The 1939 Cornell Big Red football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

team that represented

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

as an independent during the

1939 college football season The 1939 college football season concluded with the Aggies of The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (Texas A&M) being named as the national champions by the voters in the Associated Press writers' poll. Led by consensus All-American ...

. In its fourth season under head coach

Carl Snavely Carl Gray "The Grey Fox" Snavely (July 30, 1894 – July 12, 1975) was an American football and baseball coach. He served as the head football coach at Bucknell University (1927–1933), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1934–19 ...

, Cornell compiled an 8–0 record and outscored opponents by a total of 197 to 52. After the season, Cornell declined a bid to the 1940 Rose Bowl so that the football players could catch up on their schoolwork. On December 1, Cornell was awarded the Lambert Trophy as the best Eastern college football team. In the final

AP Poll The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadca ...

released on December 12, Cornell was ranked No. 4 nationally, behind

Texas A&M Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

, and

USC USC most often refers to: * University of South Carolina, a public research university ** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses **South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program * University of ...

. Cornell was named national champion in the

Litkenhous Ratings The Litkenhous Difference by Score Ratings system was a mathematical system used to rank football and basketball teams. The Litrating system was developed by Vanderbilt University professor Edward E. Litkenhous (1907 – December 22, 1984) and his b ...

released in December 1939. It was also retroactively recognized as co-national champion in the

Sagarin Ratings Jeff Sagarin is an American sports statistician known for his development of a method for ranking and rating sports teams in a variety of sports. His ratings have been a regular feature in the ''USA Today'' sports section since 1985, have been use ...

Cornell tackle

Nick Drahos Nick Drahos (December 6, 1918 – May 12, 2018) was an American football end. He played college football at Cornell University and was a member of the Sphinx Head Society. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame The College Footbal ...

was a consensus first-team selection on the 1939 All-America college football team. He was inducted in 1981 into the

College Football Hall of Fame The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vote ...

. Quarterback Walter Matuszczak was also selected as a first-team All-American by the ''New York Sun''.

Schedule

References

{{Cornell Big Red football navbox

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

Cornell Big Red football seasons College football national champions Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy seasons College football undefeated seasons

Cornell Big Red football The Cornell Big Red football team represents Cornell University in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) college football competition as a member of the Ivy League. It is one of the ol ...