Meetings total 67 Largest victory Syracuse, 71–0 (1959) | All-time series 31–31–5 | |
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First meeting November 7, 1891Colgate 22, Syracuse 16 Latest meeting September 3, 2016Syracuse 33, Colgate 7 Longest win streak Syracuse, 16 (1951–present) | ||
The Colgate–Syracuse football rivalry is an American college football rivalry between the Colgate Raiders and Syracuse Orange. The two schools are located 38 miles apart from each other in Central New York. The two teams have met 67 times, and despite Colgate not recording a victory since 1950, the series is tied 31–31–5. The game has been infrequently played since the NCAA's divisional split in 1978, which placed Colgate in Division I-AA and Syracuse in Division I-A.
Contents
History
Colgate University (located in Madison County) and Syracuse University (located in neighboring Onondaga County) are both private institutions, and their close proximity to each other quickly lead to a natural rivalry in athletics between the two schools. Colgate and Syracuse first played each other in football in 1891, with Colgate recording a 22–16 victory. The Red Raiders would go on the win 12 of the first 16 games in the series. Colgate's early dominance in the series quickly gave rise to the legend of the Hoodoo (a play on a corruption of the word Voodoo). The Hoodoo legend was based on a story that, during the construction of Syracuse's Archbold Stadium in 1907, a Colgate student snuck onto the construction site and buried a varsity maroon "C" sweater in the drying cement, thereby cursing Syracuse to failure against the Red Raiders. Colgate students even went so far as to rent planes to drop "Hoodoo" flyers to litter the Syracuse campus, prompting Syracuse students to respond by dropping their own flyers on the Colgate campus. After Syracuse students upped the ante by pouring orange dye into Colgate's Taylor Lake, Colgate students responded by renting a plane to drop red paint onto Archbold Stadium. However, by the late 1950s, Syracuse had established itself as a major power in Eastern college football, while Colgate continued to lag behind and the games became increasingly one-sided. Following the 1961 contest, Colgate terminated the series, in order to focus on playing smaller, peer institutions. Following the NCAA's I-A/I-AA split in 1978, the rivalry was intermittently renewed in the 1980s, with Syracuse comfortably winning all three games played in the decade. In 2010, the rivalry was renewed again after a 23-year absence, with Syracuse recording a 42–7 victory. The series resumed again in 2016, when Syracuse is scheduled to host Colgate in a game played in the Carrier Dome. Syracuse won 33–7.
Notable games
Game results
Colgate victories are shaded ██ maroon. Syracuse victories are shaded ██ orange. Ties are white.