The Columbia Lions are Ivy League Champions. Yes, you read that right. For the first time in 63 years—and only the second time in history—our football team claimed the title after a spectacular 7-3 overall (5-2 conference) season.

It wasn’t easy. Beating Cornell was just step one. Yale also had to defeat Harvard to create a three-way tie between Harvard, Dartmouth, and Columbia. But the stars aligned. Here’s the moment—40 minutes after the Cornell game—when our team got the news: we won.

Some photos below, shared by our friends.

Our gratitude roll call:

• The team. An unbelievable “band of brothers” that focused, persisted, and delivered. No less than twelve seniors came back for an extra season after last year.
• Pete Pilling. The Director of Athletics who made winning a priority.
• Al Bagnoli. The legendary coach who laid the foundation for one of college football’s greatest turnarounds.
• Mark Fabish. Our interim head coach, who stepped up last season when Al Bagnoli stepped down.
• Jon Poppe. Our head coach, who was possibly genetically bred to be our head coach. Jon was coming to Columbia games since he was a toddler: both his father (Bill Poppe ‘70) and brother (Will Poppe ‘00) played for the Lions. Now, he is the winningest first-year coach since Columbia’s first football coach, George Sanford, in 1899.
• And finally… Bill Campbell. The late, great Columbia icon who epitomized the spirit of this victory. More below.

Echoes of October 1989

Some of our subscribers wrote to compare today to what happened on October 8, 1988, the game that broke the infamous “streak”. (Columbia beat Princeton 16-13.) And yes, the famous “Spectator Blue” headline inspired the subject of today’s post.

One of them recalled:

“I’ll never forget that game. It was incredibly emotional. It was also homecoming, so all the alumni were back and many were tailgating up at Baker Field. A lot of students had tickets, but they didn’t really come all the time. Then this strange energy started to build and by halftime, word started to filter back to campus (remember, this was before cell phones) that we might actually pull it off, and so we started seeing waves of students show up.

When we won, the energy was electric. The students swarmed the field and started taking down the goal posts. Stadium security made a half hearted attempt to stop them and then gave up. A roving crowd carried the goalposts 5 miles down to the main campus (I’m not sure how they fit them in the subway but they did) and started parading them around campus.

Later that day, we kicked off what I can only describe as the greatest party we had ever seen, before or since. All the alumni came back with us and 114th Street was one giant block party. You couldn’t get any cars through. There were pieces of goal posts in all the fraternity houses and in the streets. Then supposedly someone in administration gave the order ‘open the taps’, and Columbia dining employees started rolling out kegs. One of my friends claims he saw Columbia College Dean Bob Pollack ‘61 feeding beer to undergrads out of a keg. It was an incredible experience, and really one of my best (although slightly blurry) memories of Columbia.”

We asked our dear friend Bob Pollack if there was any truth to that claim, and he replied with a chuckle, “I have no memory of that.”

A tribute to Bill Campbell

We would not be here today without the legendary Bill Campbell, CC ’62, TC ’64 (1940–2016). Bill bled Columbia Blue. As captain of the 1961 Ivy League Championship team and head coach from 1974–1979, his heart never left the field. After Columbia, Bill had a spectacular career—he became one of Steve Jobs’s earliest lieutenants at Apple, CEO of three Silicon Valley companies, and a trusted advisor to Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Known as the “Coach of Silicon Valley,” Bill still called Columbia home, serving as Chair of the Board of Trustees from 2005–2014—or as he joked, “nine years into my three-year term.”

For those lucky enough to know him, one word defined Bill: love. Bill loved Columbia, everything about it, and everyone in it. His standard greeting was a bear hug. As Trustee, he demanded high standards and accepted zero excuses, but he gave back with unmatched generosity. The Campbell Sports Center at Baker Field stands as a tribute to his impact. Even after his cancer diagnosis, Bill regularly traveled from the West Coast to cheer on his beloved Lions at Inwood, and was a constant presence on the sidelines until the final months of his life.

Our only regret is that Bill isn’t with us today to share this moment. But we know he would have been bursting with pride for the team and deeply inspired by what Columbia has achieved—and what it can become.

One final thought

Last season, we finished last in the Ivy League (3-7 overall, 1-6 conference). Twelve months later, we’re Ivy League Champions. A turnaround of this magnitude at this speed is unprecedented and owes much to both farsighted vision and relentless execution.

The 1988 victory was a vindication of a “Columbia Recovered” from the turmoil of 1968. Today, Columbia faces similar challenges. But the vast majority of our 36,000 students are here to learn, grow, and contribute to society. A weird fringe minority (and their faculty enablers) that celebrates terrorism must not be permitted to destroy one of this country’s great institutions. Today, the football team reminded us how quickly renewal can happen. A turnaround doesn’t have to take decades. Columbia Renewed awaits. Let’s get to work.