Columbia Lions (1915)

Many of you probably know that Rutgers and Princeton played the first intercollegiate "football" game in 1869, although that game bore little semblance to the game of even 30 years alter. A year later, Columbia University became the third school to take up the sport. The Lions (actually, they didn't use that name until 1910) were rather undistinguished until the turn of the century, when they went 49-22-4 from 1899-1905. 

But just as Columbia seemed to be getting it's act together, the school dropped football, citing the increase of violence that had plagued the sport in recent years, what with kicking, biting, flying tackles and the occasional death thrown in for good measure. Although a series of sweeping rules changes (highlighted by the addition of the forward pass) were passed in 1906, Columbia refused to reinstate the sport. (According to Mark F. Bernstein's Football: The Ivy League Origins of an American Obsession, the source for much of the info here, MIT, Northwestern, Trinity, Duke, California and Stanford also punted the sport after the '05 season.)

The Columbia student paper didn't hide its feelings on football.

After years of protest from students, Columbia allowed interclass games in 1914 and announced the return of the varsity game in February 1915. There were some conditions, however, including the prohibition of facing most of the big Ivy schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Cornell), games has to be restricted to campus and freshmen were forbidden from playing (a practice that eventually became universal). 

The 1915 Columbia Lions. Welcome back.

This illustration from the 1917 Columbian yearbook (which covered the 
1915-16 academic year) heralds the return of football to campus.

Columbia went 5-0 in its first season back, facing relative lightweights such as Stevens Tech, UConn and Wesleyan. The Lions played all their games on South Field on campus. And when I say "on campus," I mean "on campus." It looks like Columbia shoehorned a football field onto a campus mall or quad. Temporary stands were squeezed behind the sidelines. The Lions played in this makeshift facility until Baker Field opened in 1923.

The top photo is from 1915; the second photo is from 1919.
But they illustrate how Columbia's games were played on the heart of the campus.
Wonder if students walked across the field on their way to the library
 (the domed building in the background)? 

Columbia continued to play NESCAC-level teams the next several years, even after the ban against bigger Ivy schools was lifted. (In fact, Columbia didn't play Harvard again until 1948, Yale until 1934 and Princeton until 1932.)

Columbia's uniforms are pretty typical from the era; the trademark "Columbia blue" jerseys didn't arrive until about the late 1920s. The primitive numbers were sewn onto white squares that were stitched onto the jerseys.