For all its intellectual might, Columbia seemingly cannot find a way to win a football game.

On a weekend in which the Ivy League will be front and center, with ESPN’s “College GameDay” broadcasting from the Harvard-Yale game in Boston, Columbia will take a 20-game losing streak into its season finale at Brown on Saturday. It is the worst stretch since the program, which has been associated with decades of failure, dropped 44 contests in a row from 1983 to 1988. The Lions have been outscored, 348-96, in nine losses this year, including six in the Ivy League.

The team’s woes are so severe that Lee C. Bollinger, the university president, sent a letter to football alumni on Thursday in which he promised a comprehensive review of the program while offering support for Coach Peter Mangurian, who has two years remaining on a five-year contract.

“Columbia football should be, and must be, competitive within the values of Ivy League athletics,” Bollinger wrote.

Bollinger announced the hiring of Rick Taylor, a former football coach and athletic director, to oversee the review. Bollinger said the need to revitalize the program, which won its only Ivy League title in 1961, would be a “key topic of conversation” in the pursuit of a new athletic director to succeed M. Dianne Murphy, who previously announced she would leave in June.