The losing streak, it seemed, would never end. But this weekend, after Columbia's 21-13 win over Dartmouth, the stench of the 13-game skid was washed away in orange Gatorade.
The bath that Lions coach Norries Wilson received courtesy of safety Andy Shalbrack must have felt good - it signaled the end of the second-longest active skid in the Football Championship Subdivision.
Columbia hadn't won a contest since its 31-7 victory over Marist on Sept. 22, 2007, suffering plenty of tough-luck losses along the way.
This season, the Lions had lost their first five games by an average of just 6.4 points, with a few key plays going against them. Wilson's squad, which looked promising after the 2006 season, was "a little bit snakebitten," according to Penn coach Al Bagnoli, and due for a win to fall its way.
Some of Wilson's coaching decisions this season had drawn scrutiny, but he experienced a small measure of vindication when his team locked up the victory amid swirling wind and sporadic rain at Lawrence Wien Stadium.
Caught Red-Handed. Cornell, it appeared, had arrived. In the second week of the season, the Big Red shocked title favorite Yale with a 17-14 victory and became another horse in the tightly-contested title race.
Four weeks later, they seem to be more pretender than contender. After starting 3-0 with victories over Bucknell, Yale and Lehigh, the Big Red have fallen back to .500 with three consecutive blowout losses.
Harvard, Colgate and Brown beat up on Cornell by an average of 19 points, absolutely demoralizing the Big Red, who have fallen into the bottom half of the league standings.
"Something's not clicking, and we've got to fix this," Knowles told The Cornell Daily Sun after Saturday's 27-7 loss to Brown. "We're just not where we were three weeks ago."
Mixed Berry. No, you weren't going crazy - that Princeton wideout did look just like the Harvard cornerback who was covering him.
Tigers tri-captain Adam Berry and his twin brother Andrew, a defensive back for the Crimson, squared off this weekend during Harvard's 24-20 victory.
While neither was spectacular, Adam was the better of the Berrys, hauling in four catches for 40 yards.
Andrew did log four tackles on the day, but he had a rough outing as punt returner - his first-quarter fumble set up a Tigers touchdown.
