In the latest issue of Columbia College Today (Fall 2025), Charles Butler writes an amazing story about a recent “you-gotta-be-kidding” coincidence in Columbia football history. Last year, junior Jack Smiechowski helped Columbia win the Ivy League Championship (tied with Harvard and Dartmouth) and this year, as a senior, he is one of the co-captains. The […]
Tag: football
From Amsterdam Avenue to Broadway
From 1915 to 1922, Columbia football games were played on South Field right on the Morningside campus. A recently re-discovered photograph captures not only the old “stadium” with a game in progress (!), but even neighbors enjoying the game from the rooftops along 114th Street. Before John Jay Hall, Butler Library and Lerner Hall, you […]
Columbia Football at 150!
On November 12, 1870 Columbia played its first football game, only the fourth intercollegiate contest in the history of the sport, losing to Rutgers by a score of 6-3. The game and Columbia’s program have come a long way since then. […]
In the Desert
On December 19, 1933, the Columbia Lion football players set out on a cross-country trip to Pasadena, California to play in the 1934 Rose Bowl against the heavily favored Stanford. Every player making the cross-country trip was insured for $5,000 to guard against possible injuries on the train ride to California and back. The Lions […]
Cliff Montgomery
In preparing the “Roar, Lion, Roar” Columbia football exhibition (on view at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s Chang Octagon through December 20), we found a great detail about the 1934 Rose Bowl game in the New York Times obituary for Cliff Montgomery, the quarterback and MVP of Columbia’s victory over Stanford. According to the […]