Head Football Coach Pete Mangurian resigned on December 5 following three losing seasons at Columbia and two weeks after President Lee C. Bollinger commissioned a review of Columbia’s football program by consultant Rick Taylor.

“We are committed to providing our dedicated student athletes with the best possible opportunities to succeed both on and off the field,” Bollinger said in a news release announcing Mangurian’s resignation. “So we will now look forward to completing consultant Rick Taylor’s expert review of our football operations that will help us chart a new direction under a new coach.”
Columbia’s football team compiled a 3-27 record under Mangurian, with all three victories coming in his initial season. The Lions, who have lost 21 consecutive games, posted their last winning season in 1996 and won their only Ivy League championship in 1961.

Taylor was an assistant football coach at Lehigh and Dartmouth before becoming head coach at Boston University and leading the Terriers to four Yankee Conference championships in five years in the 1980s. He later served as athletics director at BU, Cincinnati and Northwestern, overseeing a turnaround in the football program at Northwestern that saw the team win three Big Ten titles during his decade there. He retired from Northwestern in 2003.

“It goes without saying that the results of this football season have been disappointing,” Bollinger wrote in his email on November 20 to alumni supporters of Columbia football announcing the review. “Columbia Football should be, and must be, competitive within the values of Ivy League athletics… Yet the fact remains that no one has yet succeeded in building a sustainable, competitive football program at Columbia in several decades.”

In describing Taylor, Bollinger noted his success at turning around programs at other schools and that he had “performed a similar review several years ago at Dartmouth as it began its own long-term effort to turn around its football fortunes.” Dartmouth suffered five consecutive losing seasons under Coach Buddy Teevens, including 0-10 in 2008, before hiring Taylor. It has not had a losing season since then, with Teevens continuing on as head coach. Dartmouth compiled an 8-2 record in 2014 and tied for second place in the Ivy League with a 6-1 mark.