Fordham Rams
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The 22 Fordham University varsity sports teams are known as the Fordham Rams. Their colors are maroon and white. The Fordham Rams are members of NCAA Division I and compete in the Atlantic 10 Conference for all sports except football. In football, the Rams play in the Patriot League of NCAA Division 1 Football Championship Subdivision. The University's athletic booster clubs are the Sixth Man Club for basketball and the Twelfth Man Club for football. The University also supports a number of club sports and a significant intramural sports program.
Fordham University sports, though not part of the Ivy League, has nevertheless been credited with inspiring the term by comparison. The first usage of "Ivy" in reference to a group of colleges is from sportswriter Stanley Woodward (1895-1965). In an article that appeared in the New York Tribune on October 14, 1933, Woodward, referencing football, wrote
| “ | A proportion of our eastern ivy colleges are meeting little fellows another Saturday before plunging into the strife and the turmoil.[1] | ” |
According to the book "Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins"(1988), author William Morris writes that Stanley Woodward actually took the term from fellow New York Tribune sportswriter Caswell Adams. Morris writes that during the 1930's, the Fordham University football team was running roughshod over all its opponents. One day in the sports room at the Tribune, the merits of Fordham's football team was being compared to Princeton and Columbia. Adams remarked disparagingly of the latter two, saying they were "only Ivy League." Woodward, the sports editor of the Tribune, picked up the term and printed it the next day.
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[edit] Varsity
This is an incomplete listing of the 22 varsity sports played at Fordham.
[edit] Baseball
Founded in the late 1850's, the Fordham Rose Hill Baseball Club of St. John's College (the precursor to Fordham University, and of no connection at all to St. John's University) played against St. Francis Xavier College in the first ever nine-man-team college baseball game on November 3, 1859.[1]
Steve Bellán, first Latin American to play Major League Baseball, started his career as a player at St. John's College.[2]
There have been 56 major leaguers who have played for Fordham, including All-Star pitcher Pete Harnisch and Baseball Hall of Famer Frankie Frisch. Frisch, a star athlete in four different sports at Fordham, was known as the "Fordham Flash".[3]
Jack Coffey Field, a multisport field, is named after John "Jack" Coffey, former athletic director and baseball coach at the University. He amassed 817 wins as a baseball coach. Coffey's name is also the answer to a popular baseball trivia question, since he is the only player to play with both Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth in the same season (1918 Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox). A renovation completed in 2005 resulted in an official renaming of the baseball portion of the field to "Houlihan Park at Jack Coffey Field".
[edit] Basketball
[edit] History
On February 28, 1940, Fordham hosted the University of Pittsburgh at Madison Square Garden in the first ever televised basketball game. Pittsburgh won, 57-37.
[edit] Cross-Country
The Fordham Rams Cross-Country team, which competes in the Atlantic 10 Conference, won the IC4A 2006 Championships at Van Cortlandt Park. It was the team's first IC4A Championship in almost twenty years. [4]
[edit] Football
[edit] History
First recognized as a sport at St. John's College in 1882, Fordham in its hey-day has played before sellout crowds at the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium. In the mid-1930s, Fordham boasted what might have been the greatest offensive and defensive line in college history -- the "Seven Blocks of Granite." Tackle Ed Franco was a consensus All-American. So was center Alex Wojciechowicz who later became an All-Pro with Detroit and Philadelphia. Guard Vince Lombardi later became one of the greatest of pro coaches. In 1937, the team went undefeated and was ranked number three nationally. So popular was Fordham, that the Cleveland NFL franchise formed in the '30s took its nickname from the Rams of the Bronx.[5] The Cleveland Rams later moved to Los Angeles and then to St. Louis, Missouri, and are now known as the St. Louis Rams.
On September 30, 1939, Fordham participated in the world’s first televised football game. In front of the sport’s first live TV audience, the Rams defeated Waynesburg College, 34-7. The following week they lost the second ever televised game to the University of Alabama, 7-6. It was not for another month that a professional NFL game was televised.
On December 15, 1954, Fordham scratched its football program for various reasons, mainly financial. A club football team was established in 1964 (on shaky authority) and football was re-established as a varsity sport in 1970, but in Division III. Fordham joined what is now the NCAA Division 1 Football Championship Subdivision in 1989.
With 722 all-time wins at the close of the 2005 season [6], Fordham's football program ranks 15th among Division I programs on the all-time NCAA wins list, and fifth among programs currently playing in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision, trailing only Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Princeton University.
Fordham was invited to play in the 1942 Rose Bowl, but declined the invitation because it had previously accepted a berth in the 1942 Sugar Bowl. The Rams, who defeated the University of Missouri by a 2-0 score, were the 1942 Sugar Bowl champions. The Rams also played in the 1941 Cotton Bowl but lost, 13-12, to Texas A&M. At least one source lists Fordham as the 1929 National Football Champions. [7]
Since 2002, Fordham has played Columbia University for The Liberty Cup. The trophy was dedicated after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 forced the postponement of the first annual meeting between New York City's two NCAA Football Championship Subdivision programs.
[edit] Football milestones
- National Championship: 1929 [8]
- Bowl games:
- 1941 Cotton Bowl [9]
- 1942 Sugar Bowl [10]
- NCAA Football Championship Subdivision Playoffs: 2002 (Quarterfinal Loss), 2007 (First Round Loss)
- Division III Playoffs: 1987 (Quarterfinal Loss)
- Patriot League Champions: 2002, 2007
- Liberty Cup Winners: 2003, 2004, 2007
- Wins: 722 at the end of 2005 season, 15th most wins in NCAA, 5th most wins in Division I Football Championship Subdivision
[edit] Current players in professional football
- Javarus Dudley, WR, Orlando Predators
- Kevin Eakin, QB, Team Alabama
- Aki Jones, DL, New York Dragons
- Tad Kornegay, DB, Hamilton Tiger-Cats
[edit] Track and Field
Fordham was home to U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist at 800m Tom Courtney, who anchored a World Record 4x800m Relay team of Fordham Runners in 1954.
[edit] Clubs
This is a partial listing of the club sports played at Fordham
[edit] Crew
Men's crew has been a club sport at Fordham since 1915, when John Mulcahy (an alumnus and Olympic Gold medalist in the sport) helped found it there. Fordham Crew has since been quite successful, winning several national championships. The team is a member of the Dad Vail affiliation, making the Dad Vail Regatta the focus of its spring racing season. Exceptional crews have competed at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) National Championships, Henley Royal Regatta, and the San Diego Crew Classic. The team is divided into novice and varsity squads. Fordham Athletics also sponsors a women's varsity team.
Fordham Crew trains on the Harlem River. For many years the University maintained a boathouse off the river in Manhattan on "sculler's row" along Sherman Creek (the last remaining there), until it was destroyed by suspected arson in 1978.[11] It has yet to be replaced.
Since 1989, Fordham has medaled every year at the Dad Vail and other major collegiate regattas. During that period the team has had 9 undefeated seasons and 13 national championships: eight at the Dad Vail, three at the Eastern College Athletic Conference National Invitational Collegiate Regatta, one at the Division-I National Championships, and one at the IRA Championship. Fordham was the 2007 Dad Vail Champions in Men's Varsity Lightweight 4+.
[edit] Hockey
The University supports hockey as a club sport. In 2006, Rams hockey took their first Conference championship since becoming a club in the late 1960's. The team is recognized as a Division III team by the American Collegiate Hockey Association, and it is a member of the Metropolitan Collegiate Hockey Conference.
[edit] Lacrosse
Founded in 1970, the Lacrosse program has grown tremendously. After years as the top independent lacrosse team in the New York metropolitan area, the team has been accepted to be a member of the National College Lacrosse League. The Rams currently compete in the NY Metro Division. Fordham's team boasts the infamous faceoff man, Colin "Marvin" O'Reilly, one of the greatest players ever to grace Murphy Field.
[edit] Rugby
The University supports men's and women's rugby as club sports. They play in the Metropolitan New York Rugby Union, a member of USA Rugby, and field within it Division I 'A' and 'B' side rugby squads. The men's team won the conference championship in 2003 and 2004, and made it to the first round of the national tournament in 2004. The women's team is a three time defending champion of the Big Apple Classic, which is hosted on Randall's Island, NY. They were also east coast champions in the spring of 2005. The Rose Hill Campus is host every spring to the "Irish-Italian" men's rugby game, a staple of Fordham's Spring Weekend festival.
[edit] Sailing
Fordham is a Regular member of the Middle Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association (MAISA), one of seven regional conferences of the Intercollegiate Sailing Association of North America (ICSA), the governing body of US Sailing. With 43 schools and a geographical territory extending from Canada to Virginia, MAISA is one of the most competitive conferences in the country. Fordham placed 10th among all teams and 2nd among all club teams, in 2007. [12] Fordham's Home Port is Morris Yacht & Beach Club overlooking Long Island Sound and Eastchester Bay on City Island, a few miles from the Rose Hill campus.
[edit] References
- ^ "Yale Book of Quotations" (2006) Yale University Press edited by Fred R. Shapiro
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