by Sam Hatcher
But before steaks were served, he put his players through a thorough workout.
After final goodbyes were being said and handshakes exchanged, Heisman blew a long brisk note on his whistle and ordered his team back to the field.
This was not unexpected. His team had seen the drill before. Over the next half hour they went back into combat but this time against each other. Heisman felt his squad had not had a sufficient physical experience for the day.
Satisfied with their efforts, he called his team together at the center of the field. He told the players, “You men played a pretty good game out there today. What do you say we eat some beefsteak?”
The Georgia Tech boys responded with hurrahs.
Cumberland’s bunch by now had limped and staggered their way to the bus that transported them to their hotel.
The only positive emotion they felt was that of relief. They had done what they had come to Atlanta to do. Their mission fulfilled in their own way, they too had been successful. The sports world may have looked down on them as losers. But they completed the task that had been placed before them, thus, in their own crumpled condition, they sort of felt they, too, were winners.
Before George and his Bulldogs boarded their bus, Heisman himself presented the student manager a check for $500, the amount Georgia Tech had agreed to pay Cumberland to play the game. As he did so, he extended his hand as if to say all is forgotten, but, with a smirk peeling across his left cheek, the wily Heisman suggested “maybe we can get together again next spring for a baseball game?”
George felt a slight sting at the departing words. Without a doubt, Heisman had gotten his revenge and then some.
Sports writers have a field day
The fact that Cumberland University did not actually have a competitive football team in 1916 had been lost to most sports writers when the national press filed its reports about Georgia Tech’s ambush on the tiny Lebanon school.
Few words were written in defense of Cumberland playing the game to fulfill a contract even though the private school’s leadership had voted to disband the football program eight months earlier.
Absent also was the fact that the Cumberland team was comprised mainly of law school students and a sprinkling of liberal arts majors who volunteered to play the game with no college football experience.
There was no mention of Heisman insisting that the game be played or he would see to it that Cumberland would pay $3,000 for breach of contract, which could have closed the educational institution.
Writing for The Atlanta Journal, Morgan Blake described the Cumberland team as “pitifully weak opposition” for the Engineers.
“With all due regard to the Tech team, it must be admitted that the tremendous score was due more to the pitifully weak opposition than to any unnatural strength on the part of the victors. In fact, as a general rule, the only thing necessary for a touchdown was to give a Tech back the ball and holler, ‘Here he comes’ and ‘There he goes.’
“The Lebanon boys were absolutely minus any apparent football virtues. They couldn’t run the ball, they couldn’t block, and they couldn’t tackle. At spasmodic intervals they were able to down a runner, but they were decidedly too light and green to be effective at any stage of the game,” Blake wrote.
The report in The New York Times was much the same on the day following the game. The Times story referred to Tech’s aggressive offense and how it had overrun Cumberland’s defense.
“When the game began, Georgia Tech scored on its first play. Cumberland fumbled on the next play, and Tech returned it for a touchdown. Cumberland fumbled again on its first play, and Tech returned it for a touchdown. Cumberland fumbled again on its first play, and Tech scored two plays later. And on and on,” The Times report noted.
Similar accounts of the game were filed in Chicago, Boston and other major cities. It was important to Heisman that the media had picked up on the game and was reporting the outcome, especially in the northeast where American football had been conceived, a region where the schools remained darlings of a prejudiced press.
Heisman’s objective for playing Cumberland had been met. Beyond payback this lopsided high-scoring affair alerted the national press corps that his Georgia Tech Engineers might be something special.
Basking in the spotlight, he was delighted to find himself being anointed as the next best mind in college football, and his Georgia Tech team was moving closer to its coveted goal of becoming a national champion.
Back to Lebanon
Early Sunday morning the Cumberland players and their entourage boarded a train bound for Birmingham.
The players and their followers were rather subdued after a night of celebration in Atlanta that had lasted well into the early morning hours.
Emotions were mixed. Their cause for celebration was complicated. There really was no reason to rejoice, but they had completed their mission and, miraculously, no one had been seriously injured.
As the train neared Birmingham the conductor told passengers they would be allowed to get off and mosey about the terminal and stretch their legs or grab a bite to eat.
Terminal Station in Birmingham was as magnificent as Atlanta’s train station by the same name. Built in 1909, this station was a main stop for trains representing six railroad companies.
The conductor reported to the travelers that the train would be at rest for an hour and fifteen minutes before departing for Nashville.
With less than a full hour to spend in the station, the Cumberland bunch filed off as quickly as they could. They shuffled to the end of the platform and made a right turn before walking another fifty yards to the station.
Passengers exiting other trains had the same idea. Everywhere the Cumberland group turned there was a lengthy line of waiting customers.
George suggested that they spread out. Everyone, he insisted, doesn’t need to go to the same concession area, restaurant, or restroom. The players heeded his advice and divided into groups of two or three and went to fulfill their needs.
Shoeshine stand news
George stays in the first line he joined with the notion of purchasing a ham and cheese sandwich and a Coca-Cola.
Glancing around, he spots a boutique shoeshine stand and a news rack where an elderly African-American man conducts the business of putting a spit shine on the leather cap toe dress shoes of mostly white male passengers flitting about through the station.
Engulfed on three sides of his booth by a massive collection of Sunday newspapers, the shoeshine specialist augments his daily livelihood by peddling the news of the day. Earlier this morning trains from Atlanta, Louisville, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago have trucked in papers from across their respective departing regions.
George decides to forgo breakfast and makes a bee line to a shoeshine booth.
COST OF GOODS IN 1916
* * *
A loaf of bread cost about a nickel as did a bottle of Coke and a ticket to the movie theater (popular at the time was a news reel about the 1912 sinking of the Titanic). Gas was 16 cents a gallon (equivalent to a 2015 price of about $3.15 cents), coffee was about 30 cents a pound, and several leading hotels advertised room rates at $2 per night with meals served at 50 cents each. Car prices began as low as $400. Chevrolet listed its new Chevy 490 at $490, which just happened to be the same price of its greatest competitor, the Model T Ford. Soon after Chevy made the announcement introducing its 490 model, Henry Ford dropped the price of his Model T to $440.
His eye catches a number of headlines in the various newspapers. Several had made mention of the game played the day before in Atlanta, but only as teasers in an effort to lure readers inside to an area reserved for sports fanatics.
The Birmingham News, The Louisville Courier-Journal, Atlanta Constitution, among others, reported the devastating loss Cumberland had suffered at the hands of Georgia Tech.
Details of the game varied in each newspaper. Some of the publications misspelled names. Others
omitted names, mainly the names of Cumberland players, but each paper did report the score correctly.
Reading the results, “Georgia Tech 222, Cumberland 0” in newsprint for the first time left George feeling a bit desperate. He had no clue the match would generate so much interest from the press.
Reports about the game and what it meant for Georgia Tech’s drive for a national championship had been published in daily newspapers across the nation. What George believed to be not such a big deal turned out to be humongous.
Even the old man shining shoes, born 20 years before the start of the Civil War, who could barely read, could determine from the bold-faced size type on the sports page in The Constitution that Cumberland, as he might put it, had gotten “an old-fashioned whupping” in Atlanta.
Hearing the elderly black man’s perspective on the game, George decided to climb up into the customer’s chair, where he could rest his feet while his shoes were being shined.
He really had no need of a shine but wanted to hear more about what the old fellow thought about the game.
George listened intently as the shoeshine man told him the reactions he had heard from others, even from a few who had attended the game.
The old man told George that his life had not yet provided him the opportunity of seeing a football game, but it was something he would like to witness one day. He confessed to his customer that the sport didn’t make that much sense to him.
He struggled with the idea of congregations of grown men pounding and smashing into one another just to move a funny-shaped ball down a cow pasture. He said that from what he’d heard, the game was more like a back-alley brawl.
George paid attention to every word but really he wanted to know what other people may have been saying about the Cumberland athletes.
George pressed gently for more gossip.
The old man told him that from what he had gathered this Coach Heisman was something else. He relayed to George that folks who had sat in this same chair earlier in the day were saying the Tech team that had beaten the little school from Tennessee would likely win the championship this year. He said they kept saying they’d never seen a football game in which so many points had been scored. They talked about how Heisman was the best coach in the country.
George paid two bits for the old man’s artisan work and flipped him a silver dollar as a tip. He walked away with his shoes sporting a handsome shine and felt a bit better hearing that most of the scuttlebutt surrounding the game was about the strength of Tech and not the incompetence of Cumberland.
The student manager had known his team was bad, but he never wanted them to be thought of as cowards or as a group that had disgraced their alma mater.
He was fearful of what the word would be around Lebanon after they returned to the campus.
He hoped the team would receive some sort of a small home-coming after they reached the Lebanon depot and that they might get at least a little praise and considerable credit for helping the college keep its word and perhaps more importantly keeping its doors open.
With low spirits George rounded up his players and the traveling party to make sure all got back to the train on time.
They boarded and departed Birmingham for Nashville, the next and final station before Lebanon.
Back in Lebanon
After a thirty-minute stop in Nashville the train rolled east toward Lebanon. The train was scheduled to arrive at 3:42 p.m.
From Nashville the train picked up passengers at three stops that included Hermitage, a neighborhood community near the home of the late President Andrew Jackson; Mt. Juliet, a farm community on the west side of Wilson County, about 12 miles from Lebanon; and finally before arriving at the final destination, Horn Springs, the place where much of the hoopla for the trip to Atlanta was inspired.
As the train got closer to home, the boys on the team began stirring from their seats. They weren’t exactly proud of their efforts, but, by damn, they had given it all they had. Beat-up, worn-out and exhausted, they were content that they had accomplished their mission.
The iron horse’s engineer gave two blasts on the horn as it crossed South Cumberland Street only two blocks from the Lebanon station.
As the Cumberland group gazes out windows they see what appears to be a large welcoming crowd awaiting them from the station platform.
Those on board began to hear a band and cheering and then they spied a crowd of two hundred to three hundred people flanking the train. The hoard, which included President Hill, professors, students and town people, were there to greet the heroes who had saved Cumberland University.
Off the train the players scattered. They kissed girlfriends, shook hands with comrades and even hugged strangers as they made the most of their emotional return.
Back in Atlanta
Coach Heisman had accomplished his goals on Saturday. He had thoroughly embarrassed Cumberland. He had gotten the payback he had so desperately sought since his baseball team had suffered the humiliating defeat at the hands of Cumberland and George Allen the previous spring. And he had captured the attention of sports writers across the nation with the enormous number of points his team had scored.
The following Sunday afternoon he was back in his office on the Tech campus studying his next opponent.
Tech would be playing Davidson on October 14. The North Carolina college had lost its first game of the season 14–0 to Virginia but beat North Carolina State 16–0 in its second outing.
Davidson would be a formidable opponent. Heisman’s task was to prepare his team for a real team after the easy trouncing of Cumberland.
Georgia Tech was clearly on a route that could take them to a national championship, the first for the Engineers and the first for their already highly decorated coach.
None other than Grantland Rice was proclaiming Heisman as the next great mind and coach in college football. Attracting the attention of a myriad of sports writers was the fact that Tech had scored 285 points in its first two games and not allowed its opponents to score. No other team in the nation had ever come close to such a feat.
The stars were aligning, and Heisman was cognizant of the opportunity before him.
His single most concern was to keep his team focused. They had seven more games on their schedule. One slip up, one fumble, one interception, one dropped punt, one missed tackle could cost them a game. And one lost game could be the difference between winning a national championship and having to wait till next year.
Again and again Coach Heisman reminded his players about the disciplines that create winners.
Developing a strategy for the game against Davidson, he would be well prepared for the team presentation he would deliver at practice on Monday afternoon.
On the Cumberland campus
While the jubilant welcome at the train depot had proved exhilarating to the valiant losers, Cumberland University President Hill did not believe the celebration on Sunday was all that it should have been.
The results of the game had reached campus late Saturday via Western Union, although there still were many who had not gotten the word. There were also a great number of people from town, outside the Cumberland family, who had made financial contributions for the cause, and they too, Hill reckoned, should have the opportunity to congratulate the team and join the celebration.
On Monday afternoon Hill summonsed to his office in Memorial Hall key members of his administrative team, a small delegation of trustees, George Allen, and several members of the law school faculty to discuss how to plan an event worthy of the expedition to Atlanta.
As the group sat in Hill’s office waiting for the meeting to begin, conspicuously absent was George, the primary principal for whom the meeting had been called.
A few minutes past 3 p.m. Hill, assured that all were present, explained that he had intentionally asked George to arrive around 3:15 p.m. Starting from day one of the entire ordeal, Hill revisited for those in his office the sacrifice that had been made, Geor
ge’s commitment to right a grievous personal mistake, and what this had meant for the sustainability of Cumberland University.
As he wound down his summary of the story, he told those present that in a few minutes George would be entering the room, and he asked that each of them stand and offer a rousing ovation for the young man whom he described as possibly Cumberland’s most outstanding law student.
A slight rap came on the door, and George walked into the room where he was met by a vigorous standing ovation, a dozen hearty slaps on the back and three choruses of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
The Mississippi native was overwhelmed. George tried to begin to speak, his voice trembling, as he stood astonished in front of this august audience.
Among those greeting George were Judge Nathan Green Jr., 89, the first dean of the Cumberland University School of Law (Judge Green taught at the law school until his death at age 92); Professor of Law Andrew Bennett Martin, an 1858 graduate of Cumberland and former major and adjutant on the staffs of Confederate Generals Robert Hatton, George Dibreil, and Joseph Wheeler; Professor of Moot Court Proceedings Edward Ewing Beard, a former Lebanon mayor and member of the state legislature; Professor W.P. Graham, who along with Hill was in charge of the university’s athletic programs; and three members of the university’s board of trust including Amzl W. Hooker, James Lee Weir, and Selden R. Williams.
Represented in the president’s office with George was a select portfolio of individuals who had personally overseen triumphs and defeats throughout much of Cumberland’s history. A few had seen Cumberland rise from the ashes after its main building was torched and burned to the ground by Union troops at the end of the Civil War. A couple of these men were instrumental in turning the university’s law school into one of the nation’s finest, and several of the trustees, successful local businessmen, had stood by Cumberland through periods of severe financial woes.