Johnathan Reese
I've made the point here many times that focusing on history too much is simply not fair to the players who are all too young to even remember it, let alone take responsibility for it. That's why Head Coach Al Bagnoli said in his postgame news conference last week that he "gets nervous every time someone brings up history around here."
But as fans, a quick look at a few key moments in the past is helpful to help promote the game and explain its importance to our long-suffering loved ones who likely don't get why we still care so much about Ivy League football.
So, here are 10 historical points in ascending order to consider for this big Columbia-Dartmouth match up on Saturday:
10) Columbia's last win in Hanover was a 27-20 win in 2001 featuring good games from QB Jeff McCall and RB Johnathan Reese. But the Lions were almost forced to forfeit the game retroactively when it was discovered that DL Matt Stary wasn't taking enough credits to be eligible for Ivy play. The league ended up deciding that suspending Stary for the rest of the season was punishment enough.
Rick Taylor
9) Maybe they should call this game the "Rick Taylor Bowl." The former coach and athletic director was brought in to advise Dartmouth after the Big Green's 0-10 2008 season and his recommendations played a big role in the program’s slow-but-steady turnaround. Just two years later, Dartmouth had a 6-4 winning record.
8) Most of the Columbia-Dartmouth games over the last 30 years have been pretty good. Starting with the 1987 nail biter, 14 of the games have been decided by one score or less and six have been decided by a FG or less.
7) All the talk about Columbia ending its 20 game losing streak to Penn should have people remembering the 26 game winless streak the Lions endured against Dartmouth from 1972-1997. That streak was split down the middle by a 17-17 tie in 1983 in a weird game played at an almost empty Giants Stadium during the year when the Lions played every game away from Baker Field while Wien Stadium was being built. Columbia finally ended that streak in 1998 with a 24-14 win over the Big Green in Hanover. That was also the first Lion win at Memorial Field since 1946.
6) The fact that both the Lions and Big Green are undefeated has been mentioned many times over the past five days. But what makes that more interesting is the fact that there have been so many times in recent years when one or both of these teams have come into this game winless. Perhaps the most famous example was the 1987 game when the Lions were still in the midst of what would end up as record 44 game losing streak. Loss #39 ended when Dartmouth hit a late FG to take a 12-10 lead and Columbia missed a makeable FG try at the end of the game. That agonizing moment was caught in an NFL Films video you can see by clicking here.
Columbia was winless again two years later when they met the Big Green again at Wien Stadium. A blocked punt late in the game led to a 13-12 loss.
Both teams were winless in 2004 when the Lions eked out an ugly 9-6 win, and they were both winless again in 2008 when Columbia won a more dramatic, rain and wind swept night game by a 21-13 score in New York. A year later Dartmouth came into the game in Hanover 0-5 against a 2-3 Lion team, but it was the Big Green that won that one in another rain soaked contest, 28-6. And of course, Columbia was winless in 2013 and 2014 when they played and lost to Dartmouth en route to back-to-back 0-10 seasons.
5) Another classic Columbia-Dartmouth game came back to life in the minds of savvy Lion fans just two weeks ago during the game at Marist. With QB Anders Hill approaching 300 passing yards in the 1st half against the Red Foxes, many of us were wondering if he had a shot to break John Witkowski's 35-year-old record of 466 passing yards against the Big Green. That game was a 56-41 win for Dartmouth and Witkowski racked up most of those yards after the contest was basically decided. His 466 yard mark stood for a few years after that as the Ivy single game passing yardage record and it's still the top Columbia mark.
4) The greatest single performance by a player for either team that most of us have seen in this series over the last 30 years was put in by Reese in the 2000 game at Wien Stadium. Reese broke the Columbia single game rushing record with 236 yards and four TD's in less than three quarters of play. The Lions won on Homecoming, 49-21.
Dalyn Williams
3) If this game were taking place a year earlier, bad blood could be more of a story line. That's because in Dartmouth's 13-9 win over Columbia in Hanover in 2015, a decent amount of trash talk and alleged extracurricular activity after the whistle positively unhinged the Big Green and especially star QB Dalyn Williams. Dartmouth was flagged repeatedly for personal foul penalties and basically took their own offense out of the game in the 2nd half. But it's been two years and just about everyone involved in all of that has graduated.
2) The big game everyone is referencing this week is the last time the Lions and Big Green played each other with 1st place in the Ivies on the line. That was 1996 when they entered week 8 with Dartmouth at 7-0 and the Lions 6-1. Much of the hype around the game was lost when Columbia stumbled at home the week before to suffer its first loss of the year to Princeton, 14-11. And the hype really fell apart when the Big Green whipped the Lions 40-0.
1) You have to go back 25 more years from there to find the next CU-DC game that meant something serious in the Ivy race. The 1971 Lions shocked Dartmouth at Baker Field with a 31-29 win that ended with a FG that barely cleared the crossbar. Defensive star/emergency kicker Paul Kaliades provided the heroics. Dartmouth came into the game with a 15-game winning streak, including a 55-0 shellacking of the Lions the previous year. The 1971 game would end up being the Big Green's only Ivy loss of the year in a season where they had to share the title with Ed Marinaro's Cornell Big Red. Columbia finished just behind those two giants at 5-2 in the Ivies and 6-3 overall.
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