Lopsided

I like watching football occasionally, but I’m no expert on the game. Over the years, I have learned more about it, but that doesn’t mean that I totally get it. Nevertheless, even I can see when something is completely lopsided, and I can see that something went terribly wrong with a football game that is completely lopsided. Recently, the Denver Broncos played such a game against the Miami Dolphins. Denver lost to Miami, 70 to 20. That is an almost unheard-of loss, and I wondered if the Broncos simply sat on the sidelines and watched the game go down the tubes. I hadn’t watched the game, even though the Broncos are my favorite team. Nevertheless, that game is nowhere near the worst game in history.

On October 7, 1916, Georgia Tech defeated Cumberland University in a scorchingly lopsided loss of 222 to 0. Of course, these were not professional football players, who would be expected to have better scoring ability, but 222-0 indicates that one team must have stayed in the locker room. The Georgia Tech team was coached by John Heisman, who was later the namesake of college football’s most famous trophy. Georgia Tech took an early 63-0 lead in the first quarter at Grant Field in Atlanta. And they managed to completely shut out every play Cumberland tried to execute. As the Atlanta Constitution reported, “All of Cumberland’s plays were smothered completely.” That was putting it mildly. Ed Haysler Poague, who played for Cumberland, recalled decades later, “I think one of our best plays of the game was when one of our players got the ball on a pitchout and he lost only 10 yards.”

By halftime, the game was “for all intents and purposes” over. Nevertheless, despite a 126-0 halftime lead, Heisman decided to take his team to greatness, so he urged them to keep the pressure on, telling them, “You never know what those Cumberland players have up their sleeve, so in the second half, go out and hit ’em clean and hit ’em hard. Do not let up.” Heisman agreed to shorten the quarters to 12 minutes from 15. There was speculation that he ran up the score because he thought Cumberland, a team out of Lebanon, Tennessee, used professional players to beat Georgia Tech in baseball. Heisman also coached baseball, so that could have been a source of contention, whether it was true or not.

Coach Poage said of his team, “We really didn’t have such a bad team. We were just so ridiculously outclassed that day that it was, well, ridiculous.” The reality is that any team can have a bad day, or even a bad season, but Cumberland just couldn’t catch a break, and after a while, they couldn’t concentrate on what they were doing. It’s common for a coach to tell his team to “keep their head in the game.” That advise doesn’t always do much good, and this time was no exception. By halftime, and trailing 126 to 0, Cumberland couldn’t even see daylight from the hole they were in, much less “keep their head in the game” that they were being slaughtered in.

As for the Georgia Tech fans, well it seems that they thought the Cumberland team might be tough to beat, but before long, they knew better. Coach Poague recalled, “But it didn’t take them long to realize that it wasn’t going to be too difficult. They did a lot of laughing after that.” I’m sure that no one on the Cumberland team was laughing, during the game or for many months after it. A loss like that is really hard to live down. In reality, Cumberland had discontinued football before the 1916 season, but forgot to tell Coach Heisman, who insisted that the game be played, or face a $3000 forfeit fee, which was a lot of money back then. Cumberland was forced to round up 13 students, many of them fraternity brothers, to go to Atlanta and play. So in their defense, these “football players” were really no such thing, and it was a seriously lopsided game even before it started. Heisman, who had been beaten by Cumberland in a 1915 baseball game, 22 to 0, wanted to have his revenge, so he told his team to keep up the beating, which they did…not that it was really a fair fight.