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I read the following fact in a newspaper over my Thanksgiving break:

The 2008 Oklahoma Sooners team is on pace to become just the third CFB team to ever score 700 points in one season. The others were

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1886 Harvard and 1904 Minnesota.

In related news, if OU scores 105 points in its final two games, it will set the "modern day/Post-WWII" record for points per game, at 53.2.

Appa23 wrote:I read the following fact in a newspaper over my Thanksgiving break:

The 2008 Oklahoma Sooners team is on pace to become just the third CFB team to ever score 700 points in one season. The others were

Spoiler

1886 Harvard and 1904 Minnesota.

3rd in major college football.

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Code: Select all

    Pts       School                       Season     Classification
    765    Harvard (MA)                    1886   Major College
    752    Mount Union (OH)                1997   NCAA III
    747    Georgia Southern                1999   NCAA 1-AA
    744    Georgetown (KY)                 1991   NAIA II
    725    Minnesota                       1904   Major College
    710    Georgetown (KY)                 1999   NAIA
    702    Saint John's (MN)               1993   NCAA III

Yes, the third Division I-A team. (I wonder if any other hypercritical "fans" wrote letters to the editor based on the newspaper failing to mention teams from other levels.)

Looks like that list I posted was not completely correct. The NCAA says a team scored over 800 points in one season:

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Pittsburg State scored 837 points in 2004.

Also, St. John's scored 61.5 ppg in 1993 and Mississippi Valley State scored 60.9 ppg in 1984.

Appa23 wrote:Yes, the third Division I-A team. (I wonder if any other hypercritical "fans" wrote letters to the editor based on the newspaper failing to mention teams from other levels.)

Hmmm. Hypercritical I can live with but "fans" in quotes? What's that supposed to mean?

andrewjackson wrote:

Appa23 wrote:Yes, the third Division I-A team. (I wonder if any other hypercritical "fans" wrote letters to the editor based on the newspaper failing to mention teams from other levels.)

Hmmm. Hypercritical I can live with but "fans" in quotes? What's that supposed to mean?

He forgot the winking smilie

I wonder how many points the 1916 Georgia Tech team scored, besides the one game in which they scored 222 points... http://www2.cumberland.edu/about/gotc/pbp.html

danielh41 wrote:I wonder how many points the 1916 Georgia Tech team scored, besides the one game in which they scored 222 points... http://www2.cumberland.edu/about/gotc/pbp.html

The Tech team that year only averaged 46.78 points a game in an 8-0-1 season:

Mercer 61-0
Cumberland 222-0
Davidson 9-0
North Carolina 10-6
Washington and Lee 7-7 (TIE)
Tulane 45-0
Alabama 13-0
Georgia 21-0
Auburn 33-7

Total Points: 421
Allowed: 20

That was not Heisman's best team at Tech. The following year, the 1917 team went 9-0 and was the national champion according to most sources (there were no weekly polls or bowl games back then). The 1917 team scored 491 points during the season. And Tech had a considerable home field advantage back then due to having a "modern" stadium where most teams agreed to travel to. In both 1916 and 17, Tech played eight of nine games at home.

There should be a huge asterisk by the Cumberland result. Cumberland had actually disbanded its football team (which played a very representative schedule against major southern schools) after the 1915 season. However, the contract with Tech had already been signed and the Cumberland baseball team had beaten Tech 22-0 in the 1915 season leading to some bad blood between the schools. Tech's coach Heisman insisted Cumberland honor the contract or pay a substantial cancellation fee. As a result, a Cumberland student manager rounded up a pickup team consisting mostly of his frat brothers (13 total players) and went to Atlanta for the game.

The results could have been worse. Heisman agreed to shorten the second half to fifteen minutes, so Tech "only" scored 96 points in the second half after 126 the first half.

danielh41 wrote:I wonder how many points the 1916 Georgia Tech team scored, besides the one game in which they scored 222 points... http://www2.cumberland.edu/about/gotc/pbp.html

421 points in 9 games that year but they only played one away game:

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/geo ... scores.pdf

Date Result Opponent
S. 30 hW 61- 0 Mercer
O. 7 hW 222- 0 Cumberland
O. 14 hW 9- 0 Davidson
O. 21 hW 10- 6 North Carolina
O. 28 hT 7- 7 Washington & Lee
N. 4 hW 45- 0 Tulane
N. 11 hW 13- 0 Alabama
N. 18 aW 21- 0 Georgia
N. 30 hW 33- 7 Auburn


They like their home-cooking at GT. I suppose they could give big guarantees for teams to come to Atlanta to play but this is ridiculous.

From 1900-1930, Georgia Tech played 219 home games, 43 away, and one on a neutral field against Penn State in New York City. That's an average of 1.4 away games per year.

In 1933, GT joined the SEC and started playing a much more balanced schedule.

I see SSS already covered the home field advantage.

andrewjackson wrote:I see SSS already covered the home field advantage.

Back then, Tech was one of the first Southern schools to actually build a football stadium. Grant Field, which is the oldest Division 1A stadium still in use, was built in 1913 and seated about 5500 for the first several years. Before that, Tech played most of its games in Piedmont Park, which hosted a wide variety of sporting events including Georgia-Auburn football and Atlanta Crackers minor league baseball as well. Piedmont Park was considered to have the best athletic facilities in the South as well as being easily accessible by train from most places. Other Southern schools were still playing their games essentially on practice fields with makeshift bleachers.

During the 1920's Tech starting playing intersectional games against teams like Notre Dame and Penn State and went on the road regularly for those games. As other schools in the south built their own on-campus facilities, Tech went to home-and-home schedules, although they routinely hosted most of their nonconference games against teams like Clemson (which played every year in Atlanta until the 1970s) who still had smaller stadiums and would not draw as big a crowd.

Tech's football fortunes declined in the 1960s with the retirement of Bobby Dodd, the arrival of the Atlanta Falcons, and the growth of Georgia football under Vince Dooley. When I was a student 1969-73, the stadium seated 60,000 and was one of the largest in the south. Since then, remodeling and installation of luxury seats has resulted in a far more modern but smaller capacity of about 56,000, well below most other SEC schools and Clemson. Needless to say, we can't routinely get Division 1A teams to come to Atlanta to play.

I have seen a few commentators noting that the Gator Bowl might be your Ramblin' Wreck versus my Huskers.

If so, I hope that it goes better than that Citrus Bowl several years back.

For me, it would be the "Did the Huskers Make the Right Choice?" bowl, as I was a big proponent of hiring Paul Johnson before Bo Pelini became the pick. Ga Tech got a great coach with that choice.

Appa23 wrote:I have seen a few commentators noting that the Gator Bowl might be your Ramblin' Wreck versus my Huskers.

If so, I hope that it goes better than that Citrus Bowl several years back.

I was there. That was one of the most enjoyable days in my life. In the course of one single month, Tech won the national championship and the Giants won the Super Bowl (Tech had also made the Final Four for the first time earlier in 1990). Sports doesn't get much better than that.

Appa23 wrote:I have seen a few commentators noting that the Gator Bowl might be your Ramblin' Wreck versus my Huskers.

If so, I hope that it goes better than that Citrus Bowl several years back.

Word in today's paper is that Tech will be going two miles down the road from the campus to play in the Peach Bowl against LSU or South Carolina.

I'm not too pleased about this, although the trip will be much easier and the game should be easier. If Tech loses, it's an embarrassment; if they win, they gain nothing because everyone will say they beat a crummy team that was mailing it in the last month of the season.

The Gator Bowl would be a much better game both on the field and in terms of prestige.