Warm up for the big game by reading about the biggest blowout in football history
Aux Features Sports
We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 6,244,127-week series, Wiki Wormhole.
This week’s entry: 1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech Football Game
What it’s about: Are you ready for some football? Because in 1916, Cumberland College was decidedly not, as in the leather-helmet era of football, when 6-0 was considered a rousing game, the Cumberland Bulldogs lost to the Georgia Tech Engineers by a remarkable 222-0, still the most lopsided game in the history of football. To put things in perspective, the biggest blowout in NFL history was when Chicago beat Washington 73-0 in the 1940 title game.
Biggest controversy: Cumberland had to be coerced into even showing up for the game. The Lebanon, Tennessee-based college had shuttered its football program before the season started, but they were still contracted to play Georgia Tech, and Tech coach and trophy namesake John Heisman insisted they meet their obligation. Voiding the contract would mean a $3,000 forfeit (almost $76,000 in today’s money), and Heisman sweetened the pot by paying them $500 “and an all-expenses-paid trip to Atlanta” to play the game.
Rumor has it Heisman was out for revenge, as Cumberland had embarrassed Georgia Tech’s baseball team (which Heisman also coached) earlier that year, beating them 22-0 in a game in which Cumberland was alleged to have used professional players as ringers. It’s thought Heisman ran up the score to 222 as pointed revenge for that 22-0 loss. College football teams were also ranked based on points scored, so beating up on a weak opponent was a good way to become a top-ranked team.
Strangest fact: Cumberland’s football team was primarily made up of law students. As the school no longer had a football program, they asked the baseball team’s student manager to recruit some players, and he asked his fraternity brothers and fellow law students. The manager, George E. Allen, graduated with a law degree and went on to be a “political operative and crony” for FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower. He was also named head football coach for the duration of that one game, which has to give him the worst lifetime record in the history of coaching any sport.
Thing we were happiest to learn: Heisman eventually took it easy on ’em. After a tongue-in-cheek halftime speech, in which he told his players, “You just can’t tell what those Cumberland players have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise. Be alert, men!”, he agreed to shortening the third and fourth quarters to 12 minutes instead of 15, so Cumberland’s suffering would be over faster.
Thing we were unhappiest to learn: Football used to be even worse at protecting their players from injury. Cumberland QB Edwards (no first name given) was taken off the field with concussions three times during the game. Cumberland’s only effective play was a blocked extra point, which they managed by forming a human pyramid, but Vichy Woods, the player at the top, “suffered a gruesome facial injury.” It’s not clear that he blocked the ball with his face, but that seems to be the likeliest explanation.
Also noteworthy: You can safely skip this section if you’re not familiar with football stats, but if you are, the stats are remarkable. Georgia Tech rushed for a total of 922 yards and 32 TDs. To put that in perspective, the 2020 Engineers rushed for 1,908 yards and 18 TDs in ten games. Also, Wikipedia lists 26 rushing attempts, which seems low given the 32 touchdowns. Cumberland’s running game was, shall we say, less successful, as they managed -42 yards and 9 fumbles lost. However, they led the game in passing, as Georgia Tech did not throw a pass. Edwards the first-name-less QB threw 18 passes for Cumberland—two landed in the hands of his own receivers, for a total of 14 yards. Six more were intercepted by Georgia Tech. All in all, Wikipedia estimates that Cumberland were in their own territory for 97% of the game.
Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: Games as lopsided as Cumberland-Georgia Tech are rare enough that the very concept of running up the score has its own page, including a list of memorably one-sided games from pro and college sports.
Further Down the Wormhole: Wikipedia includes a tragic footnote on one of the Cumberland players, Dow R. Cope—not long after the game, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and died in a plane crash while serving in France during WWI. The Signal Corps were established during the Civil War, and run the all-important communications network the military relies on. Signal Corps vets who went on to fame post-service include Frank Capra, John Cheever, Tony Randall, Senator Frank Lautenberg, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, and Stan Lee.
Lee is, of course, a towering figure in pop culture, having served as lead editor and writer of Marvel Comics during an era in which he (alongside artists and co-writers Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) created countless iconic comic book characters, who have now become iconic movie characters under the banner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After a COVID-related pause of nearly two years, the MCU’s “Phase Four” is set to begin later this year, with a slate of films that includes the Sam Raimi-directed Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. Raimi is a natural choice to direct a Marvel movie, as he helped usher in the modern superhero epic with his Spider-Man series in the early 2000s. But Raimi has also missed several opportunities to direct superheroes in the past, as he had pitched a Thor movie in 1990, was considered for Batman Forever, and developed and abandoned The Shadow and Spider-Man 4 through 6. We’ll look at the remarkably long list of Sam Raimi’s Unrealized Projects next week.
55 Comments
Sam Raimi Project that should have remained unrealised.(I know he was forced to use Venom, hence why the project should have remained unrealised until he was allowed to do what he actually had in mind, you’d think he had earned that right after the two previous films.)
It was disappointing, but at this point there are so many mediocre superhero movies that singling out Spider-Man 3 is purely nostalgic.
Seriously. If someone forced me at gunpoint to watch a superhero flop, I’d pick Spider-Man 3 before anything Snyder directed, any of the Fantastic 4 movies, or any of the more dire entries in the X-Men series (Last Stand or Origins, for example).
I would would even watch the hated “dance” scene above on continuous loop over any of those. I think it’s a mistake, but it’s not wretched.
Creative flop, sure, but SM3 made more money worldwide than the other two (but the least of the three domestically). Among all Spiders-Men, only Far From Home had bigger global B.O.
But I think you’ve hit on the whole reason we talk about Spider-Man 3 as being bad. No one expected any of those other movies to be good, but after the first two Spideys, we figured Raimi was money in the bank.
While I don’t know what the expectations of FF were, after the first two X-Men, I think people expected the third to at least not suck. And Warner went and staked their whole DC franchise on Snyder’s vision.
“ If someone forced me at gunpoint to watch a superhero flop . . . “What, no love for Pumaman!?!
I’m not saying it’s the only superhero flop I’d watch. Mystery Men exists, after all.
It’s crazy to think where the MCU would be if Raimi had stayed on for 3 more Spiderman movies. I doubt Toby Mcguire would still be playing Spiderman in the MCU
It’s crazy to think where the MCU would be if Sony had taken Marvel up on their offer to buy the whole catalog when they acquired Spider-Man.
Jon Bois did an episode of Pretty Good about this game, and it’s pretty good:
Clicked this link just to look for this in the comments.
Ooo, embarrassing sports stats thread!
Melbourne University Football club played in the Victorian Football League between 1908 and 1914. They lost their last 51 games in a row.
Ohio State lost twice in one season to Oberlin.That was back when Heisman coached Oberlin. Wikipedia said Oberlin may have beaten Michigan that season too. Michigan scored a final touchdown after all of the Oberlin players left the field when the ref said the game was over, Michigan said it counted while Oberlin said no way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Heisman
In this day and age, “Oberlin Football Team” sounds like a student organization that destigmatizes testicle-stomping fetishists.
This game was basically a real-life version of Orcs vs. Halflings in Blood Bowl.
Or the “Breaking Madden” series where that guy would custom-set his players to the maximum setting, and his opponents to the minimum. It was basically a team full of Tom Bradies, Adrian Petersons, and Michael Strahans vs. 11 Martin Grmaticas.
BEEFTANK
TALK PAGE HIGHLIGHTSInflation adjustmentThe article notes that the $3,000 no-show penalty would be equivalent to $65,016 when adjusted for inflation. While I agree that providing an inflation-adjusted figure helps the contemporary reader grasp the significance of the penalty, the problem is that the correctness of that figure is inherently temporary. It will change every year. Is someone keeping on top of updating it? 76.170.162.114 (talk) 17:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC)The template that’s depending on defaults to the figures from the latest year. Everything’s good. 🙂 Disavian (talk) 08:01, 21 September 2014 (UTC)220 kickoff return yards?How could Georgia Tech have 220 kickoff return yards? Cumberland would have only kicked off once, to start the second half, if they didn’t score. I don’t dispute the punt return yards. Jtw3unc 16:06, 4 October 2007 (UTC)I know very little about football stats, but wouldn’t Cumberland have kicked off after every score against them? Ben Hocking (talk|contribs) 16:07, 4 October 2007 (UTC)No, the scoring team kicks off to the team that was scored upon. Therefore, Cumberland could theoretically have a whole bunch of return yards, because they would have returned kicks after every Tech score. Jtw3unc 16:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)That’s right, I should have figured that one out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 220 was vandalism. I’ve already found a lot of it in this article. Check against the linked sources, if you haven’t already. Ben Hocking (talk|contribs) 16:37, 4 October 2007 (UTC)This page [[1]]l on the official GT athletics web site, lists 440 yards on kick returns. I haven’t found out how many times Cumberland punted, but that stat must include punt return yards.Jtw3unc 17:09, 4 October 2007 (UTC)now i am reading the play by play and i saw this. i didnt list everything but this is from the 1st quarter. Cumberland kicks off to GT after GT scores touchtowns? I dont get itMcDonald kicked off for Cumberland to Shaver who returned the ball 70 yards to the Cumberland 10. Strupper Got 9 yards at right end. Alexander scored from the 1. Preas’ conversion made it 35-0 Georgia Tech.(taken from the play by play page)McDonald kicked off for Cumberland again, this time to Carpenter who returned 5 yards to the Tech 40. Strupper ran 60 yards for the score. Preas converted. Tech 42, Cumberland 0.(taken from the play by play page) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.233.231.147 (talk) 08:39, 8 October 2007 (UTC)Is it possible the rules were different then? Ben Hocking (talk|contribs) 13:31, 8 October 2007 (UTC)It might be that the scoring team recevied the kickoff in those days. Kind of like “make it, take it.” MrMurph101 23:58, 8 October 2007 (UTC)Nope, Cumberland doesn’t start kicking off after scores until after it’s 35-0. I *believe* this rule is actually still on the books, but at least at the time, the team scored upon had a choice to kick off or to receive. Cumberland from what I remember decided that, being unable to move the ball, they would try to pin Tech deeper into their own territory and hope for a mistake or a stalled drive. Punting on third, second, or even first down wasn’t uncommon in the old days of football. PeteF3 02:59, 8 November 2007 (UTC)2 years later… at the entertainment reference desk, this question was posed, and as it turns out, it was legal at that time for the scored-upon team to kick off rather than receive. That is no longer the case. The rule apparently changed ca. 1922, to require the team just scored-upon to receive the kickoff. The NFL rule is the same. ←Baseball Bugs What’s up, Doc? carrots→ 05:14, 9 November 2009 (UTC)Thanks for posting all that – it actually makes sense. Games in those days typically didn’t have that many points, especially between evenly matched teams. Every yard was crucial, first downs were precious. Defenses were relatively much further ahead of offenses, at least compared with today’s game. Under the circumstances, it makes sense that a team might choose to kick off rather than receive. Harry Yelreh (talk) 00:54, 4 October 2010 (UTC)I remember reading a sports book about this game when I was a teenager. In addition to Cumberland chosing to kick off after the Tech scores (a rarity even in those days albeit legal), their were other peculiarities of the game. One I remember is that Tech at some point began handing off the ball to their lineman, who—of course—also scored. The reason Tech did this we can only speculate, but I imagine it could have been an attempt to take it easy on Cumberland after the game was blown open or they were just having fun. Going back to the kickoff issue, I also remember reading that after Cumberland tried kicking off after scores and when that didn’t work, they went back to receiving kickoffs again for a while which still didn’t work. They then tried kicking off again with little or no improvement. So they were going back and forth in desperation, changing the only thing they seemingly had any control over. I wish I still had the book because it went into much more detail about this strange game. I can’t even remember the title. I will do some research myself but does anyone know off-hand if we can find a source that covers some of the odd circumstances that took place during that game?—Racerx11 (talk) 04:02, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Multiple posts back and forth and finally, finally someone points out that football rules could have changed between 1922 and 2007. It’s not as Peak Wikipedia as referencing a different Wikipedia page as a primary source (in the “Danger Triangle of the Face” chat) or referencing Otherkin as an example of animals who are also people (in the “Polish Army Bear” thread).
I can’t tell if people don’t understand football rules in those exchanges or if the rules were different enough to confuse everyone
Probably both.FWIW, in rugby the scoring team does receive the ball (for the same reason mentioned here: field position is more valuable than possession) which might be responsible for some confusion among non–American Football fans.
“Heisman eventually took it easy on ’em. After a tongue-in-cheek halftime speech… he agreed to shortening the third and fourth quarters to 12 minutes instead of 15, so Cumberland’s suffering would be over faster.”If he really wanted to take it easy on them, then he would have agreed to end the game at halftime. Heisman must have been really pissed about that baseball game.
Dragons Basketball Coach : You want to forfeit the game?Coach Finstock : Yeah, what’s wrong with that?Dragons Basketball Coach : No.Coach Finstock : No?Dragons Basketball Coach : My players have league scoring records at stake. It wouldn’t be fair to them.Coach Finstock : I just figured you quit now, you can beat the 5 o’clock traffic.Dragons Basketball Coach : There’s a lot to learn from losing.Coach Finstock : Alright, we’ll play, if it’s that big a deal to you.
I just read a remarkable stat on Twitter as part of the stupid “Is Tom Brady the GOAT, obviously no” debate. When Lisa Leslie was in high school, she scored 101 points in the first half of a game. The other team got on the bus at halftime and went home.I’m not sure I could score 101 points in a half on an empty court!
We get it, Vago. You’re in the pocket of Big Lisa.
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the 2020 Engineers rushed for 1,908 yards and 18 TDs in ten gamesGeorgia Tech’s mascot/nickname is Yellow Jackets, not Engineers.
Was it Yellow Jackets in 1916?
Not sure, but in 2020 it surely was.I tried to find some more information about it, but even the GT website isn’t clear. Like most teams from the late 1800s, they didn’t really have nicknames or mascots when they started. But this is from the GT website:An article in the Atlanta Constitution on October 29, 1905 announced that Coach John Heisman and the Tech team wanted to be referred to as the Yellow Jackets instead of the Techity Techs, Blacksmiths or Tech Boys that were used at the time.
“Techity Techs?” Clearly, Boaty McBoatface is not purely of Millennial origin. But that would indicate their nickname in 1916 was not the Engineers. I also missed that Mike referred to the 2020 team as “Engineers.”
Yeah, that’s my fault. It was Engineers in ’16 and I forgot to change it for modern times.
The more touchdowns than rushing attempts thing may have something to do with the 15 turnovers. Some of them may have been returned for scores. I also found this article:https://fanbuzz.com/college-football/georgia-tech-cumberland-blowout/which says that 5 times Cumberland elected to punt the ball themselves instead of receiving a kickoff after GT scored, which was something you could do then. So TD’s may have scored on those kicks and maybe when Cumberland punted the ball on 4th down when they didn’t turn it over.There is also this, which I am having trouble visualizing: On one kickoff, Georgia Tech kicker Jim Preas attempted to boot the ball through the uprights. He sprinted to the end zone, where a Cumberland player fell after backpedaling into the goal post. The ball bounced off his head and into Preas’ hands for an unbelievable touchdown.
I don’t know where kick off started back then, but it sounds like he kicked the ball all the way to the end zone, then ran as fast as the ball to the end zone, then caught the ball after it bounced off the opposing player’s head. Then, I assume, he turned to the audience and shouted “Th-th-tha-that’s all, folks!” while the animators irised in on his winking face.
It helps just a little bit to remember that the uprights would have been at the front of the endzone (on the 0-yard line) then, making it slightly less embarrassing to back into them, and shaving 10 yards off the distance Preas would have had to run.
That’s still a lot of ground to cover in the time it takes the ball to fly through the air and the Cumberland player to bobble it for a few seconds.
A podcast I was listening to this week ran an ad for Huggies, boosting their spot during “the big game” (yep, an ad for an upcoming ad). I note that this article also uses that phrase. WTF is nobody allowed to say “Super Bowl” except the NFL and CBS? Seems excessive.
It’s an NFL trademark, so anyone who doesn’t pay to use it gets sued.
Yeah technically the term Superbowl is copyrighted by the NFL. Although if people keep using it as a common phrase then they can legally lose the copyright to it so keep saying Superbowl!
If they’re not an official Super Bowl sponsor, they can’t say “Super Bowl” in a commercial context. Editorially, they can say it (for example, a sports report on the events of the Super Bowl, or a news report on the cost of ads during the Super Bowl, etc.).And don’t even get me started on how Michael Buffer will come after your ass if you use any variation of “Ready to rumble” without first reaching an agreement with him on his cut.
Yeah, he doesn’t have a trademark on the *phrase*, just his delivery of it. I remember a local radio station skirting it by inserting a coughing fit before “rumble”.
Can you trademark a delivery? At any rate, the lawyers for my company seem terrified of him, and just want us to stay as far the hell away from any of that as possible.
I seem to recall contest offers of tickets to “The Big Game” as prizes. That seems to me like it shouldn’t require dancing around copyright since it’s just a statement of fact what the tickets are for, but I guess they might actually enforce it against different uses of the term in the same announcement.
I think that the NFL asserts a lot of rights that it doesn’t actually have when it comes to its Super Bowl trademark.
Remember the NFL is a massively profitable multi-billion-dollar corporation that’s legally classified as a “nonprofit” to avoid paying taxes. It’s not a shock they don’t think usual constraints on copyright law apply to them either.As my favorite from that Will Smith concussion movie goes, “you’re going up against an organization that owns a day of the week! And the previous owner was God!”
NCAA is just as persnickety with people using “March Madness.”
You can say Super Bowl you know. You don’t have to say ‘Big Game’.I await being hauled away to Gitmo for typing Super Bowl.
“All in all, Wikipedia estimates that Cumberland were in their own territory for 97% of the game.”That’s still better than the 2011 LSU Tigers, who never crossed the 50-yard line in the BCD title game vs. Alabama, spending 100% of their offensive snaps in their own territory. Unless that 97% accounts for the Cumberland defense, too. LSU did at least force ‘Bama to punt a few times.
According to the Pretty Good episode, that’s 97% of all the lines of scrimmage in the game. And more than half in the Cumberland red zone.
I love old time football. You just know all of those players were bleeding from their brain by the end of that game.
“Cumberland QB Edwards (no first name given) was taken off the field with concussions three times during the game.”I mean, goddamn man. Maybe his first name was not recorded because he could not remember it by the end of this game.
What has become of the AV Club that this hasn’t been posted already and multiple jokes made about it?I am very, very disappointed.
Was this story ever featured on Drunk History? Because, this sounds perfect for that show.
Want a great rundown of the history of this game? Watch the video made by John Bois for his “Pretty Good” series on YouTube. Also . . . John Bois! John Bois! John Bois! JOHN BOIS! JOHN BOIS!As you can tell, I’m a big fan of his work.