Fordham Rams


The Fordham Rams are the varsity sports teams for Fordham University. Their colors are maroon and white. The Fordham Rams are members of NCAA Division I and compete in the Atlantic 10 Conference for most sports. In football, the Rams play in the Patriot League of NCAA Division 1 Football Championship Subdivision. The university also supports a number of club sports, and a significant intramural sports program. The university's athletic booster clubs include the Sixth Man Club for basketball and the Afterguard for sailing.

Fordham and the Ivy League

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. In an article that appeared in the New York Tribune on October 14, 1933, Woodward, referencing football, wrote
William Morris writes that Stanley Woodward actually took the term from fellow New York Tribune sportswriter Caswell Adams. Morris writes that during the 1930s, 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.

Sports sponsored

As a primary member of the Atlantic 10 Conference, Fordham University sponsors varsity teams in eleven men's and ten women's NCAA sanctioned sports.

Baseball

Founded in the late 1850s, the Fordham Rose Hill Baseball Club of St. John's College played against St. Francis Xavier College in the first ever nine-man-team college baseball game on November 3, 1859. Fordham is the all time NCAA leader in wins.
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". Steve Bellán, first Latin American to play Major League Baseball, started his career as a player at St. John's College.
The team plays home games at Houlihan Park at Jack Coffey Field. Jack Coffey Field, a multisport facility, is named after Jack Coffey, former athletic director and baseball coach at the university. He amassed 817 wins as a baseball coach. Coffey is the only player to play with both Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth in the same season. The baseball portion of the field was renamed "Houlihan Park" after renovations completed in 2005.

Basketball

Fordham basketball teams have been members of the MAAC, Patriot League, and the Atlantic 10 Conference.

Men

Fordham began competing in men's basketball in 1902. They played their first game in Rose Hill Gymnasium on January 16, 1925. On February 28, 1940, Fordham hosted the University of Pittsburgh at Madison Square Garden in the first ever televised basketball game. Pitt won, 57–37. The game was televised by NBC. Fordham University enjoyed its best season in 1970–1971, when the squad went 26–3 under coach Digger Phelps and was ranked number nine in the nation in the AP poll.
The Fordham men have won three Patriot League regular season conference titles and two Patriot League tournament championships.
Fordham has participated in four NCAA Tournaments, and sixteen NITs. Though Fordham won the 1991 Patriot League Tournament, the NCAA did not grant the Patriot League an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament that year. Instead, Fordham played in one of three "play-in games", but lost, and was not considered to have reached the NCAA Tournament.
In the 2009–10 season, Fordham went 0–16 in the A-10 conference season, becoming the first team to go winless in an A-10 conference season since St. Bonaventure in 1992–93. That winless streak, which started during the 2008–09 season, ended on the 2010–11 season's final game, snapping the streak at 41.
Through the end of the 2010–11 season, the program's cumulative record is 1,444 wins and 1,237 losses.
After leading the team to a 25-8 record in 2022-23, head coach Keith Urgo received the John B. Hall award, one given to the top first-year coach in Division 1 basketball. In addition, the Atlantic 10 conference named Keith Urgo coach of the year for the 2023 season, being the second Fordham coach to receive this honor.
The Rams won more home games in the 2023 season than any other college team in the nation.

Women

Women's basketball at Fordham began as a club team in 1963–64. They became an NCAA competitive team in 1970–71. The Rams have won the Patriot League Championship in 1992 and 1994 and the Atlantic 10 women's basketball tournament in 2014. They have played in the 1994 NCAA tournament, the 2013 WNIT, and the 2014 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament.

Football

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 1930s took its nickname from the Rams of the Bronx. The Cleveland Rams later moved to Los Angeles and then to St. Louis, Missouri, before returning to Los Angeles in 2016, and are now known as the Los Angeles Rams.
On September 30, 1939, Fordham participated in the world's first televised American 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.
Fordham has dropped their football program on several different occasions. Fordham first dropped football between 1894–95, and then again between 1910–11, 1919, and 1943-45. On December 15, 1954, Fordham scratched its football program for the fifth time, for various reasons, mainly financial. A club football team was established in 1964 and football was re-established as a varsity sport in 1970, but in Division III. Fordham joined what is now the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision in 1989.
With 722 all-time wins at the close of the 2005 season, 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 Classic but lost 13–12 to Texas A&M. At least one source lists Fordham as the 1929 National Football Champions.
Since 2002, Fordham has played Columbia University for The Liberty Cup. The trophy was dedicated after the attacks of September 11, 2001, forced the postponement of the first annual meeting between New York City's two Division I football programs. In 2009 the university announced that it will be offering scholarships for football for the first time since 1954. This makes the Rams ineligible to compete for the Patriot League championship, but simultaneously allows them to schedule games with Football Bowl Subdivision teams such as the Army Black Knights and the Navy Midshipmen, both immediately scheduled. In addition, the Rams are still eligible for an at-large bid for the Championship Subdivision play-offs. In 2013, the Rams had a record year in going 12-2 with wins over FBS Temple and ranked Villanova and Lehigh teams and went to the second round of the FCS playoffs.
Fordham University's 2023 Football team had an overall record of 6-5 with a 2-4 record in the Patriot League. Their biggest win of the season came against Lehigh University with a score of 38-35 on October 7, 2023. Kicker Brandon Peskin kicked the 44-yard game-winning field goal with one second left on the clock. During the pregame on October 7, 2023, during Fordham University's homecoming football game, the school announced renaming the Jack Coffey Field to The Joe Moglia Stadium in honor of Fordham Alum Joe Moglia.

Milestones

Men

The team currently plays in the Atlantic 10 conference and reached the quarterfinals of the 2017 NCAA Division I men's soccer championships

Women

The team currently plays in the Atlantic 10 conference and has appeared in the Atlantic 10 Championship game in 2007 and 2015.

Softball

The Fordham softball program has been the most successful recent program for the Rams, winning seven of the past eight Atlantic 10 championships and earning an NCAA championship berths in eight of the past nine years.