by Sam Hatcher
Each person voting in the Heisman is asked to designate three selections ranking them in order of preference. In the process of totaling votes, each first place selection tallies three points, second place receives two points and third place gets one point.
Through 2015, Notre Dame and the University of Southern California share the distinction of having the most Heisman winners. Each has had seven players receive the trophy. Ohio State has had six winners; Oklahoma, five; and Army, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Michigan, and Nebraska have had three each.
What if?
What if the 1916 game between Cumberland and Georgia Tech had never been played?
If George Allen hadn’t rallied his fraternity brothers for the trip to Atlanta, it’s likely Cumberland University would have faced bankruptcy and closed its doors.
The school was struggling financially at the time. To add an invoice for damages in a breach of contract claim by Coach John Heisman and Georgia Tech, paying up could have been devastating as the penalty would have amounted to more than $100,000 in today’s monetary values.
Founded in 1842, Cumberland University continues today as an accredited four-year university with an enrollment of approximately 1,500.
If Heisman had acquiesced to Cumberland’s request to let the small Tennessee university off the hook from playing Georgia Tech in Atlanta, his team would never have received the national spotlight for the 222 points with which his Engineers managed to dominate the scoreboard.
And likely the absence of that exposure by the nation’s sports writing press corps would have severely crippled Georgia Tech’s successful campaign the very next year to be named college football’s national champion.
Heisman’s insistence that the game be played, and his team’s offensive dominance that allowed Tech to score at will not only captured the attention of football fans nationwide, it also caused a bevy of sports writers headquartered in the Northeast to look South and to realize for perhaps the first time that the sport in this region was being played with as much talent, enthusiasm, grit, and skill as in other parts of the country.
The gosh-almighty score, 222–0, opened doors for football in the South, making a dramatic statement. While Harvard, Dartmouth, Pittsburgh, and other schools in the Northeast had been the dominant headliners in the national press, the time had come to recognize the abilities of the teams playing the sport below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Even if the game had not been played, John Heisman still would have made his name as a football legend. His multiple contributions to the sport will be recognized for as long as the game is played. But the lopsided score his Tech team inflicted on Cumberland University is more than a simple asterisk in the record books.
As for George Allen, if the game in Atlanta had never occurred, his tenure at Cumberland would have come to the same conclusion.
He would have heard lecture upon lecture in law classes, partied at fraternity socials, been at the center of student life, and, after receiving his law degree, would still have been a successful attorney, political operative and advisor to four American presidents.
But he wouldn’t have had the conversation with President Dwight Eisenhower on October 7, 1960, at Burning Tree Golf Club about what he was doing on the same day forty-four years earlier.
Four hours later
The fall afternoon sun is fading quickly. Both men by now have donned sweaters to counter a seasonal chill in the air encouraged by a slight northerly breeze.
After 17 holes George and the president were only separated by one stroke as they squared off on the 18th green.
Ike, boasting a 15 handicap at the time, was having a decent round. He was laying three on the par four hole with only a three foot putt remaining to closeout his round. If it sinks, he’ll have an 83 for the day.
George, trailing by one stroke, but on the green in two has a chance to tie his friend and playing foe if he can hit a12 footer for a birdie.
Surveying the route between him and the cup, George sees bumps and curves ahead. Meanwhile Ike is focused on his awaiting three foot strike.
“What I’m looking at here isn’t so unlike the trip I took to Atlanta in 1916,” George reckoned out loud to Ike as he continued to study his putt.
“I was facing all sorts of challenges, troubles you might say. There were nightmarish bumps in the road and curves thrown at me from every direction that I nor anyone else could see coming.
“I was relegated to but one option and that was to put a frat team of college boys together and make the trip south to Atlanta in order to save my university and probably save my own ass as it turned out.
“And here I am now, 44 years later, facing bumps in my way and breaks I can’t see to save my ass once again,” George said laughing a bit as he lowered his voice almost to a whisper before stroking his putt.
His ball began slowly meandering forward. It bumped and darted back and forth. As the ball got to within three feet of the hole, the president could see the putt was going to be good, and exclaimed, “By golly George you’ve done it again. You’ve saved your ass.”
It wasn’t the first time that this story teller, well spoken lawyer, politician and public servant had stepped up his game to achieve a heroic-like outcome.
But not on this day or for that matter any other day in his life had he produced results with such overwhelming consequences as he had in 1916.
“Pick it up,” George instructed Ike declaring the president’s remaining three footer a gimme.
“Let’s go grab a Johnnie Walker Black and call it a day.”
A life like few others
George Allen, the man who had personally served four U.S. presidents, been featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1946, and lived a life of charm died on April 27, 1973 at the age of 77.
In his lifetime he was able to see the world from both sides of the Atlantic, play a masterful role in national politics, rub elbows with the nation’s elite and do a thousand things for which others could only dream.
George did all of this and also managed, as a young college student, to save a southern university from financial demise.
CUMBERLAND UNIVERSITY SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS
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While Cumberland may be most recognized for the record-setting loss it suffered at the hands of Georgia Tech and John Heisman in 1916, there are numerous highlights in the university’s sporting efforts.
In 1894 Cumberland University fielded its first football team.
In 1903 Cumberland beats Tulane, LSU, Alabama and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in a five-day road trip, scoring 250 points and skunking its opponents. Cumberland capped off the championship season with a post-season game, the first of its kind to be played in the South, against John Heisman’s Clemson Tigers. The Thanksgiving Day game, played in Montgomery, Alabama, ended in an 11–11 tie.
In 1932, 1933, 1934, and 1935 Cumberland captured football championship titles in the Smokey Mountain Athletic Conference.
In 1947, Cumberland’s football team defeated Florida State University 6–0.
Cumberland’s baseball team made twelve appearances in the NAIA World Series, and in 2004, 2010, and 2014 won the national championship, all under the helm of Coach Woody Hunt.
Among those who have coached at Cumberland, one of the most outstanding in recent history is Cliff Ellis, who coached basketball from 1972 to 1975 before leaving for coaching jobs at South Alabama (1975–1984), Clemson (1884–1994), Auburn (1994–2004) and now at Coastal Carolina.
While at Auburn Ellis was named National Coach of the Year in 1999 by the Associated Press. In 1995 and 1999 he received honors for Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year, and in 1987 and 1990 he was named Atlantic Coast Conference Coach of the Year.
40 years after the game
In 1956 at the suggestion of the Greater Atlanta Club, 28 participants of the 1916 game, including 22 former players from Tech and six from Cumberland, attended a special 40 year anniversary reunion
to celebrate the historic event they made possible.
Gathering attention from members of the national press, the program which attracted more than 200 Georgia Tech alumni, was reported by newspapers from coast to coast.
George Griffin, who played in the game for Tech served as toastmaster for the event, while Tech’s 1916 team captain, Talley Johnson, introduced the Tech players present.
Representing Cumberland, Gentry Dugat, also a player in the game, introduced attending former players from his alma mater as well as a couple of special guests including O.K. Armstrong, who had written a story about the game that was published in Reader’s Digest.
The reunion provided a suitable venue for the former players to reminisce with each other and retell their personal accounts about arguably the most memorable football game ever played.
According to one report about the reunion published in Tech’s Alumni Magazine, hearing game participants tell their own favorite anecdotes about the game was the most entertaining part of the event.
Cumberland’s Morris Gouger, a Texas banker at the time of the reunion, entertained attendees with details about how the score could have even been worse.
“I called for a quarterback sneak on fourth down late in the final period,” Gouger said. “We needed 25 yards and were deep in our territory. I made it back to the line of scrimmage and saved us from really ignominious defeat. If we had punted, as we should have, Tech would have blocked the kick, made another touchdown and the score would have been 229–0.”
As first person accounts about the game continued, some in conflict with each other, one Tech alum is said to have lamented, “This rematch is fixed. How do you expect 22 engineers to out talk six lawyers.”
Several Tech players remembered that after the game Coach Heisman declared they had played a “fairly good game,” but even so they were directed back to the practice field for what they described as a “vigorous 30-minute scrimmage.”
They also remembered that Heisman had played his first and second teams in alternate quarters and had promised that the squad with the most points would be rewarded with a steak dinner. At the end of the day, after their scrimmage, they said their coach congratulated them and awarded all with a steak dinner that evening.
Dugat, addressing the audience offered, “Little did we realize we were playing ourselves into immortality that day. We made you of Georgia Tech a great team.”
His observation, likely shared by all reunion attendees, was ever so true. Cumberland’s 222–0 loss to Tech in 1916 set the stage for Tech’s national championship the very next year.
45 years later Cumberland sells prestigious law school
In 1961, 45 years after the game was played in Atlanta, Cumberland University brokered a deal to sell its prestigious School of Law to Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. The transaction was closed and all assets of the law school were transferred to Samford in 1962 for a sum of $125,000.
The law school was overwhelmed with demands by the American Bar Association and other accrediting agencies to strengthen its law library and to add a great number of fulltime faculty members and additional administrators. The requirements proved to be too financially stringent on Cumberland and the school’s Board of Trust voted to sell the once highly acclaimed School of Law to Samford.
This school, that provided the education for a former U.S. Secretary of State and founder of the United Nations, Cordell Hull; two Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court; more than 82 members of the U.S. Congress; 16 state governors, and scores of members of the federal, state and local judiciary, closed its doors in Lebanon and sold the old “Law Barn,” Caruthers Hall, which strongly favored Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, to a local bank that years later tore down the structure opting for a modern contemporary styled building. It too was torn down by a second bank in order to build another more accommodating building.
A historical marker remains at the corner of West Main Street and North Greenwood in Lebanon noting that once on this property stood Caruthers Hall, the home of the Cumberland University School of Law.
From four year university to junior college to four year university
Believing Cumberland should find a new niche to meet current financial burdens in 1957, the school’s Board of Trust opted to change the university’s curriculum from a four year degree program to that of a two year associate’s degree. Cumberland became a private, independent junior college and remained so for some 25 years.
In 1982 Cumberland’s trustees voted to return the school to its original position as an accredited four year university.
Now accredited, as many other universities in the South by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Cumberland offers a number of baccalaureate degree programs as well as graduate studies. Cumberland also maintains one of the state’s outstanding nursing programs, the Dr. Jeanette C. Rudy School of Nursing.
Tech’s best games on Grant Field
Georgia Tech has mastered and surprised a number of opponents on Grant Field since its opening in 1913. These may be the 12 best games.
October 7, 1916: Georgia Tech 222, Cumberland University 0
The game played to keep one school out of bankruptcy and the other, Georgia Tech, on a track to win a national championship. The score still remains as the largest victory in collegiate football ever.
November 29, 1917: Georgia Tech 68, Auburn 7
With this victory came the successful completion of the end of the first undefeated, untied National Championship season for the Yellow Jackets.
December 8, 1928: Georgia Tech 20, Georgia 6
This game concluded a second perfect season for Tech and another National Championship. The Yellow Jackets went on to beat Cal 8–7 in the Rose Bowl. Tech won nine consecutive games in the regular season topping the perfect stretch off with the Rose Bowl victory.
November 15, 1952: No. 4 Georgia Tech 7, No. 12 Alabama 3
In one of the biggest games of Georgia Tech’s third National Championship season, two of the highest ranked teams to ever play on Grant Field saw Georgia Tech defeat Alabama in a closely matched defensive battle.
November 17, 1962: Georgia Tech 7, No. 1 Alabama 6
This incredible upset victory over top-ranked Alabama ended the Crimson Tide’s 26-game unbeaten streak. Tech coach Bobby Dodd called it his greatest victory as Tech thwarted Alabama comeback efforts by preventing a two-point conversion attempt and intercepting a Joe Namath pass deep in their own territory with just 1:05 left.
November 6, 1976: Georgia Tech 23, No. 11 Notre Dame 14
In the most memorable game of a 4–6–1 season, Georgia Tech defeated #11 Notre Dame without throwing a forward pass.
October 13, 1990: No. 15 Georgia Tech 21, No. 14 Clemson 19
Only two seasons past a miserable 3–8 1988 season, Tech’s Bobby Ross led his team to a 4–0 record to face the Tigers. The Yellow Jackets came out on top and went on to defeat No. 1 Virginia in the regular season and No.19 Nebraska in the Citrus Bowl to secure the school’s fourth National Championship.
October 17, 1998: No. 25 Georgia Tech 41, No. 7 Virginia 38
It was the second meeting between two highly ranked Georgia Tech and Virginia teams (the first being in 1990). Georgia Tech won again and by the same score 41–38 earning the Yellow Jackets a share of the ACC Championship.
November 27, 1999: No. 16 Georgia Tech 51, No. 21 Georgia 48 (OT)
In the highest scoring game ever in the series with Georgia. The Bulldogs overcame a 17-point deficit in the second half to tie the game and appeared to be within easy victory after driving to Tech’s 2-yard line with nine seconds left to play. Rather than kick a game winning field goal, Georgia coach Jim Donnan called a running play that was ruled a fumble that Georgia Tech recovered in the end zone. Tech attempted a field goal on third down in its possession. The kick was blocked, but the Tech holder recovered the ball. Tech succeeded on its second chance kick on fourth down and won the game.
November 1,
2008: Georgia Tech 31, No. 16 Florida State 28
Before the 2008 meeting between FSU and Georgia Tech, FSU’s Bobby Bowden was undefeated against the Yellow Jackets. The last time Georgia Tech had defeated Florida State was in 1975. Bowden had never lost to Georgia Tech in 12 meetings.
October 17, 2009: No. 19 Georgia Tech 28, No. 4 Virginia Tech 23
Played before an emotionally charged crowd, this was the first time Georgia Tech defeated a top five team at home since beating No. 1 Alabama 7–6 in 1962.
October 29, 2011: Georgia Tech 31, No. 5 Clemson 17
Before a sellout crowd of 55,646, Georgia Tech rebounded from two consecutive losses to upset No. 5 Clemson.
Skirmish with Bear leads to SEC withdrawal
After the record setting win over Cumberland, after football gained credibility in the South largely because of the Cumberland game, and after Heisman’s Engineers won a national title in 1917, Georgia Tech’s reputation emerged nationally as a football powerhouse.
In 1932, 16 years after the Cumberland game, Georgia Tech and 12 other schools including Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Sewanee, Tennessee, Tulane and Vanderbilt, formed the Southeastern Conference.
Many believe Tech was persuaded to withdraw from the conference in 1963 during Coach Bobby Dodd’s era as the result of a clash between Dodd and Alabama Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant involving a controversial hit made on a Tech player.
The incident happened in a game being played at Legion Field in Birmingham in 1961.
Tech had punted the ball to Alabama. The Crimson Tide player receiving the punt called for a “fair catch.” Seeing the player receiving the punt waive for a “fair catch,” Chick Graning, covering the punt for Tech, retreated from his charge toward the Alabama punt receiver and while in a somewhat defenseless position was hit with significant force from a Bama blocker.