0

SportsBlog

One Blowout to Rule Them All

One-sided games are not unusual in college football. Nearly every season has a few games where the score gets lopsided in favor of one team.

In 1916, one of the biggest blowouts in college football took place, and today is the 100th anniversary of that mauling. The game involved the Georgia Institute of Technology and Cumberland College.

http://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/124864/100-years-ago-georgia-techs-222-0-victory">Georgia Tech rolled to an amazing 222-0 win over Cumberland. The Yellow Jackets scored 63 points in the first quarter alone.

But why did http://www.myajc.com/news/sports/college/on-100th-anniversary-of-tech-cumberland-8-things-t/nsmfs/">Georgia Tech pour it on Cumberland? And http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/sports/ncaafootball/07tech.html?_r=0">why was the game so one-sided?

The second question is easier to answer than the first. Cumberland dissolved its football team in 1915 but failed to properly notify Georgia Tech that it was cancelling the game.

Then-head coach of the Yellow Jackets John Heisman threatened to sue Cumberland for $3,000, roughly $65,000 in today’s dollars, if the tiny college from Lebanon, Tenn., cancelled the game.

Instead, a student manager put together a team of 13 players that consisted mostly of fraternity brothers to head to Atlanta and fulfill the contract obligations.

The myth of why Heisman wanted to play the game so badly was that Cumberland beat the Yellow Jacket’s baseball team, which Heisman also coached, 22-0 in the spring of 1915. He even threw in $500 (worth about $11,000 in today’s dollars) and paid the travel expenses for the Cumberland team he was about to slaughter.

Georgia Tech scored on its first play of the game, and Cumberland fumbled on its first play, which the Yellow Jackets recovered for a score. That was how the matchup went—Georgia Tech would need only one to three plays to score and forced Cumberland into 15 turnovers.

The Yellow Jackets led 126-0 at halftime. Heisman showed some mercy, allowing the teams to play the third and fourth quarters at 12 minutes instead of the normal 15 minutes.

Georgia Tech scored on every single one of its possessions, tallying 32 touchdowns. Cumberland had six interceptions, nine fumbles and zero first downs.

The Yellow Jackets racked up 501 yards of total offense on just 29 offensive plays with 20 first downs. Cumberland finished with negative-28 yards, and the team’s main offensive highlight was a 10-yard pass completion on a fourth-and-22 play.

Cumberland has http://www.gocumberlandathletics.com/football/history/">shuttered its football program five times at various points, despite being a college-football powerhouse at one point. In 1903, the team finished with a 6-1-1 record after a spectacular run of beating the University of Alabama, Tulane University and Louisiana State University by a combined 113-0 score in the span of six days. Cumberland’s only loss was a https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5280535/the_courierjournal/">6-0 defeat at the hands of Sewanee, and its lone tie came in an 11-11 game against Clemson.

That season, Cumberland met Clemson University in the championship game of the former Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, which contained teams that later formed the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference. Cumberland now plays football at the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics level.

Here are a few interesting facts. Sewanee is now a Division III team and will http://sewaneetigers.com/sports/fball/2016-17/schedule">play host to Millsaps College this season on Nov. 5. Heisman—the same one who coached Georgia Tech—was the coach of the Clemson team that Cumberland tied.

Heisman is, of course, the man who the Heisman Trophy is named after, and many consider him to be the best player in the history of college football.

Georgia Tech went on to http://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2016-10-07/college-football-100th-anniversary-georgia-techs-222-0">win the national championship in 1917 with several players who were a part of the 222-0 blowout. Cumberland didn’t send a team on the field again until 1920.

Comments

Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.

Sign in to comment