Football Looks To Make It Two Straight When Brown Visits on Saturday

David Archer '05
The Roger J. Weiss '61 Head Coach of Cornell Football

STREAKS, STORYLINES & SIDEBARS
• Cornell will look for its second straight victory and first Ivy League win of 2021 when it hosts a high-octane Brown offense on Saturday, Oct. 23 at 1 p.m. at Schoellkopf Field. 
• Barry Leonard and Buck Briggs ‘76 will be in the broadcast booth with the call on ESPN+.
• Cornell is flying high after picking up its first win of the season, a 34-20 victory over Colgate last weekend as the offense piled up 480 yards with a three-quarterback system and the defense did what it’s done all year long — stopped the run.
• The Big Red defense has been its calling card in 2021, ranking in the top 30 in third-down conversion defense (fifth, .254), rushing defense (11th, 100.0), red zone defense (17th, .706) and total defense (23rd, 323.0). 
• Freshman Jameson Wang earned Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors after posting a game-high 84 rushing yards and accounting for a touchdown both passing and rushing, becoming the first rookie in school history to accomplish that in a single game.
• He was joined by senior Richie Kenney, who surpassed 3,000 career passing yards and threw for a score, and sophomore Luke Duby, who hit on 2-of-3 aerials for 56 yards and ran for a touchdown.
• The Bears also enter the game with one win — a 31-10 triumph over that same Raiders team the Big Red defeated, only the the week prior.   
• All-American quarterback EJ Perry directs an offense ranked in the top 20 nationally in passing offense (seventh, 335.6), completion percentage (eighth, .670) and total offense (18th, 435.6 ypg.).
• This will be the second time in as many weeks where the two opposing head coaches will represent their alma maters on the sidelines.
• Cornell head coach David Archer was a three-year starter on the offensive line for Cornell, graduating in 2005 — with James Perry earning his degree from Brown in 2000 after a stellar, record-setting career under center for the Bears.

LOOKING FORWARD, LOOKING BACK
• The Big Red finished the 2019 season with a 4-6 overall record (3-4 Ivy) and earned an upper division finish for the first time since 2006 with a fourth place finish. 
• Cornell defeated Ivy co-champ and 12th-ranked Dartmouth on the road and trailed the other Ivy champ, Yale, 20-16 with under two minutes to play while two of its losses came by a single point. 
• Cornell played its first football game in 665 days when it met #22 VMI on Sept. 18, its second-longest drought without a game since the introduction of the program in 1887 (674 days from Nov. 29, 1917 - Oct. 4, 1919).
• The 2020 season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• This year’s version of the Big Red returns 14 starters (six offense, eight defense), as well as its placekicker and long-snapper from 2019. 
• Eight Big Red players earned All-Ivy honors in 2019, including returners Hunter Nourzad (OL) and Jake Stebbins (LB) on the second team. 
• A total of 21 fifth-year seniors return in 2021, combining with 30 four-year seniors to give the program 51 total seniors — the most in any season in school history.
• With three wins, Cornell will reach 650 all-time (13th all-time in FCS history). 

A WIN OVER BROWN WOULD...
• move the Big Red’s record to 2-4 on the season and 1-2 in Ivy League play.
• be Cornell’s second in a row overall and in front of the home crowd.
• be the fourth consecutive victory for the Big Red in the series, its longest since the 1990-93 seasons.
• improve its home record to 2-1.
• cut the Big Red’s deficit in the all-time series to 37-30-1.
• give Cornell a 311-247-14 (.556) record all-time in the month of October.
• be the 648th in program history (13th-most in the Football Championship Subdivision).

ABOUT BROWN
• Brown is 1-4 (0-2 Ivy) after last weekend’s 56-42 shootout loss to nationally-ranked Princeton.
• Featuring an explosive offense and one of the top quarterbacks in the FCS, the Bears are ranked in the top 20 nationally in passing offense (seventh, 335.6), completion percentage (eighth, .670) and total offense (18th, 435.6 ypg.).
• First-team All-Ivy quarterback and All-America candidate EJ Perry leads the Ivy League and ranks in the top 20 nationally in passing yards per game (sixth, 335.6) and passing touchdowns (17th, 13). 
• Three different receivers have at least 25 receptions and 330 yards through the air led by Wes Rockett (31 receptions, 383 yards, five touchdowns).
• Defensively, six players have at least 20 tackles with Jason Medeiros posting 23 stops with 5.0 for a loss, but Brown ranks in the bottom 12 nationally in total defense (111th, 461.4 ypg.), scoring defense (113th, 39.2 ppg.), pass efficiency defense (117th, 168.19), passing yards allowed (120th, 306.8 ypg.) and third-down conversion percentage (121st, .516).
• Punter Declan Boyle is averaging 41.8 yards per punt, while place-kicker Christopher Maron is 3-of-5 on field goals and a perfect 18-of-18 on PAT kicks.
• Head coach James Perry, who implemented the offense at Princeton that developed three Ivy Players of the Year at quarterback, is in his second season and third year directing the Brown program
• Perry is one of Brown and the Ivy League’s all-time leading passers as a quarterback and has won Ivy titles for the Bears as a player and assistant coach.

THE SERIES
• This will be the 68th meeting between Cornell and Brown, with the Bears holding a 37-29-1 advantage. 
• The two teams first met in 1895, a 6-4 Cornell win. 
• Brown has won 14 of the last 19 meetings, though Cornell won the last three, including a 37-35, last-second win over the Bears in 2019 at Schoellkopf Field.
• Prior to that, the Bears had won seven straight against the Big Red in Providence, with Cornell’s last previous win coming in 2002 (10-7).

• Schoellkopf Field has been an indelible mark of Cornell football since it opened in 1915. 
• Schoellkopf Field is the fourth-oldest FCS stadium, opening in 1915. Only Penn’s Franklin Field (1895), Harvard Stadium (1903) and the Yale Bowl (1914) are older. 
• A gift from Willard Straight ‘01 and the family of Henry (Heinie) Schoellkopf ‘02 made the construction possible for the current stadium. 
• The Big Red’s first year on the field was one of its best, going 9-0 and winning the national championship. 
• In 1915, General Electric Company completed work on a flood searchlight system for the field, and in 1924 a construction project was completed to bring capacity from 9,000 to 21,500 by adding the famed Crescent. 
• In 1947 that capacity was increased to 25,597 and a press box was added. 
• In 1971 a gift was made to put artificial turf on the field, and it was resurfaced three times, the last time in 1999. 
• A new press box was built in 1986.
• The 2008 season saw installation of FieldTurf synthetic grass to replace the artificial turf. 
• In 2016, the West Stands were demolished and the field was moved 15 feet toward the Crescent while replacing the FieldTurf to ready for more construction at the site, lowering the capacity to 21,500 in the process.
• The Big Red’s all-time record at Schoellkopf Field is 304-194-15 (.607).

Few collegiate football programs have the storied history of Cornell University. With more than 130 seasons of football in the books, the Big Red has collected five national titles, won nearly 650 games and has had legendary players and coaches perform on historic Schoellkopf Field. Names such as Glenn "Pop" Warner and Heisman Trophy finalist and NCAA record-breaker Ed Marinaro have suited up for Cornell, while seven College Football Hall of Famers (including Warner, Gil Dobie and Carl Snavely) and multiple-time Super Bowl winner George Seifert have set the strategy as head coaches. Now, with David Archer '05 leading the program, there’s little doubt that history will continue to be made.

• Cornell and Princeton renew one of college football’s spookiest rivalries when the teams meet in a pre-Halloween thriller on Friday, Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. on Schoellkopf Field.
• The game will be broadcast to a nationwide audience on ESPNU.
• Peppered with last-second finishes, crazy endings and upsets galore, nine of the last 16 contests have been decided by a touchdown or less, with that stretching to 12 of the last 20 meetings and 19 of the last 30.