A Legacy of Lions Leadership

He kept it to himself, for nearly three years. A secret? Not really. But it was a piece of his family’s history that not everyone, including his fellow football players, needed access to. “Having a lot of people know about this story … ” Jack Smiechowski ’26 says, looking for the right words. “It feels a little like I’m bragging.” And people who know him say that bragging is not his M.O.

It’s likely Smiechowski might never have shared it, at least not publicly, until something very unlikely happened, and the irony and the coincidence and the you-gotta-be-kidding were too good not to offer up the narrative.

For sure, if his teammates had been eagle-eyed, they might have picked up signals. When Smiechowski would head out of Chrystie Field House, on his way to the turf for practice or to a bus for a ride back to campus, he would usually stop in front of the large wooden panel attached to a wall in the locker room. It lists the names of football captains from as far back as the late 1800s. He’d stare at one name: Thomas E. O’Connor, 1962. He might whisper to it, or reach out and touch it. Why O’Connor, captain of a respectable 5–4 squad but nothing like the ’61 team, the only Columbia team (until recently) to win an Ivy League title?

Thomas E. O’Connor. What did Smiechowski know — and when would he let others know as well?

The time finally came with an improbable development. Last fall, after 63 years, Columbia won another Ivy football championship, and Smiechowski played a big part in the drought-busting, so much so that his teammates elected him co-captain for the coming season. And when that happened, Smiechowski was ready to nudge a piece of family lore into the open.

“It is such a cool story,” he says, again not boasting. “I feel like anybody who wants to know should be able to hear about it.”

Here’s the scoop: On the extremely rare occasions Columbia has sought to defend an Ivy football title — just twice since the Kennedy administration — its captains have come from the same family. Jack Smiechowski, you see, is a grandson of Tom O’Connor ’63.

Fluke? Happenstance? Weird? Try finding a more suitable word. For this familial alignment to occur, consider the odds: In the 62 seasons following that first championship, which Columbia shared with Harvard, the Lions had only five winning Ivy records. Their best league finish was second, achieved just twice. And the title drought seemed destined to continue heading into last season’s final weekend.

It took a Yale upset of Harvard to create tri-champions: Columbia, Dartmouth and Harvard. Days later came the captain vote, and the symmetry between 1962 and 2025 snapped into place.

“Wow, I didn’t think of that that,” says Columbia head football coach Jon Poppe when alerted of the connection. “I don’t know what that ’62 team did” — it finished tied for third in the league — “but hopefully the 2025 version will do OK.”

The one missing link: O’Connor, who rarely missed a home game in the years after graduating, passed away in 2020. He never saw his grandson play on the same field.

O’Connor, called Okie by teammates, had been a force on the ’61 squad. He played both sides of the line, fullback and defensive back (and also kicked field goals). He stood 6 feet, weighed 190 pounds, and was bigger than some of the linemen blocking for him. He scored four touchdowns that season, including two in the Lions’ lone Ivy League loss (to Princeton) and one in a crucial win over Harvard that helped to seal a shared title with the Crimson.

“Okie was a big part of the team. He was an excellent blocker and a good runner,” recalls Dr. Russ Warren ’62, O’Connor’s backfield mate. “He made a lot of big contributions and big plays.”

O’Connor was the oldest of 10 kids from the working-class mill town of Chicopee, Mass. Three brothers would follow him to Columbia and play football: John ’67, Jim ’69 and Dan ’82. He was part of the Navy ROTC program and played on the Old Blue rugby team. “He could do it all,” says his brother John. “I don’t know how the hell he did it, having gone [to Columbia] myself. He was very modest, very modest — but he could do it all.”

Simply put, he was captain material. “He had some good leadership skills, he was enthusiastic,” Warren says, “and he had the respect of the other kids in his class.”

“My dad wore Columbia blue every single day. It was him,” says Katy Smiechowski TC’98.

And he never strayed far from Columbia. He settled down with his wife, Terrie, and family in northern New Jersey, making it easy to get to Baker Field for Saturday games and tailgates that became mini-reunions with his football buddies. Bill Campbell ’62, TC’64, the spirited captain of that ’61 title team, might show up, or Tom Vasell ’62, the quarterback.

“My dad wore Columbia blue every single day. It was him,” says Katy Smiechowski TC’98, one of Tom’s four children and Jack’s mom. “It was part of what defined him.”

As a kid, Smiechowski would often go to his grandpa’s tailgates, but he admits he didn’t soak in the lore. He was more keen on watching the action on the field than in listening to war stories. Then, as he got older, his own games replaced trips to northern Manhattan. He saw his grandpa plenty; they lived near each other, giving O’Connor time to teach Smiechowski chess, pick him up from school and arm-wrestle the kid into submission. “He was incredibly strong,” Smiechowski remembers. “I was a young high schooler and was still getting my ass kicked.”

But the grandfather rarely brought up the title, or his captaincy, around the grandson. “I wish I had talked to him a lot more about it,” Smiechowski says. He pauses. “So he passed away, a year before I got an offer to come to Columbia. I would sacrifice a lot to be able to get that perspective and ask him a few questions. But I’ve heard a lot of stories from other people about him, which warms my heart.”

Despite the family ties, Smiechowski didn’t limit his college sights on Columbia. He was a three-sport athlete at Saint Joseph Regional H.S. in Montvale, N.J., and had known since he was young that he wanted an Ivy League school. But as a quick yet undersized linebacker — he was 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds as a high school senior — all the Ivies passed on him, except one.

“I’m not sure if they knew that my grandfather played [at Columbia]; I don’t think that they did,” Smiechowski, an economics major, says of the Lions then-coaching staff, led by Al Bagnoli. “But Columbia was the only Ivy to give me a chance, so I want to kind of show that they’ve made the right choice.”

Smiechowski has made the most of the opportunity. He saw action in all but one game during his first two seasons. Then, by the start of his junior year, he’d gotten bigger — he’ll head into this season at 210 pounds — without losing any athleticism. Poppe says Smiechowski’s measurements in the long jump and broad jump line up with many NFL prospects. “He also plays football the way it’s meant to be played,” Poppe says. “He’s not taking cheap shots, but if he’s got you in the open field, he’s got you lined up — he’s going to run through you.” To further illustrate Smiechowski, one of four co-captains for the coming season, Poppe uses “tireless, relentless — you know, those adjectives. That’s who Jack is.”

“Focused” might be another appropriate modifier. During last season’s finale against Cornell, Smiechowski says claiming a share of the Ivy title “wasn’t in my head very much.” That wasn’t the case in the stands. His parents, Greg and Katy, were there, along with his granduncle Dan. Midway through the third quarter, with Columbia leading Cornell in New York and Harvard trailing Yale in Cambridge, the significance hit Katy, who had been to many tailgates with her dad and his football buddies. “I started crying, just crying at the possibility because it was just surreal,” she says.

“I remember tapping my husband on the shoulder and going, ‘Is this happening?’”

It was. Columbia beat Cornell to finish with a 5–2 Ivy record; 45 minutes or so later the news came that Harvard had lost. A title was won. A very long wait was over. Smiechowski and his teammates came back to the field from the locker room to cheers from the fans who had stayed. He soon found his family. “They couldn’t believe it,” he says, “because, again, they knew the story of my grandpa.”

And more and more he’s telling others the tale. If someone now sees him staring at the wide, wooden panel in the Lions’ locker room, he’ll explain why — and share a bit about the Columbia football captain from 63 years ago.

“Every day I walk into the locker room, and I see his name on the board of captains, I give him a quick moment,” Smiechowski offers. “And before I leave, I do the same. And whenever I feel like I’m selling myself short or could have done better, I always think about what he would think, of what he did for the program. Because, you know, I’m sure he was imperfect, but from all the stories I’ve heard, he might have been the Second Coming.” He pauses. “He definitely allows me to hold myself to a higher standard, and I thank him every day for that.”

Charles Butler ’85, JRN’99 is a journalism professor at the University of Oregon. He is researching a book on former Columbia foot- ball coach Lou Little.