Category Archives: Georgia Tech

Clemson vs. Georgia Tech on October 17th

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Today’s match-up between Clemson and Georgia Tech was the 85th meeting between the two schools (with their first meeting having been in 1898). Clemson won the game today by a score of 73-7, making the date of October 17th a bit of a problem for Georgia Tech.

Today’s game was played on October 17, 2020, and as I already stated, the result was a final score of Clemson 73 – Georgia Tech 7. This is only the second time in 85 games that Clemson has scored more than 70 points against Georgia Tech, with the first time being on October 17, 1903. On that date, Clemson beat Georgia Tech 73-0.

If there is a positive take-away, it is that while Clemson can’t get over the 73-point barrier, at least Georgia Tech has improved from 0 to 7 points.

In any event, Clemson and Georgia Tech have only played twice on October 17th (once in 1903 and again in 2020). Both were Clemson victories and both times Clemson was able to score 70+ points. At no other time, in 83 other games, has Clemson been able to score 70+ points against Georgia Tech; as Clemson is apparently only able to do that when the game is played on October 17th.

For these reasons, my guess is that Georgia Tech will do everything they can to avoid having to play Clemson on October 17th ever again.

I know I would.

Footnote: The head coach at Clemson in 1903 was John Heisman. After the 1903 season, Georgia Tech hired Heisman, making the 1903 season his last at Clemson. Heisman was the head coach of Georgia Tech in 1904. While this is an interesting footnote to the October 17th story, I don’t think history is going to repeat itself in this manner. In other words, I don’t think there is any chance Georgia Tech is able to steal Dabo Swinney away from Clemson at the end of this 2020 season … but I guess we will have to wait and see.

Georgia Tech’s 222

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Scoreboard from the 1916 Georgia Tech vs. Cumberland football game, Wikipedia.com

by Travis Normand
July 26, 2017

I have written about Georgia Tech’s historic 222-0 drubbing of Cumberland before (here and here), but for some reason I was thinking about it again today. I was wondering how the outcome of that game stacked up against other games and whether or not the outcome was truly an anomaly.

I set out to answer these questions and created this post to share what I found.

1916 Georgia Tech vs. Cumberland, 222-0:  According to Wikipedia.com, the 222-0 Georgia Tech (GT) victory was the most lopsided in the history of college football. However, how much more “lopsided” was this game than others? Well, again, according to Wikipedia.com:

  • Of the current Division I, Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams, only (1) Arizona, (2) Bowling Green, (2) Georgia Tech, (3) Oklahoma, and (4) Tulsa have eclipsed 150 points in a single game.
  • Ignoring games from the early 1900s (and earlier), the Houston Cougars are the only Division I, FBS team to score 100 points against another FBS team in the last 50 years (they did it against Tulsa on November 3, 1968).
  • King College (now King University) in Tennessee scored 206 points against Lenoir in 1922.
  • St. Viator College (Illinois) scored 205 points against Lane Tech in 1916 (the same year as Georgia Tech’s 222 points against Cumberland). In fact, according to an article published in Sports Illustrated, the Georgia Tech vs. Cumberland game received no national publicity. The New York Times reported a new scoring record when St. Viator’s beat Lane Tech 205-0, which happened three weeks after Georgia Tech defeated Cumberland (Georgia Tech had to wait until 1917 before it was recognized as the nation’s top-scoring team). [FN1]
  • Yale defeated Dartmouth 113–0 on October 25, 1884 (in Hanover, New Hampshire). This is the first recorded incident of a team (1) scoring over 100 points in a game, and (2) scoring over 100 points while shutting out the other team. [FN2]
  • Four days after Yale’s defeat of Dartmouth, on October 29, 1884, Princeton outscored Lafayette 140-0. [FN3]
  • Another notable finding is that more often than not, when one team scores 100 points, the other team typically doesn’t score at all. However, in 1916 SMU scored an early field goal in its game against Rice. However, Rice made a “come back” and ended up winning the game 146-3.

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