HAMILTON – Saturday's Patriot League opener against Lehigh headlines the weekend recognition of two great football teams: the 1977 and 1997 Colgate Raiders.
 
The 1977 Colgate squad went 10-1, opening with an amazing 23-0 shutout of Rutgers on home turf and reeling off six road victories in a six-week stretch. Those efforts resulted in Colgate earning 1977 ECAC Team of the Year honors.
 
The 1997 Raiders won the first of Colgate's eight Patriot League championships with an undefeated run through conference play. That it came just two seasons after rebounding from an 0-11 campaign makes the story even more remarkable.
 
Foley with Both Squads
Mike Foley was involved in both teams – the first as one of two co-captains; the second as an assistant coach. Foley does his coaching now as an offensive line assistant at Massachusetts but is among those in attendance this weekend thanks to a UMass bye week.
 
"It was a great time," said Foley, who played center in 1977. "The biggest memory was obviously beating Rutgers 23-0 in the opener after having lost to them the year before in the final game on ABC-TV and the controversial call. That game pushed us to work really hard in the offseason to get ready, and it carried over into the season."
 
Of the 13 seasons in which Colgate was eligible for the NCAA playoffs with Foley on staff, the Raiders qualified seven times. Foley also played a role in each of Colgate's first five Patriot League championship teams: 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003 and 2005.
 
"Offensively, both of those teams were pretty good," Foley said of the 1977 and 1997 squads. "A lot of the games were over at halftime, or for sure after the third quarter. It was fun."
 
As a student-athlete, Foley was a four-year letterwinner and captain of the 1977 team. A three-year starter at center, he twice was honored as an All-East performer by The Associated Press and also named to the 1977 ECAC All-East squad.
 
That 1977 team also produced Henry White and John Gibney as ECAC Division I All-Stars, and Doug Curtis as Associated Press All-East First Team.
 
"Coach Dunlap made you believe that anything was possible," Foley said. "Chris Palmer was our offensive coordinator on that 1977 team and he had a saying, 'We're always going in; no matter how far.'
 
"It might be 99 yards, but we were always played like we were going in for a score. That was our mentality."
 
1997 Turnaround
Ryan Vena was one of the stars of the 1997 team. He had been inserted at quarterback the previous season in hopes of stemming a 16-game losing streak dating to the 1994 season finale. The 1995 Raiders had gone winless and 1996 began 0-4, culminating with a 38-7 loss at Pennsylvania.
 
"I didn't have the greatest of outings at Penn and I thought my career was over before it even had started, to be honest," Vena said.
 
But the 1996 Raiders responded with six consecutive wins and then took Bucknell to overtime on the final weekend of the season for the Patriot League title. Bucknell prevailed 28-27, but Colgate as a sleeping giant had been awakened.
 
"Our entire team, starting in 1996 when we lost the league championship to Bucknell in overtime, we laid the groundwork for what was to come those next few years and what it has transformed into over these last 20 years," Vena said. "I truly believe that and a lot of the guys I speak to truly believe that."
 
Colgate in 1997 went 6-0 in the Patriot League, capped by a 48-14 thumping of Bucknell that clinched the title. Vena was All-Patriot League First Team that year and in the two seasons that followed. Fellow Raiders on the 1997 first team were Daymon Smith, Corey Hill, Luke George, Tim Girard, Blair Hicks, Matt Domyancic and Jamal Patterson.
 
"It being the program's first Patriot League title was pretty special. To have lost the year before to Bucknell in overtime, and then to really take it to them that next season and to win the league championship outright was pretty sweet.
 
"To share that with those seniors and the other guys who had been through the program who hadn't won a game in that 1995 season was pretty special. It was an awesome moment."
 
Start of Something Good
For that Colgate team to respond like it did speaks volumes to the coaching staff led by Dick Biddle, who was named head coach to start the 1996 campaign. Colgate began play in the Patriot League in 1986, and the Raiders had gone 0-for-11 in championship tries until that 1997 breakthrough.
 
"It was the perfect storm," Vena said. "For whatever reason, before that, they weren't putting the right mix together. But Coach Biddle being appointed to the head coaching position, bringing back Coach Dunlap at the time and having Coach Hunt there -- look at the coaches we had.
 
"When my class came in for 1996, we gave it a little bit of a shot in the arm. It just worked."
 
Current Raiders head coach Dan Hunt remembers all too well the turnaround. He coached alongside Biddle on the 1995 staff and then stayed on as a Biddle assistant to put the transformation in motion.
 
That 1997 season jumpstarted a Colgate wave that saw the Raiders go 47-9 against Patriot League competition and win five conference titles over a nine-year span.
 
"The '97 team put the exclamation point on what the '96 team started," Hunt said. "They basically said, 'This is where Colgate football is going to be. We're going to be on top of the Patriot League; we're going to be in it every year for titles.'
 
"Eight titles later, that momentum they started is still going."