Most lopsided college football game ever - October 7, 1916

On this day in 1916, the Georgia Tech vs. Cumberland College football game in Atlanta ended with a score of 222-0, making it the most lopsided college football game in history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Stay in History class is production of I Heart Radio.
Hey y'all, I'm Eves and welcome to this day in
History class, where we uncover a new layer of history
every day. Today is October seven en. The day was

(00:22):
October seventh, nineteen sixteen. The most lopsided game in the
history of college football in the US took place at
Grant Field in Atlanta. At the time, Georgia Tech had
a strong football team coached by John Heisman. Cumberland College
was a small school in Lebanon, Tennessee. Because of budget cuts,
the football program at Cumberland had to be shut down.

(00:46):
Cumberland didn't tell Georgia Tech that its program had been
discontinued until weeks before they were set to play each other.
But Heisman was determined to make the game happen. He
said he would uphold the three thousand dollar four fit fee,
a heavy lift for a college going through financial troubles.
That's about seventy thousand dollars today. Heisman even offered to

(01:09):
pay Cumberland five hundred dollars to play the game, so
Cumberland's student manager, George Allen, began assembling a team. Most
of the people he chose for the team were his
fraternity brothers. Even though Georgia Tech was the expected winner
in the matchup by fans and by Cumberland's players, Heisman
still planned on going beyond just beating Cumberland. When it

(01:33):
was time for the Georgia Tech Engineers to play the
Cumberland College Bulldogs, Cumberland had cobbled together a team of
inexperienced players. Georgia Tech scored on its first play. By
the end of the first quarter, Georgia Tech was up
sixty to zero. In the second quarter, Tech scored another
sixty three points, bringing its score to a hundred and

(01:55):
twenty six points by halftime. Heisman agreed to shorten the
time of the second half to fifteen minutes, but Georgia
Tech continued running up the score or continuing to score
points after it was clear that scoring was no longer necessary.
Tech scored ninety six points in the second half. The
final score was two twenty two for Georgia Tech to

(02:16):
zero for Cumberland. Tech scored thirty two touchdowns, while Cumberland
reportedly had fifteen turnovers, nine fumbles, and six interceptions. Cumberland
had no first downs throughout the entire game. There are
plenty of myths surrounding things Cumberland players did during the
game in embarrassment, including hiding on the Georgia Tech bench.

(02:39):
Running up the score was considered unsportsmanlike, but Heisman was
probably trying to prove a point about sportswriter's practice of
ranking a team by adding up the points is scored.
He also may have pulled this junt as revenge because
Cumberland's baseball team beat Georgia Tech to zero in the
spring of nineteen how Heisman believed allegations that Cumberland had

(03:02):
brought in semi professionals as ringers for that game. In
the end, Heisman proved his point and got the revenge
he may have sought, and Cumberland got a little financial boost.
I'm Eves Jeff Coote and hopefully you know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. I want
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(03:23):
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