisman Memorial Award Trophy. Smith didn't win "The Heisman" himself, nor did he even know he was posing for what would become America's most prized trophy, but he was later named the 20th pick at the first ever NFL draft. Still, he probably would have traded his brief NFL tour for a spot at the Rose Bowl. Fordham's triumph cost NYU that spot and aside from one Saturday the following year, NYU football was never the same. That one Saturday came in a rematch against a group Grantland Rice dubbed the Seven Blocks of Granite. NYU penetrated what had been described as impenetrable blocks and returned the favor in stealing Fordham's tickets to Pasadena. Vince Lombardi called it the toughest loss of his life although he later befriended Ed Smith as the two played together on the semi-pro circuit during the late 1930s. Future scraps between the rivals were one sided. Following the back-to-back upsets of 1935 and 1936, Fordham made light work of their Bronx neighbors as battles against national powers like Pitt proved far more consequential.
As NYU faded, the Rams fielded an even greater collection in 1937. Wins over TCU, UNC, Purdue and a third straight scoreless tie against top-ranked Pitt propelled the Rams to a 3rd place finish in the AP's final poll. In fact, starting with the nation's first ever season-ending national poll in 1935 (conducted by the United Press for one season and the Associated Press thereafter) Fordham was the only school in the country aside from Duke to make an appearance in each and every season-ending list for the first seven years of their existence. During that same span only Notre Dame, Alabama and the aforementioned Dukies had higher winning percentages than the Maroon. La belle époque cumulated with some bon temps on the French Quarters of the Big Easy. The Big Apple team won the 1941 Sugar Bowl, cementing itself as the Beast of the East. Only a depleted roster in 1942 due to WWII and a suspension of the program for the remainder of the war ended the run. As late as 1942 however, Fordham still had enough to breeze past West Virginia and Missouri. By then the Rams had long proven to be a clear notch above locals like NYU and Manhattan. Columbia however, may have offered competition. Like the Rams, the Lions too found their greatest success throughout the 1930s and for parts of the 1940s.
For the Light Blue it started with hiring away of Luigi "Lou Little" Piccolo from Georgetown in 1930. Little already had a reputation of taking down not so little teams while in DC. During his five seasons with the Hoyas, all winning ones, Georgetown beat majors like Syracuse, Duke and West Virginia, tied Navy and Pitt, and even went 2-0 vs. Meehan's NYU bunch. Although by the time of Little's arrival the school choose to play their home games at Baker Field and away from the bright lights of the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, Columbia was quietly proving to be amongst the region's best. Following three straight winning seasons, Little put together the greatest squad Columbia had ever seen. Wins in 1933 over Virginia, Navy and Syracuse left the Lions roaring like never before. Their only loss came to Princeton but since the Tigers didn't partake in bowls, Columbia was invited to the Rose Bowl instead. There they defeated Stanford to become the last ever Ancient Eight to win the Grandaddy of 'em All. Columbia kept on winning the following season and finished 7th in the country according to the final Dickinson Ratings System, a precursor to the first UP writers' poll of 1935 (UP, later known as UPI, went on to sponsor a coaches' poll from 1950-1990) and the first AP writers' poll of 1936.
After a mediocre 1935, the Lions bounced back while being QB'd by sophomore sensation, and future NFL Hall of Famer, Sid Luckman. Once again a win over Stanford, still considered the Best of the West, highlighted a successful year. Despite Luckman's powerful arm however, he finished third in the 1938 Heisman count, Columbia dropped back down a bit in the late 1930s. Part of their problem probably had to do with Little's insistence on maintaining strong schedules as the school insisted on maintaining strict admission policies. Part of it probably had to do with Baker Field itself. The wooden structure was not only exceedingly inferior to the available MLB parks, but as is still the case today for its successor, Wien Stadium, a harder trek for most. Even so, and while somewhat hidden up in Inwood, the Lions did enough to stay relevant. Still, despite staging tilts against the likes of Michigan, Columbia never tangled with Fordham during the 1930s and early '40s. With NYU no longer a player without Meehan and with Manhattan College not quite one with Meehan, the city had become a two team town. Somehow, aside from an early encounter in 1890 (back when the Fordham Rams were still known as the St. John's College Invincibles and their arch rival was West 16th Street's Xavier High School) and another mismatch in 1902, the two schools stayed clear of each other.
Fordham wasn't too much better than those early "Invincible" days upon war's end. They returned in 1946 without many of their previous starters. Many followed Crowley to the North Carolina Pre-Flight Officer's School, where they used up their remaining college eligibility. Others moved on with life. One starter, Alex Santilli, never returned. He was killed by Japanese fire while fighting on the island of Saipan. Two years earlier Santilli had been the hero of the Sugar Bowl. His blocked punt through the end zone was the difference in a 2-0 win played in a monsoon setting in front of 73,000 at Tulane Stadium. Although it could possibly be argued that deaths like Santilli's and the war itself put sports in its proper perspective for Fordham, the school was already struggling to define its mission. Earlier in the decade the joke had been that Fordham wanted to be Harvard from Monday through Friday but Ohio State on Saturdays. By 1946 the Jesuits decided to place less emphasis on Saturdays even while the postwar years made sports bigger than ever. From Major League Baseball's footprints creeping west, to the creation of what would become the NBA, to college hoops becoming big enough for New York mobsters to interfere with, to the rise of not only the NFL, but a successful competitor, the AAFC, to the return of massive state schools again dominating college football, the sports industry blossomed in ways not seen since the '20s. Many of the Notre Dame wannabes could no longer compete with rising costs. While newbies like Manhattan dropped out completely, more affluent schools like Columbia experienced a brief renaissance.
With Little still at the helm, the Lions finished in the Top-20 in 1945 and again in 1947 thanks in part to transfers like Ventan "Vinnie" Yablonski who came from Fordham and Bill Swiacki who came from Holy Cross. Their signature victory came against three-time defending national champs, Army in 1947. Trailing 20-7, Columbia's Gene "The Golden Greek" Rossides (a Sid Luckman disciple from Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall) used the long ball to engineer two late drives. Swiacki made the catches and each drive finished with touchdown runs by halfback, Lou Kusserow. Fullback and kicker Yablonski also gained a key first down during the final push but more importantly, kicked home the deciding extra point. Later Swiacki, Kusserow and Yablonski all spent time in the NFL while Rossides entered the world of law, and later, under President Nixon, government.
While Columbia improved, Fordham's resumption of football saw them drop from region's first to region's worst. Even NYU beat the Rams in 1946. Vying for the title of most minor major the following season, the two played to a predictable tie in 1947. Eventually NYU regained their sole position at the bottom until mercifully dropping football in 1952. In 1973 they dropped out of The Bronx, another victim of urban decay. Before abandoning The Bronx and fully centering itself in Greenwich Village, NYU was still committed to other sports. They remained a roundball power throughout the 1950s and were nationally ranked as late as 1965. In the spring of 1969 their baseball team finished one game away from winning the College World Series and later that fall the Violet advanced to the Sweet 16 of the soccer championships. Although all remaining sports were relegated to D-III status upon leaving the neoclassical, green campus, football had never quite recovered from the loss of Chick Meehan in 1932. For Fordham the school never quite recovered from the loss of twice not hiring Vince Lombardi.
Lombardi was added to the Maroon staff in 1948. Having previously coached the school's freshman team, he had a better knowledge of the sophomore class than even head coach, Ed Danowski. Before long the two Rams were locking horns. It was a power struggle Lombardi couldn't win. Back then he was simply the smallest part of the famed Seven Blocks of Granite. Danowski was the former QB who led Fordham to their 1933 victory over Alabama, the win which truly put the school on the national map. From there, Big Ed went on to a long career with the football Giants where he led the league in passing and led the team to two NFL championships. Lombardi left and later went on to become arguably the most successful and inarguably the single most famous football coach the game has ever known. Danowski stayed to empty seats at the Polo Grounds. In fairness, he did lead Fordham back to three straight winning seasons between 1949-1951. His aerial assaults also had the Rams leading the country in passing yards in both 1949 and 1952. They again came close to leading the country in 1953 thanks to the quarterbacking platoon of Roger "The Rahjah" Franz and Vinnie Drake. Franz was the speedy, playmaking scrambler. Drake, one of the nation's first African Americans allowed to QB a major college team, was the big pocket flamethrower. But for all their yards in an era where conflicts were still decided on the ground, overall results were only mediocre.
Things completely fell apart with a fresh cast in 1954. Never more so than in a 75-7 debacle at Miami. The administration, rumored to be on the verge of bringing back Lombardi to fix the calamity, instead pulled the plug. Players like Chuck Zimmerman and Jim Reese, who'd go on to be the starting quarterbacks at Syracuse and Minnesota respectively, left. What would become football's biggest name was never given the chance to return. Columbia remained as the city's only "major" team although by most accounts their 1954 group was even worse than Fordham's. In fact, following the Golden Greek's tenure, Columbia slipped into a stretch from 1948 to 1960 where they had only one winning season and four one win seasons. Included in that mix, their disastrous setback at Buffalo. Only in shocking their Ivy brethren while capturing the 1961 league crown did the Lions again roar. Not that many outside the insulated bubble could hear them. Nevertheless, after more losing seasons, seven in a row headed into 1971, they almost did it again. Despite falling short, their 6-3 mark in 1971 relieved previous misery. It added drama too as their first seven contests were all decided by three points or less.
Thanks to the many last second wins, the '71 team was labeled the Cardiac Kids by reporters who still recalled the 1947 Army comeback. Not that the rest of the city, or even the student body, fresh off setting fires and occupying buildings during Vietnam era, seemed to care. Still, on the field, Columbia had a chance of building on their light success. Instead, a slew of injuries brought them back to being Columbia. Before those injuries however, the Lions finally took on Fordham's startup. For at least a few diehards, New York finally got the showdown they should have gotten in 1932, 1942, or even 1952. Despite Pete Carlesimo's hopes of creating a series between the locals, one never materialized. Both took separate paths before reuniting in 1991.
For the Lions, that path meant slipping to the point of being one of the worst of all D-I teams of the 1970s. After the NCAA demoted the entire Ivy bubble into the I-AA subdivision, Columbia slipped further in becoming the single worst I-AA team of the 1980s. Only a ruthless 44 game losing streak managed to bring any media attention back to Baker Field's replacement, Wien Stadium. Early on in that streak long time NFL assistant, Jim Garrett, was hired to rectify the abysmal mess. Helping him, his three sons, John, Jason and Judd, each born a year apart and each holding NFL potential. Each transferred in from Princeton. After his first game, where a 17-0 halftime lead turned into a 49-17 loss to Harvard, Garrett infamously laced into his team as "drug-addicted losers." The tirades continued, so did the losses. Garrett left after one winless season and later became a scout for the Dallas Cowboys. His three boys all transferred back to Princeton for the spring semester. Each finished their respective careers as Ivy League stars. Each later got the chance to wear the Dallas Cowboy star during different stints with the club in the 1990s. Later still, they each worked for the Dallas organization that Jason currently coaches. For all of their later success, Columbia got the last laugh on the Garrett family. The Light Blue beat Princeton to finally end the 44 game losing streak in 1988. Despite Jason's 200+ yards in the air and Judd's 100+ yards on the ground, the Lions pulled out a 16-13 squeaker which ended with most of the 5,420 fans in attendance racing onto the field to pull down the goalposts. That night the campus was again occupied, this time by rabid football fans, as wild celebrations lasted into the wee hours of the morning. Local and national TV crews covered the drunken festivities although even that jubilation went south fast. Upon season's end, head coach Larry McElreavy resigned amidst rumors that he was showing up to practices drunk.
For the Rams, that path meant more obscurity. Following their one encounter with Columbia they returned to being a mediocre group in the lowest of all NCAA divisions. Carlesimo couldn't elevate the program. Worse yet, the basketball power he had imagined collapsed shortly after the acrimonious departure of Digger Phelps. Things were even more hostile amongst administrators who, during "The Bronx Is Burning" days, threatened to follow NYU out of the widely neglected ghetto. Carlesimo didn't survive the multiple levels of chaos and was replaced by Dave Rice who had previously replaced Loucks as football coach. Despite allegations of playing fast and loose with their "student athletes" in the late 1970s, Fordham did briefly prosper. Rice saw an opportunity to jump up to the I-AA level, or at least to the Division-II ranks, after a 1978 win over Davidson. The school, almost as cash-poor as the crumbling city itself, couldn't afford either venture. It would take another decade, and coincidentally, two more wins over Davidson, as well as back-to-back trips into the D-III postseason before the Maroon was finally ready for promotion in 1989.
Fordham joined the Patriot League (then known as the Colonial League) to ironically replace Davidson, who chose to downsize their program after briefly filling in to replace William & Mary, who backed out of the loop upon its creation in 1986. Even William & Mary was only beckoned into the northeastern-based club because Rutgers had already fully transitioned itself into a D-I program in 1978. Still, despite not being the Patsies' first choice, after a 34 year absence, Fordham was finally a partner on the main stage. Well, the largest stage after the main one to be more exact. Frank McLaughlin, Dave Rice's successor, got a new administration to do what Rice couldn't in 1978 and what Carlesimo had only dreamed of in 1972. A dream which began with simply getting on the field with Columbia. Despite the mismatch, getting back on the pages of New York's biggest tabloid (even as a punchline), getting covered by a commercial radio station (even on tape delay), getting on cable TV (even if very few understood what cable was), showed that there was potential for what the CUMB suggested, a second "big time" college football team. Since joining the I-AA slate Fordham has seen its shares of ups and (mostly) downs.
As I-AA equals, both were equally horrific, the two locals did square off again in 1991. Fordham took that tussle but an improved Columbia squad which, for a time featured future NFL All-Pro Marcellus Wiley, swept the next five leading to their 2001 encounter. The murderous attacks of 9/11 postponed that game although the two schools stood together refusing to cancel the contest outright. Instead, the affair was eventually rescheduled for Thanksgiving morning. The following year the Liberty Cup was born to honor the memories of the 3,000 killed. But even the 9/11 tribute did little to garner I-AA interest amongst most New Yorkers. In fact, the most memorable part of the game involved the CUMB's halftime show which featured a joke about Fordham "going down like alter boys." Columbia's administration apologized, the CUMB did not. On the field the schools split wins for an 8 year spell until Fordham decided to add athletic scholarships for the 2010 season. It's been all Maroon ever since. Following a 52-7 thumping in 2013 and a 49-7 one in 2014 the Lions begged for Christian mercy. They asked out of the series which even 9/11 couldn't stop. The 2015 Liberty Cup marked the end of a rivalry that should have started in the 1930s. With history on its side, including the presence of future NFL All-Pros like Danowski and Swiacki, as well as future NFL Hall of Famers like Luckman and the greatest of all Granite Blocks, Alex Wojciechowicz, it could have become a part of the city's rich sporting tradition. Instead, the 2015 encounter, like the 1972 one, was played almost exclusively for students and alums by teams headed down separate paths.
Thanks to exponentially superior talent, Fordham again prevailed in 2015 in front of a homecoming crowd of over 8,000 fans. Oddly (or not considering the rivalry's poor background), that was the largest crowd to ever witness a Columbia-Fordham contest. The 44-24 final score however didn't do justice to what for three quarters had been a tight battle. In just his opening game with the Lions, new coach and old skipper, Al Bagnoli, added some life to a dying program. Entering the contest with a 21 game losing streak, Columbia brought Bagnoli in from Penn as a savior. On campus there were already rumbles of dropping the program which never gained the lovable losers moniker of years past. Of course, for those in the know, dropping football wasn't an option for any Ivy League member. Not with the vast political pull and massive multibillion dollar endowments that each Ancient Eight banks. That said, in a way, the league is currently dropping itself. A recent break of alliances with the Ivy-Lights after they all (minus newer football addition, Georgetown) chose to join Fordham in adding football scholarships in 2013 has left the exclusive Ivy bubble smaller than ever. In fairness, some rivalries, like Cornell-Colgate or Harvard-Holy Cross, will in all likelihood last forever. Others, like Penn-Lafayette, are already on hiatus. Others still, like Columbia-Fordham, never really came about at the right time to begin with.
After the final Liberty Cup game ever, Columbia's streak reached 22. Although halfway to tying the infamous 44 game losing streak, the combination of Bagnoli and even weaker future schedules should keep things from ever approaching "drug-addicted losers" levels of futility. As for Fordham, the future is also murky. Coach Joe Moorhead has done much more than use athletic scholarships and his own brilliant technician skills to create a nice, little team. Aiming for a third straight I-AA playoffs appearance, he's instead created the foundation for another Beast of the East. Well, for I-AA (now known as "FCS" as opposed to D-I's current "FBS" label) standards. Still, wins over Temple in 2013 and Army in 2015 have inched the Rams closer to the "big time." Perhaps they're only as "big time" as the CUMB thought their football team was in 1972. Perhaps Moorhead, a former Rams quarterback who played at a time when Fordham was mired in their own 14 game losing streak, will stick around long enough to build the I-AA facsimile of what Lombardi once envisioned. Either way, as Lombardi's teammate Pete Carlesimo would say, it all started with the Lions-Christians clash of 1972.