Two years removed from a 1-10 season, the Fordham Rams are one of five undefeated FCS teams. Howard Smith/USA TODAY Sports

BRONX, N.Y. -- A two-hour Tuesday afternoon practice had just concluded, but Joe Moorhead was still barking at his Fordham Rams.

After the team's final huddle, a few of his players were leisurely walking toward the locker room.

"If you're staying on the field, do something!" Moorhead bellowed. "If not, run off!"

Every moment is precious to Moorhead. Players sprinted from drill to drill. The coach spoke to them about having a sense of urgency. Perhaps it's no wonder he needed such little time to turn Fordham football around.

The Rams, 1-10 two years ago before Moorhead took over, are now 7-0 -- their best start since 1930.

"I feel like I need to pinch myself," said senior running back Carlton Koonce.

New York isn't a college football town -- at least not anymore. But prior to World War II, Fordham boasted one of the top collegiate football programs in the country, and played in front of huge crowds at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds. The team finished the 1937 season No. 3 in the nation, and played in the Cotton Bowl and Sugar Bowl following the 1940 and '41 seasons, respectively.

Legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi was one of the shapers of Fordham's proud football history. AP Photo

The program, however, is best remembered for the "Seven Blocks of Granite," the nickname given to two sets of dominant Fordham linemen -- the 1929-30 group, and the 1936-37 group, which included legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi.

At the end of the 1942 season, Fordham suspended all intercollegiate sports for the duration of World War II (1943-45), and the football program never recovered. The university discontinued football entirely in 1954. It was reinstated at the club level a decade later. The Rams began competing at the Division III level in 1970, and made the jump to Division I-AA, now known as the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), in 1988.

The Rams have won the Patriot League and qualified for the I-AA playoffs twice, in 2002 and 2007, but failed to get past the quarterfinals. And then they hit rock-bottom, winning just one game in 2011.

Enter Moorhead, who attended Fordham and played quarterback for the Rams in the mid-1990s, setting school records at the time. He was hired after spending the previous three years as the offensive coordinator and QBs coach at the University of Connecticut.

The program was in dire straits, but that didn't deter him.

"You've got one of the top academic schools in the country, situated in the heart of New York City -- the cultural and business epicenter of the Western Hemisphere," Moorhead said. "As a player, my teammates and I would always talk about the potential of this place, and I'm just glad to have an opportunity to help the school realize it."

Koonce said he'll never forget the first team meeting after Moorhead took the job.

"He comes in and gives a whole spiel, and he goes, 'We're gonna be blue-collar' -- all that good stuff, all the mushy stuff," Koonce said. "And then he goes, 'We walk around campus [with] no earrings in, hats off inside, we're gonna show respect to everybody around us; treat women as somebody's sister or daughter or mother,' all that stuff. I was like, 'Aw man, this guy is serious!'"