10 Key Games with Yale

Columbia and Yale played the first "Ivy League" football game, (the Ivy League wasn't even a figure of speech at the time, let alone an actual athletic league), in 1872. In a game that was a lot more like soccer than American football, the Elis won 3-0.

Since then, the two teams have met 92 more times, with Yale holding a commanding 71-20-2 record over the Lions overall.

In honor of the oldest Ivy football rivalry, here are the 10 most important games in the series for the Lions:

1872: Yale 3 Columbia 0

Years before the Bowl was built, Yale played its games on Yale Field. But before that, the Elis used Hamilton Park in New Haven. We don't have many real details of the first Columbia-Yale game, but we do have the program for the contest... which is simply amazing.

1934: Columbia 12 Yale 6

After Yale destroyed Columbia by a combined score of 112-0 over three games from 1903-1905, the Lions declined to play the Elis for 29 years.

But after winning the Rose Bowl in January 1934, Head Coach Lou Little agreed to renew the rivalry in the 1934 season opener at the Yale Bowl.

In front of a crowd of "only" 22,000 (50,000 were expected but the weather was uncooperative), Columbia stunned the Elis with a 12-6 win, and you can see the highlights here.

After the game, visiting Lion fans tore down the Yale goal posts despite a valiant effort by many Eli fans to defend them with thrown whiskey bottles.

Columbia went on to finishing the season at 7-1 including wins over Penn State and Syracuse and a lone loss to Navy.


1961: Columbia 11 Yale 0

Columbia's one and only, (so far), Ivy League championship season was bolstered by a stunning 11-0 win over the Elis at the Yale Bowl despite the 11-game winning streak the Elis were riding into the game.

Not only was Yale undefeated coming into that game, (the contest was in week 3), but it hadn't even been scored on all year either.

As these newsreel highlights show, it was another rainy day in the Bowl.

This was the game that proved the '61 Lions were for real.


1962: Columbia 14 Yale 10

On Homecoming, the Lions were led by all-time great QB Archie Roberts in his first season with the varsity. But it was the defense that came up big with a huge defensive stop in the final two minutes as Al Butts first nailed the Elis on 2nd and goal from the 5 with tackle for a 5-yard loss and then intercepted a Yale pass on the next play and returned it all the way to the Bulldog 24.


1971: Columbia 15 Yale 14

The Lions beat the Elis on Homecoming at Baker Field after falling behind 14-0 at the half. A dramatic two-point conversion sealed the game for Columbia as the Lions went on to a 6-3 final record and their last winning season for 23 years.


1983: Columbia 21 Yale 18

The 1983 team beat the Elis at the Yale Bowl for not only their only win of that season, but it would be five more years before Columbia won another game at all. Yale Head Coach Carm Cozza was relieved when the Lions finally beat Princeton in 1988 and his team was no longer the answer to the trivia question: "Who was the last team Columbia beat in a football game?"


1994: Columbia 30 Yale 9

En route to their first winning season since 1971, the Lions came in the Yale Bowl t 2-2-1 and hoping to gain some momentum. The easy win began a stretch of four straight wins over Yale.


2009: Yale 23 Columbia 22

In what was probably the toughest loss of the Norries Wilson era, the Lions fell victim to a late Yale rally. The game did feature the debut of Sean Brackett '13 at QB, and his dazzling play did provide something of a silver lining.


2012: Columbia 26 Yale 22

Three years later, the Lions got revenge for the 2009 loss when a shocking late fumble by the Elis allowed Columbia to steal the game away from Yale. The game was also memorable because Yale RB Tyler Varga played almost the entire game at the wildcat QB position because of an injury to the Bulldogs' regular QB.


2015: Columbia 17 Yale 7

After nearly beating eventual Ivy co-champ Dartmouth in a 13-9 battle in Hanover, the Lions defense kept roaring with this first Ivy win of the Al Bagnoli era. In addition to a nifty fake FG for a TD that really sealed the win, the game featured the first real scoring drive engineered by then sophomore backup QB Anders Hill.