Cornell at Brown
Brown (2‑3) hosts Cornell (3‑2). The market has Cornell favored by 1.5.
How they got here
Last three games
Cornell · 3-2
Rated 241st in our preseason ratings, 197th now, up 44 spots.
2-1 in its last three, capped by a 10-point win over Lehigh as an 11.5-point underdog.
W 48-38 vs Lehigh No. 129 of 668 teams
won by 10 as an 11.5-point underdog
W 35-14 @ Georgetown No. 253 of 668 teams
won by 21 as an 8.5-point favorite
Last three games
Brown · 2-3
Rated 227th in our preseason ratings, 189th now, up 38 spots.
1-2 in its last three — but nothing on this résumé beats a top-40 team yet.
What’s at stake
Cornell
- Cornell is 1 game back in Ivy with 4 left to make it up.
- Cornell football is the program that Pop Warner built into a dynasty (five national titles, three undefeated seasons), and still plays the game the way he taught it — with intelligence, tradition, and pride in the sport itself.
Brown
- Brown is 2 games back in Ivy with 4 left to make it up.
- Brown fielded its first team in 1878 and is one of the founding-era laboratories of American football -- John Heisman played here before transferring to Penn, Fritz Pollard became the sport's first Black All-American and carried Brown to the first Rose Bowl in 1916, and Joe Paterno quarterbacked the Bears before following his college coach to Penn State. That pedigree now sits inside the modern Ivy League: no athletic scholarships, four Ivy titles (most recently 2008), a rough stretch of last-place finishes since 2019, and a signature 2025 upset of Rhode Island that snapped a six-game Governor's Cup losing streak.
The series
Brown leads the series 26-23-1
50 meetings since 1895 · Cornell won the last meeting
- 2025Cornell 30-24
- 2024Brown 23-21
- 2023Cornell 36-14
- 2022Cornell 24-21
- 2021Brown 49-45
Face-off
What each fanbase carries into this one.
Cornell
The chip · vs big brotherThe fanbase believes Penn holds the sixth-most played rivalry in college football history against Cornell, and that Penn has won more Ivy titles in the modern era. Cornell built the foundation of Ivy football, but Penn has claimed more championships since 1956. That gap between historical pedigree and modern success fuels the Big Red.
What this game touches
The weight of Pop Warner's legacy — can any coach live up to it?. Pop Warner coached Cornell (1904–1906) and built one of college football's first dynasties. The program then posted three consecutive undefeated seasons (1920–1923) under Gil Dobie. Cornell has never found a coach who matched that standard in the modern era. The wound is generational: greatness that happened once, long ago.
Brown
The chipBrown's frustration isn't really with an outside villain -- it's with its own recent record next to its own history. The program that gave the sport John Heisman, Fritz Pollard, and Joe Paterno has finished at or near the bottom of a non-scholarship, eight-team league more often than not since 2019, while conference peers Harvard and Yale were the ones who made history in the Ivy League's first season of FCS playoff eligibility.
What this game touches
The post-2008 competitive decline. Brown has not won an Ivy League title since 2008. Under head coach James Perry, hired in December 2018, the Bears have gone 2-8 (2019), 2-8 (2021), 3-7 (2022), 5-5 (2023), 3-7 (2024), and 5-5 (2025) -- a stretch that has repeatedly left Brown at or near the bottom of an eight-team conference. The wound sharpened in 2025, when Harvard and Yale became the first Ivy League teams ever to reach the FCS playoffs after the conference lifted its nearly 80-year postseason ban -- Brown was not part of that breakthrough.
The betting line, and the fans
Our model and the betting line don’t fully agree on Brown’s chances here.
Cornell favored by 1.5 · Total 46.5
Cornell by 1.5: where a favorite like this usually runs
Half of games8 in 10 games
Cornell’s chance through the game, if this goes like the 256 games since 2025 with a favorite of under 3.5 points.
Week by week
Brown
- Wk 3Wat New Haven17-10
- Wk 4Lvs Harvard10-14
- Wk 5Lat Rhode Island10-13
- Wk 6Wvs Bryant28-13
- Wk 7Lat Princeton10-16
Cornell
- Wk 3Lat Colgate7-20
- Wk 4Wvs Yale38-25
- Wk 5Wat Georgetown35-14
- Wk 6Lvs Harvard29-41
- Wk 7Wvs Lehigh48-38
Power rating by week
Brown is rated 0.7 points ahead as of week 8. Our power rating by week; higher is better.
The market
The books’ cut: 5.2%, the margin built into the odds