by Sam Hatcher
Any visions Allen and his team might have had back at the celebration at Horn Springs in Tennessee a week ago about upstaging Georgia Tech had by now been transformed into a nightmare.
Some three decades following the game Allen in an autobiography confessed that he actually thought the team he had put together to play Tech “looked pretty hot” and had a decent chance to win the game.
But his vision proved blurred.
By now the Bulldogs each were just prayerful that they would survive the remaining 25 minutes of play.
Shuffling kicking duties, Coach Heisman sent fullback Tommy Spence on the field to kick off.
George Murphy receives the ball on the 5-yard line and takes it to the 15. On the first play of the second half Eddie Edwards runs for a five-yard loss. After three more running plays, Cumberland yields the ball to Tech on the Cumberland 10.
Canty Alexander runs into the nucleus of Cumberland’s defense for seven yards, and Strup Strupper closes out the two-play drive with a three-yard scamper into the end zone. Spence makes the point after, and the score is 133–0.
On the ensuing kickoff Spence boots the football through the end zone, a first for the day. This was a feat that very few kickers of this era were able to execute.
Cumberland’s offense began the series on the 20 with Murphy being nailed for a 5-yard loss. On second down, Murphy punts, and Buzz Shaver catches the 10-yard kick and returns it 25 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter. After the extra point kick Tech sits on top 140–0.
Spence kicks off again, and Murphy snares the ball at the goal line and runs it for 10 yards. On first down he fumbles, Spence recovers for Tech at the 10. On the next play Spence finds a gap in the defense and zips into the end zone. After he boots the extra point, the scoreboard reads 147-0.
HIGH SCORING RECORD
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Not far into the third quarter of the game Georgia Tech was closing in on the collegiate record for total number points scored. That mark had been set in 1886 when Harvard shellacked Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.
In this era it was not uncommon for a team to hit the century mark. By 1916 the feat had been accomplished in 186 games. Many of these tilts took place between schools of little recognition. Among the major college teams that have done it are Oklahoma (eight times); Georgia Tech (five times); Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Michigan State, Tennessee and Minnesota (all four times); Princeton, Vanderbilt and Nebraska (three times); Virginia, Georgia, Navy, Notre Dame and Hawaii (two times); and Alabama, Wisconsin, Penn State, Mississippi and Texas A&M (once).
In 1904 Cumberland University beat Bethel 103–0. Georgia Tech’s five times to hit triple figures came against Mercer, 105–0, in 1914; Cumberland , 222–0, 1916; N.C. State, 128–0, 1918; the 11th Cavalry, 123–0, 1918; and Furman, 118–0, 1918. All of Tech’s 100-plus games came during the Heisman era.
The first two collegiate games to pass the 100 mark were recorded in 1884. Princeton slammed Lafayette 140–0, and Yale crushed Dartmouth 113–0. The most recent game in which the feat took place was in 2003 when Rockford (Illinois) routed Trinity Bible (North Dakota) 105–0.
Instead of receiving the ball, George calls for Cumberland to kick. Eddie Edwards puts his foot into the ball and Tech right end Si Bell returns it 45 yards to the Cumberland 15. On the next play Strupper scores. It’s now 154–0.
George dials up Dow Cope’s name to receive the next kickoff for the Bulldogs. Cope obliges and returns the kick 10 yards to the Cumberland 35 where the maroon men fumble on the next play.
Following the fumble Heisman appoints Spence to take charge of the next running play for Tech. Spence gallops through the middle of Cumberland’s hapless defense and scores. He then kicks the extra point, and at this point history is made with a new record for most points scored in a football game at 161.
Spence kicks again and Murphy returns it to the Cumberland 10. McDonald then loses five yards. Murphy gains three but fumbles at the 8-yard line. Tech recovers and Canty Alexander takes it into the end zone on the first play. Spence misses the extra point, the first errant boot of the day after targeting 23 in a row. Tech’s lead blossoms to 167–0.
Murphy takes the next kickoff five yards to the Cumberland 20. In the huddle Cumberland calls two pass plays. Both result in incomplete passes, so McDonald punts. The 35-yard punt is caught by Strupper, who races 55 yards for a touchdown. Spence misses a second extra point attempt, and the score stands at 173–0.
GEORGE THOMAS (GEORGE) MURPHY graduated from the Cumberland Law School and returned to his hometown of Huntingdon, Tennessee, where he practiced law for a dozen or so years and then moved to Detroit. In Detroit he was named Judge of Recorder’s Court, a position he held from 1935 until he retired in 1963. Murphy died in 1983 at the age of 87.
DOW R. COPE traveled more than 2,300 miles from the northwest tip of the state of Washington to attend Cumberland University. Upon graduation he returned to his home in Yakima, Washington, about 60 miles south of Mt. Rainier. He joined the U.S. Army and was killed during World War I on an airfield near Tours, France. News of his death was published in The Spokane Daily Chronicle on June 22, 1918, 20 months after he participated in the game of his life.
B.F. “BIRD” PATY and C.W. “CHARLIE” WARWICK: Before enrolling into the Cumberland Law School Paty earned an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina in 1915. He entered Cumberland in the fall of 1916 and after receiving his law degree returned to his native Tullahoma, Tennessee, where he became a successful attorney. Later he moved to West Palm Beach, Florida to practice law with his teammate Warwick. After earning his law degree from Cumberland, Warwick and his family moved to Florida in 1927 where Paty later joined him, and the two established a successful law practice.
Warwick, an avid golfer, was appointed to the original West Palm Beach Golf Commission by the City of West Palm Beach in 1929. He is credited with saving the golf course and perhaps the West Palm Beach Country Club during World War II when the club was taken over by the U.S. government through the War Powers Act. Warwick in his role as chairman of the City Golf Commission was able to lease the nearby Belvedere golf course in 1942 for $3,000 per month as an interim replacement venue. After the war and following a significant financial settlement with the U.S. government of more than $230,000, the West Palm Beach Country Club was re-established.
Spence kicks off for a final time in the third period. Murphy fields the ball and is tackled immediately for no return. Cumberland begins its series on the 10-yard line where quarterback Murphy throws an errant pass into the arms of Tech’s Spence who makes the interception good for six points. Strupper boots the extra point, and the third quarter concludes with the score standing at 180–0.
After the third quarter ends
George rushes to his squad immediately after he hears the whistle blow ending the third quarter. His rag-tag band of brothers has been denigrated by a superior Georgia Tech team.
The group of budding attorneys had been whipped unmercifully. They were despondent and weary.
Not about to leave with still the fourth quarter on tap, Tech’s horde of fans were enjoying the slaughter. For the Cumberland players the jeering, mocking and clamor might have been similar to the sounds ineffective gladiators heard in the Rome coliseum two thousand years earlier. Tech supporters were calling for no mercy and demanding more points.
George, while still not harmed physically like his bruised squad although he had substituted himself throughout the afternoon as a backup fullback, was bleeding profusely inside. He knew he was the one responsible for having these friends of his sent to the battlefield.
Washing their faces with wet towels and taking turns guzzling water with a dipper from a wooden bucket, the weary Bulldogs listened to George plea for “just one more 12-minute period.”
Meanwhile, Heisman enthusiastically barks new orders to his team. His encouragement is relentless. He continues to hold fast to the same game plan he shared at half t
ime, that his players should be alert and watchful.
“Above all, men, we surely don’t want these fellows to slip through our lines, our main defenses, and score on us,” he warns.
Coach Heisman knows the more points his team scores the more credit his team will receive as a contender for the 1916 national title. Likewise, he reasons that a score by this pitiful opponent could take his team down a notch in the eyes of sports writers who eventually would be selecting the season’s national champion.
Points prove everything
During this era before television and radio game broadcasts and a playoff system, national college football champions were decided for the most part by sports writers who basically gave the highest ranking to the teams scoring the most points.
There were no mercy rules. The more points a team could score against an unworthy opponent the more credit that team would get when rankings were published.
Despite running the score up against Cumberland, John Heisman knew the system was flawed. He often complained to his sports journalist friend Grantland Rice about the injustice of it all.
Heisman showing his disdain for this practice once publicly proffered, “I have often contended that this habit on the part of sports writers of totaling up, from week’s end to week’s end, the number of points each team has amassed in its various games, and comparing them one with another, was a useless thing, for it means nothing whatever in the way of determining which is the better of an evenly grouped set of college teams. Still the writers persisted and some at each season’s end would still presume to hang an argument on what they claimed it showed.
“So, finding that folks are determined to take the crazy thing into consideration, we at Tech determined this year, at the start of the season, to show folks that it is no very difficult thing to run up a score in one easy game, from which it might perhaps be seen that it could be done in other easy games as well.”
Be that as it may, Heisman was confident that his team would not be in the running for a national championship if it had taken the pedal off the gas in the Cumberland game and in other games on its schedule. The week before playing Cumberland, Tech defeated Mercer 63–0.
Fourth quarter
There was light, ever so slight, at the end of the tunnel for Cumberland as Tech’s Marshall Guill lined up his first kickoff assignment of the afternoon to start the final quarter.
George Murphy handles the kick and is downed by a half dozen Tech players on the 20-yard line. Cumberland’s offense huddles and McDonald calls a pass. His throw, more of a lob, is intercepted by Stan Fellers, who returns the ball 40 yards for a touchdown. Bill Fincher boots the extra point, and Tech widens the margin to 187–0.
Guill kicks off again, and again Murphy returns the kick 10 yards to the 30. On first down he tries a run off right tackle for no gain. On second down Eddie Edwards finds a gap in the Tech line for a 5-yard gain to the 35 before he fumbles. Bob Glover recovers for the Engineers. George Griffin then runs wide around right end for 35 yards and scores. Fincher completes the extra point conversion, and Tech’s up 194–0.
Guill’s kickoff drops into the hands of Cumberland’s Eddie Edwards, who returns it 10 yards to the Cumberland 30.
On first down Edwards attempts a run veering to the left. He loses three yards, and Cumberland options to punt on second down. Guill fields McDonald’s kick, a 20-yard effort, and returns it 17 yards to the Cumberland 30. From there Glover runs 28 yards on the first play from scrimmage.
HUDDLE INTRODUCED
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Several scholars of the game contend that Cumberland was the first team to use the huddle in college football. Some argue the exercise of retreating to a safe distance behind the ball and gathering in a group as Cumberland did several times in its game against Georgia Tech was not so much for planning or scheming about the next play, but rather for Cumberland it was a time to catch a breath and rub a wound.
Senter takes the next snap and slips through Cumberland’s line for a 2-yard skip into the end zone. Fincher makes good the extra point conversion, and the score crosses the 200-point threshold with the score standing at 201–0.
Heisman assigns kickoff duties to Fincher following his extra-point boot. Edwards receives the kick for Cumberland at the goal line and sprints to the 10-yard line before being upended. Murphy then loses three yards on first down, and Edwards loses five yards on the next play. Then McDonald completes a 10-yard pass to Murphy, who is tackled on the 12. It proves to be Cumberland’s best offensive gain of the day.
Still far short of a first down marker, Cumberland punts the ball 28 yards to Tech’s “fellers”. He makes two shifty darts and speeds 40 yards to the end zone. His touchdown with Fincher’s extra point tacked on the end raises the score to 208–0.
Tech’s Fincher kicks off to Murphy, who returns the ball three yards to the Cumberland 18. Edwards rushes for no gain after which Murphy takes a handoff and fumbles at the line of scrimmage. Senter recovers for Tech advancing the ball three yards before being swarmed by a mob of maroon jerseys. On the next play Fellers rambles 15 yards around left end, finds the end zone, and scores. Fincher kicks the extra point, and Tech’s total is 215–0.
Fincher kicks off, and the ball lands in the hands of Warwick who returns the kick five yards to the Bulldog 15. On the next two plays Edwards and McDonald run for no gain. On third down McDonald makes one desperate attempt to complete a pass but he is intercepted by Senter who races 30 yards and scores Georgia Tech’s final touchdown of the afternoon. Fincher makes the extra point, and the scoreboard reads at 222–0.
Although the Tech ambush is over, there is time for one last kickoff.
Fincher boots the ball to Gouger, who runs the ball five yards to the 20.
The wrong bench
Nearing the final minutes of the game with a most comfortable lead, Heisman peers down his bench to ensure that all of his players have had a chance to play in the historic game.
Sitting on the end of the pine, he spies a player that doesn’t fit. Heisman realizes that the player in the maroon jersey and somewhat deceptively hidden by partially being covered with garb from Tech’s athletic department is a Cumberland man.
Approaching the athlete, he inquires, “Aren’t you a Cumberland player?”
“Yes sir,” the student answers meekly.
“Son, you need to get back on the other side of the field,” Heisman says, believing the young law student might have taken a blow to the head on the previous play, leaving him dazed.
However the student looks back at the coach, shakes his head from side to side and explains, “No, sir, Mr. Heisman, this is the right bench. If I go over there, they’ll put me back in the game!”
Seeing the humor in the situation, Coach Heisman smiles, orders a blanket for the Cumberland student, tells him to cover up, and gives him permission to remain on the Tech bench until the game expires.
Back on the field Cumberland is huddling for the grand finale. The teammates decide that Eddie Edwards should be given the honor of carrying the ball. He takes the snap and is downed for a 5-yard loss.
The whistle blows, and the massacre comes to a halt. The game is officially over.
No first downs
In The Atlanta Constitution on the day of the game a headline was published at the top of page ten that screamed in bold caps YELLOW JACKETS PLAY CUMBERLAND. A subhead added “Local Eleven Should Have Easy Sailing In Today’s Game — Game Starts at 3 O’clock.”
For a contest that notched 32 touchdowns, analysts have noted that it is ironic that there were no first downs recorded by either team. Cumberland never logged a first down because its offense couldn’t move the ball forward 10 yards in a single series. Tech didn’t have a first down because its offense scored a touch-down within four plays on every possession.
The Engineers never threw a pass, never punted and never fumbled.
Tech’s offense gained a total of 978 yards on 28 plays. Tech’s defense claimed ano
ther 642 yards while advancing Cumberland turnovers.
Tech scored 10 touchdowns on first-down plays and 14 touchdowns on interceptions, fumbles or kick returns. Tech rambled for 220 yards on punt returns, scoring five touchdowns and matched another 220 yards on kickoff returns scoring one touchdown.
Tech’s only miscues for the afternoon came on two misguided extra-point attempts, but their kickers hit a record 30 of 32 extra-points tries.
Pitiful Cumberland went backwards with a minus 42 yards rushing but did garner 14 yards in the right direction on two pass completions. Of their 16 other passes, six were intercepted and ten were knocked away or dropped. Cumberland yielded the ball nine times due to fumbles.
Cumberland’s longest play of the day was a 10-yard pass, but that play came on a fourth down and 22, thus it did not result in a first down.
The NCAA, founded in 1937, doesn’t list records set in the Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech game, but several happenings in the game have yet to be matched in any other collegiate football game since.
Numerous records were set in the game, many of which still stand including most points scored in a collegiate football game, most touchdowns in a game (32), most points scored in a quarter (63 in the first quarter), most individual players to score a touch-down in a single game (13), most touchdowns in a quarter (9), most points scored in a half (126), most extra points kicked in a game (30), and most extra points kicked in a game by one player (18 by Jim Preas). Other Tech kickers for the day were Tommy Spence, Thomasville, Ga.; Marshall Guill, Sparta, Ga.; and Bill Fincher, Spring Place, Ga.
After the game
Heisman traditionally treated his team to a steak dinner when he believed they had played a game worthy of such a reward. This had been such a game.