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Kevin DeMarrais' Top-10 Most Memorable Football Games

Former Columbia Sports Information Director, Historian and Athletics Hall of Fame member Kevin DeMarrais gives his top-10 list of most memorable Columbia Football games.

10/14/2020 1:00:00 PM

NEW YORK—This story is a part of the #CUFootball150 feature series on Top-10 Historical Lists for Columbia Football. Today we look at former Columbia Sports Information Director, Historian and Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame member Kevin DeMarrais' list of Columbia Football's all-time Top-10 most memorable games.
 
150 Year Logo PNGDeMarrais was inducted into the Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame (Class of 2016). He has spent over 60 years observing Columbia Athletics and spent 19 years from 1965-84 as Columbia's Sports Information Director, where he earned numerous awards promoting Columbia's teams, including the National Award for Editorial Excellence for the Best College Football Program/Magazine six times and another for Outstanding Special Project for the Football Centennial Promotion in 1971. He also served as the publicity coordinator for the Ivy League from 1978-84, served three terms as chairman of the League's Director of Sports Information, and is a former president of the Eastern College Athletic Conference Sports Information Directors. As an undergraduate at Columbia, he wrote for the New York Times and was a three-year starter on Columbia's lightweight football team. DeMarrais is a 1964 graduate of Columbia College.
 
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Obviously, you have to start with the 1934 Rose Bowl and the 1947 win over Army. All Lions fans know all about Swiacki and KF79. So I have a Top 10, excluding those two:
 
1. Columbia 31, Dartmouth 29 (November 6, 1971)
The Cardiac Kids gained their fifth nail-bitter win on Paul Kaliades' 34-yard "wounded duck" field goal with 48 seconds remaining.
 
2. Columbia 11, Yale 0 (October 14, 1961)
A week after losing the Ivy opener to Princeton, and forced to play on the road without star running back Tom Haggerty, who was sidelined with injury, the Lions got an all-star performance from sophomore Al Butts. He scored the game's only touchdown and a two-point conversion and had two interceptions on defense, putting Columbia on the path to its only Ivy championship.
 
3. Columbia 24, Cornell 21 (November 17, 2018)
Freshman Mike Roussos, who had a 91-yard punt return in the first quarter, ran back a kickoff 87 yards with 45 seconds left, giving Columbia a 24-21 victory and its first back-to-back winning season in 56 years. The second TD came just 13 seconds after Cornell had taken a 21-17 lead.
 
4. Columbia 20, Harvard 13 (OT) (September 21, 1996)
An interception by Roy Hanks in overtime preserved the win, but it was a block of a 23-yard field goal attempt by future NFL star Marcellus Wiley with less than a minute left in regulation that sent the game into overtime.
 
5. Columbia 22, Princeton 20 (October 2, 1971)
Combine a 56-yard interception return by Ted Gregory, a blocked 2-point conversion attempt by Charlie Johnson, and a missed 32-yard field goal attempt by Princeton with six seconds left to give the Lions their first win over Princeton since 1945. It prompted the sports information director to pop the cork on a bottle of champaign in the press box.
 
6. Columbia 25, Cornell 19 (November 3, 1956)
Claude Benham, playing the entire 60 minutes, passed for three touchdowns, ran for a fourth, and set up a TD with an interception in legendary Coach Lou Little's final game at Baker Field.
 
7. Columbia 16, Syracuse 0 (November 25, 1933).
Cliff Montgomery ran for two TDs as Columbia wrapped up its regular season with a 7-1 record, earning an invitation to the Rose Bowl.
 
8. Columbia 57, St. Lawrence 0 (October 23, 1915)
As reported by The New York Times, Columbia "resumed its place among athletic colleges when the Blue and White boys overwhelmed "eleven lads" from St. Lawrence. The game, played on South Field was Columbia's first in 10 years.
 
9. Columbia 14, Army 14 (October 25, 1952)
With President Eisenhower among the crowd of 31,000 in the stands, Columbia pulled out a tie on what The New York Times called "a fourth-down Pass of desperation" from Mitch Price to Al Ward.
 
10. Columbia 16, Princeton 13 (October 8, 1988)
Columbia saw its 44-game losing streak come to an end, but not until the Tigers missed a 48-yard field goal attempt on the game's final play.
 
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