With college football in full season right now, no matter how poorly your team is doing, you are doing better than Cumberland College on October 7, 1916, at Georgia Tech in the Train Game. Georgia Tech won the game 222-0 over the Cumberland Bulldogs.
In the Spring of 1916, Georgia Tech played Cumberland in baseball. Cumberland defeated the Georgia Tech Team 22-0. John Heisman— yes, that John Heisman, of the trophy name— also invented the football scoreboard and made the forward pass a legal play. Heisman wanted to get back at Cumberland for that lopsided baseball loss. He signed them to play Georgia Tech in football. Heisman was also the head football coach.
Before the football season started, Cumberland decided drop football. Heisman told them if they did not play the game, they would have to pay $3000, which in 1916 would be equivalent to $80,000 today. To sweeten the pot, Heisman kicked in $500 dollars out of his own pocket for Cumberland to play the game.
George Allen was named Cumberland Coach for this game—he was not a coach, but a law student and a student manager.
So George combed the fraternities and found 16 guys who would be willing to play the game. A few of them played because they wanted to take a train ride. The Bulldogs worked out for a week and came up with some simple plays for their survival game plan.
The 16 iron men from Cumberland boarded their train headed to Georgia. The train was scheduled to stop on the campus of Vanderbilt, and they thought they could surely pick up a few more football players. When the train stopped on the Vanderbilt campus, not only did they not find any additional players, but two of the most apprehensive players decided they wanted no part of this football game.
So now Cumberland was down to 14 men.
There were 1000 spectators for this historic game. Once the game started, it was over. Cumberland never gained a first down. They completed one pass for 10 yards. The half-time score was 126-0.
Cumberland suffered a myriad of injuries. Their quarterback Charles Edwards was carried off the field three times on a stretcher.
There was significance in the score—Heisman wanted to avenge his baseball loss to Cumberland of 22-0. So that was part of his strategy to create the 220-0 score.
To help understand this extremely difficult mismatch, imagine if this week we stopped at the UT Law School, picked 16 guys who had never played football before, then loaded everyone into Amtrak to ride the rails to Ohio State to play the Buckeyes. It would take a lot of guts to take the field, just like it did for the Cumberland Bulldogs to take the field against Georgia Tech. Outmanned, out-gunned and outtalented, Cumberland somehow finished the game.
So anytime this season, if your college football team is having a rough go of it, just remember: 220-0.
