Lest we forget...The 1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech football game was a college football game played on October 7, 1916, between the Georgia Tech Engineers and the Cumberland College Bulldogs. The game became the most lopsided in the history of college football, as Georgia Tech was victorious 222–0.
Cumberland College, a school in Lebanon, Tennessee, had discontinued its football program before the season but was not allowed to cancel its game against the Engineers. The fact that Cumberland’s baseball team had crushed Georgia Tech earlier that year 22-0 (amidst allegations that Cumberland used professionals as ringers) probably accounted for Georgia Tech coach John Heisman’s running up the score on the Bulldogs. He insisted on the schools’ scheduling agreement, which required Cumberland to pay $3,000 ($59,780 in inflation-adjusted terms) to Tech if its football team failed to show. So, George E. Allen (who was elected to serve as Cumberland’s football team student manager after first serving as the baseball team student manager) put together a scrub team of 14 men to travel to Atlanta as Cumberland’s football team.
According to the “Sports Hall of Shame” book series, another reason for Heisman’s plan to run up the score was that collegiate rules at the time ranked teams based on how many points they scored. Heisman did not consider that statistic a true mark of a team’s success, and may have unleashed his players on Cumberland to make his point.
Legend has it that in spite of being up by 126 points at halftime, Heisman fired up his team to keep the assault going by saying, ``You can't tell what those Cumberland players have up their sleeves!''.