“I haven’t been keeping up with this,” he added. “Not in the least. It’s all brand new to me and I already resent it.”

For decades, Columbia football has been a running punch line. The university has not won an Ivy League championship since 1961, when it shared the laurels with Harvard. After going 6-3 in 1971, the Lions did not have another winning season for 23 years. More recently, they lost 24 straight games before beating Wagner in 2015.

Under Al Bagnoli, who was hired that year as head coach, this season is shaping up to be quite different, even extraordinary. The Lions have not started 6-0 since 1996, and their victory against Dartmouth ensured their first winning season since that year. Currently, they are first in the Ivy League. More than 13,000 spectators witnessed the team’s 34-31 overtime victory at homecoming against the University of Pennsylvania on Oct. 14 — the biggest turnout since 2003.

Some who wave the blue and white are euphoric. “This is utterly exciting,” said Beth Chung, a middle-school teacher in Falls Church, Va., and a Columbia College graduate of 1988. “It was deeply disturbing to me when we couldn’t win a game for five years.”