Columbia Lions (1933)

Over the last year, we’ve profiled some unlikely teams that reached bowl games both big — 1919 Harvard (Rose Bowl) and 1945 Holy Cross (Orange Bowl) — and small — 1955 Rhode Island (Refrigerator Bowl) and 1969 Boston University (Pasadena Bowl). Today, we look at perhaps the most miraculous team among our group of bowlers: The 1933 Columbia Lions, who stunned mighty Stanford — and the nation — in the ’34 Rose Bowl in what was widely hailed as one of football greatest upsets to that point in history.

Columbia’s football history, of course, is not a glamorous one, marked by long losing streaks, consecutive winless seasons and on-campus apathy that almost borders on passion. But under coach Lou Little — Columbia’s seventh coach in 16 years since the the school reinstated the program in 1915 — the Lions were generally competitive and often quite good. Little won 110 games from 1930-56, but two victories defined his reign at Columbia: 1947’s 21-20 win over Army that ended the Cadets’ four-year, 32-game unbeaten streak, and the other was, well, … read on. 

The 1933 Columbia Lions, wearing the striped jerseys

(for more info on the unis, read on!)

In 1930 Columbia hired Little away from Georgetown, where he went 41-12-3 over six seasons. (To this day, I see a Georgetown score and my first thought is, “You mean Georgetown has football?” And yes, I know I went to Maine and people probably think the same thing about the Black Bears.) After a 5-4 debut season, Columbia went 29-4-2 over the next four seasons, highlighted by the ’33 edition. Columbia went 7-1 in the regular season, and although the schedule was considered soft by contemporary sportswriters, the Lions beat what are considered real football schools by today’s standards: Virginia (15-6), Penn State (33-0), Navy (14-7) and Syracuse (16-0). The lone setback was at Princeton (20-0), which finished 9-0 and outscored its foes 217-8 (yes, that reads E-I-G-H-T). But Princeton declined any Rose Bowl overtures, so the folks in Pasadena went with Plan B: Columbia, which would face 8-1 Stanford on New Year’s Day. 

Columbia's lone 1933 loss was to Princeton.

West Coast sportswriters, upset Stanford and the Rose Bowl people settled for what they considered a soft opponent, made the Indians (later the Cardinals, then the Cardinal) a four-touchdown favorite. The New York Times predicted the Lions would be overwhelmed by such sights as parade floats, starlets and other trappings, treating a group of sophisticated New Yorkers as if they were country bumpkins from Hanover or Orono.

In addition to the parades and celebrities, the teams also were greeted by rainy, muddy conditions at the Rose Bowl stadium, which kept the crowd down to about 35,000. (The pervious year’s game drew 78,874; the next year’s, 84,474.) Wikipedia tells us the stadium was so muddy, the Pasadena fire department pumped water out of the stadium. 

The 1934 Rose Bowl program, which survived the ravages

of weather and time. 

Stanford and Columbia slogged through a scoreless first quarter before Little unveiled a trick play, in this curious era when a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offense would suddenly spring an unusual, intricate play out of nowhere. 

With the ball of the Stanford 17-yard-line, quarterback Cliff Montgomery quickly handed the ball off to running back Al Barabas, then faked a handoff to another back, Ed Brominski. While the Stanford defense chased Montgomery and Brominski, Barabas scampered to his left untouched toward the end zone for the game’s only score. Columbia won 7-0 for the mega-upset over the four-TD favorites. The play, listed in the playbook as “KF-79,” became legendary in Columbia annals. Montgomery, a future College Football Hall of Fame inductee, was named the game’s MVP.

Cliff Montgomery in 1933 ...

... and in 2003 (left), wearing the 1933 throwback jersey.

Tip Top 25 has Columbia ranked No. 5 in hypothetical 1933 postseason poll, which sounds about right. While the rest of the Lions’ schedule was considered a run of cupcakes, the win over Stanford (No. 12) was HUGE and enough to land them in the top 5. (Princeton, which didn’t go bowling, is No. 2 at 9-0, and Tip Top considers the Tigers worthy of a national title claim.) 

And now, the uniforms, where it gets a little tricky. All the preseason and team photos have the Lions wearing blue jerseys with a navy friction-stripe pattern on the front. But all the pictures I’ve seen from that season — including the Rose Bowl — shows the shirts with plain blue fronts. When Columbia honored the ’33 team 70 years later, the Lions wore throwback jerseys with the striped fronts, even though they apparently weren’t worn in the regular season. (As I think I’ve said earlier, people who whine and moan about supposedly inaccurate throwback unis rank high on my list of things I can’t stand. Life’s too short, folks.) 

In the interest of completion and in diffusing confusion (for the half-dozen people who have waded this far!), I’ve included the preseason unis in the above graphic. I prefer the striped versions, although by ’33 stripes were on the outs as front jersey numbers became more commonplace.

The basic template — Light blue shirts, navy stripes down the sleeves and around the wrists — was used from at least the late 1920s until 1946, when the Lions adopted a style resembling those other Lions in Detroit, kicking off a long, long run of uniform changes.

NOTE: Much of the information above comes from John McCallum’s wonderful “Ivy League Football Since 1872,” published in 1977, and contains tons of great details and tidbits about Columbia’s Rose Bowl run.