Cornell Football Is Giving Students a Reason to Show Up
At schools that do it best, the stadium fills with people who disagree about nearly everything else, and nobody checks a neighbor’s politics before a third-down stand. For a few hours they all want the same thing — a situation hard to find on many university campuses these days. Cornell has a team and a stadium that can offer this experience. Last Saturday at Schoellkopf showed how close Cornell is to having that kind of football culture, and how much is still missing.
The Big Red needed to respond after their opening-weekend 20-7 loss to Colgate in nearby Hamilton, and they did when they returned home to Schoellkopf Field on September 26. In front of the largest reported home crowd since the 2022 season, Cornell beat nationally ranked Yale, the Ivy League’s preseason favorite, 38-25. The Big Red ran for five touchdowns, and senior standout Tommy MacPherson had two interceptions in front of 12,542 fans on Family Weekend. Seven days earlier, the offense had managed just 216 yards and seven points.
The yardage totals make the game look closer than it felt. The Bulldogs outgained Cornell 361-278 and had 23 first downs to Cornell’s 19, but that’s what a box score can look like when a team spends the second half chasing a 25-point deficit, and Cornell’s defense was able to give the offense good field position. Tommy MacPherson picked off Yale quarterback Charles Hewitt twice and returned the passes for a combined 63 yards, which put the offense at the Yale six and the Yale 43, with both drives ending in touchdowns. MacPherson added six tackles and a tackle for loss before recovering a late onside kick to seal the win. According to Cornell Athletics, his three interceptions are the most by a Cornell player through the first two games of a season since 1999.
Cornell’s 126 rushing yards are similarly deceptive, and the team’s inability to run the ball with consistency could become an issue against better defenses. Ean Pope had 48 yards on four carries, including a 31-yard touchdown, but Cornell’s other 36 carries went for just 78 yards, or 2.17 yards per carry. Jordan Triplett needed 11 carries to get 31, and quarterback Garrett Bass-Sulpizio finished with 27 on 12. At 6-foot-5 and 248 pounds, Bass-Sulpizio is a great tool in Cornell’s goal-line offense. Doing his best Josh Allen impression, Bass-Sulpizio scored both of his touchdowns at the goal line, where Cornell can just point him downhill behind the interior line. He also went 14 of 21 for 152 yards with no turnovers, a nice rebound from the three interceptions he threw at Colgate.
Then came the strangest call of the day. Facing fourth-and-four at the Yale 38, Cornell passed on going for it or attempting a field goal of roughly 55 yards and instead asked Bass-Sulpizio to execute a pooch punt. The ball went 13 yards, and Yale took over at its own 25. Cornell gave up a possession in Yale territory to gain 13 yards of field position. In contrast, Caden Lesiewicz, the actual punter, averaged 44.8 yards on four punts and put two inside the 20. One of those was an amazing special teams play in which he kicked a career-long 75-yarder (thanks to a fortuitous roll) that the coverage team expertly downed at the Yale one.
The Big Red put together touchdown drives of 62 and 75 yards, the first featuring a 41-yard reception from JaVon Broussard and the second highlighted by a 31-yard Pope touchdown run. The best drive of the day may have produced only three points. After Yale cut the lead to 28-18, the Big Red took over with 13:03 left and ran 12 plays for 58 yards. Alan Zhao kicked a 34-yard field goal, but the more important number was 6:50, the amount of clock Cornell burned. Yale got the ball back with 6:13 to go, still trailing by 13. At that point, the Cornell crowd felt pretty comfortable that the win was secured.
The announced crowd of 12,542 is where the football and the experience around it parted ways. Family Weekend filled Schoellkopf, and the people in the seats reacted whenever Cornell gave them something to react to. MacPherson’s interceptions, Pope’s long run, Bass-Sulpizio’s goal-line scores, and a 25-point lead on a ranked Ivy League opponent all did that. The fans who showed up are not the issue. The issue is that Cornell has not turned football Saturdays into something the wider student body feels compelled to attend.
The stadium should make that easy, and Cornell is lucky to have it. Opened in 1915, Schoellkopf is the fourth-oldest stadium in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), and for more than a century it has sat in the middle of campus, a short walk for thousands of students. Many “big football schools” are not so lucky. UCLA, Miami, and South Carolina are among the many football programs that run game-day shuttles to get students from campus to their stadiums. Cornell students are lucky enough to be able to walk to Schoellkopf. Yet even with more than 12,000 in the Crescent, parts of the game-day experience felt closer to a high school Friday night than a Division I game against a ranked conference opponent. That is no knock on the fans or players. The football was the best thing about the afternoon.
Plenty of students who ended up at Cornell wanted the big-time college football Saturday but gave it up in favor of stronger academics. But that tradeoff does not have to mean giving up the game-day experience entirely. A school with a packed stadium and a so-so academic reputation cannot become an Ivy League school, but Cornell’s student body can build the Saturday experience, and can do so quickly if students show up and bring some school spirit. At a time when major college football feels increasingly driven by money, Cornell still gives students the chance to cheer for classmates who sit in the same lecture halls and eat in the same dining halls. There is some self-interest in building that culture, too. Every student in those seats is a future alum. Students will carry Cornell’s name far longer than they will carry a student ID, and there is more to gain from a school they feel connected to than one they simply attended. A packed student section gives alumni a reason to return, shows prospective students a campus that feels alive and, most importantly, gives thousands of students one afternoon when being Cornellians is enough to bring them together.
Simply telling students to have more school spirit will not produce any. Family Weekend brings parents and alumni through the gates, but those crowds do not build a student culture by themselves. Home games have to become worth planning a Saturday around, and that takes not only enthusiasm from students but a real effort by the school to improve how the games are promoted and presented. Increased school spirit is critical, especially during times like these, and football could provide a welcome distraction. The team is already supplying a product worth selling.
A 14-point underdog, Cornell scored 38 points against the nationally ranked Ivy League favorite just one week after managing seven at Colgate. The team looked like a Division I program on Saturday, as it is. The rest of the day should match, too.
