Tuesday, November 11, 2025

 

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PHOTO: Brown Football

If you break down the past twenty seasons of the Brown University football program, it is two remarkably different ten-year time periods.

The first, dominated by winning, and the other by cellar dwelling.

From 2005 to 2014, the Bears were a power in the Ivy League —  finishing first twice, second twice, and third three times.  Moreover, Brown never finished worse than 6th. It was the era of the high-powered offense and multiple players in the NFL.

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There was Zak DeOssie, James Devlin, Buddy Farnum, Paul Raymond, and others who went on to the NFL.

It was gold—big crowds for big games.

An Ivy League winning percentage of 59% for the ten seasons.

 

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Ticket Office PHOTO: GoLocal

Then, It Collapsed

In stark contrast are the past ten seasons.  The Bears, now 0-5 in the Ivy League with two games remaining, are on pace to finish last in the league for the 5th time in ten years.

Note that the Ivy League did not play in 2020 due to COVID-19.

The best Brown has finished in the past ten seasons is fourth, and it did it twice — in 2015 and 2016. In the past eight seasons, the best the Bears have finished is 6th — remember there are only eight teams in the Ivy.

As GoLocal has previously reported, Brown has not had a winning Ivy League season since the Obamas were in the White House.

Maybe no other football program in the country has had a more precipitous decline.

Ivy League winning percentage of 21%.

In this weekend’s loss to Yale at Brown Stadium, on a seasonably warm day, the reported attendance was an optimistic 3,009. Brown Stadium has a seating capacity of 20,000. According to the record book, 33,000 attended a game against Colgate in 1932.

Those associated with the program point to recruiting and the difficulty of getting players through the admissions office. Add in, just like winning breeds winning, losing breeds losing.

 

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