Touchdown Comes to Life

Modeled after wild black bear cubs, clay maquettes of the statue were created by New York-based artist Brian Caverly. University of Kentucky research scientist Wade Ulrey, who studies black bears, provided feedback to enhance the life-like quality of the models. The final Touchdown statue will be made of bronze.

Touchdown Comes Home

Preliminary CAD renderings show the Touchdown statue in its beautifully landscaped future home on campus, at the corner of Campus Road and Garden Avenue.This site was chosen because of its proximity to Schoellkopf Field and because that corner is a campus gateway—one of the first sights visitors encounter on that side of campus.

View of the bronze statue with Teagle Hall in the background.

The statue with Schoellkopf Memorial Hall visible across the street.

The statue with Barton Hall in the background, across the street.

Touchdown Reaches Across Time and Space

The Cornell bears of the past can still be glimpsed in different places on campus today. Embodied by the university’s unofficial mascot, the Touchdown image has also inspired generations of Cornellians near and far.

Bear emblems (like the one above) gaze down from the walls of Willard Straight Hall.

Touchdown entertains a young attendee at Reunion Weekend 2012.

One cool bear rubs shoulders with one Colbert in 2007.

“There's a little ‘Big Red Bear’ hidden in all of us,” states the winning entry submitted by Alicia Billington BS ’06, MEng ’06, for Cornell’s 2012 winter card caption contest.