Saturday’s homecoming football game was supposed to be an opportunity for the Red to make a statement in front of its largest home crowd of the year. Instead, Fordham’s senior quarterback John Skelton silenced Cornell.

Skelton threw for 420 yards and five touchdowns in leading the Rams to a 39-27 victory over the Red. He also rushed for a touchdown to cap off his impressive performance.

Check Monday's edition of The Cornell Daily Sun for more coverage

Fordham 39, Football 27

Fordham quarterback John Skelton picked apart Cornell's defense on Saturday afternoon, throwing for 421 yards and five touchdowns on 21-of-27 attempts. Jason Caldwell caught four of the touchdown passes, a school record, but Asa Lucas had the play of the game. Facing a third-and-nine from his own two-yard line on the first snap of the second quarter, Skelton found Lucas about 40 yards downfield, and the wideout took it to the end zone to put the Rams up, 13-3.

He has the size, gaudy statistics and already holds every school passing record. The early word on senior John Skelton is that he has the makeup to be a potential NFL quarterback. Tomorrow, he will direct the nation’s second-ranked offense in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) as Cornell hosts Fordham for Homecoming.

The names and shade of red on the uniforms changed, but to a casual onlooker, the football team’s 28-10 loss to Harvard on Saturday might have seemed like a repeat of the prior week’s game. For the second game in a row, Cornell was physically outmatched on both sides of the ball and gave up more than 200 rushing yards while struggling to get its own ground game in sync. Crimson junior running back Gino Gordon, who led his team with 137 rushing yards and a touchdown, summed up the reason behind his team’s success on the ground.

“The holes were wide open, and I just ran through them,” he said.

On a day when neither team could get much going through the air, Harvard's ground game picked up the slack, rushing for 251 yards and all four touchdowns and giving up only 62 to a struggling Cornell running attack that has averaged just 57 yards over its last three games. The win boosted Harvard (3-1, 2-0 Ivy), the preseason favorite to win the Ivy League, to the top of the conference standings, while dropping Cornell (2-2, 1-1) into a fourth-place tie with Yale.

It was a forgettable season in 2008 for Cornell thanks in large part to a game that most of the returning players cannot forget. Last year the Red traveled to Cambridge, Mass., to challenge Harvard. Cornell entered the contest with a spotless 3-0 record thanks to an upset victory against Yale and a last-second touchdown at Lehigh the previous week. The senior-laden team was primed for its best season yet, but a 38-17 drubbing in the national spotlight on VERSUS sparked a four-game losing skid for the Red.

HAMILTON, N.Y. — Déjà vu must have set in for the football team early in the first quarter when Colgate sophomore tailback Nate Eachus ran for a 10-yard score. The setting changed, as did some of the players, but the outcome certainly didn’t; for the second year in a row, Colgate's offense physically overwhelmed Cornell’s defense for a 45-23 win.

Check Monday's edition of The Cornell Daily Sun for more coverage

Colgate 45, Football 23

The setting changed but the outcome certainly didn't; for the second year in a row, Colgate's offense physically overwhelmed Cornell's defense. The Raiders logged 561 total yards, 344 on the ground. The three-headed rushing attack of junior quarterback Greg Sullivan (84 rushing yards and one touchdown) and sophomore running backs Jordan McCord (98 rushing yards and two touchdowns) and Nate Eachus (129 rushing yards and three touchdowns) netted an average of 5.7 yards per carry and accounted for 20 of Colgate's 32 first downs — Cornell had just 15 total first downs.

He just didn’t see it coming. As University of Florida hero and legend Tim Tebow looked for the open man, Kentucky’s defensive end blind-sided him, knocking Tebow to the ground in an oh-that’s-gotta-hurt kind of way. To make matters worse, as the 2007 Heisman winner fell from grace, the back of his helmet slammed into the knee of his own offensive lineman, Marcus Gilbert. Tebow lay motionless for more than a few seconds, and the 70,000 plus faithful of Gator Nation fell silent. As the American hero was finally carted off the field, the TV cameras captured him heaving his breakfast into a bag. But not to worry, Gator faithful, Tebow’s concussion shouldn’t keep him out too long, and he’ll probably be back for Florida’s next big game.