Expert: Thom Brooks - 1/23/2008

Question
Where is this Cumberland College located? Is it Williamsburg, Ky or elsewhere.

Answer
Bill, hello!

Cumberland is in Lebanon, Tennessee.

Take care,

Thom Brooks



1916 Georgia Tech vs. Cumberland
Main article: 1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech football game
The October 7, 1916, American football game between the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the Cumberland College Bulldogs (now Cumberland University) was the most-lopsided game in the history of college football. Georgia Tech won, 222-0.

Cumberland, a school in Lebanon, Tennessee, had actually discontinued its football program before the season but had forgotten to cancel its game against the Yellow Jackets. Tech coach John Heisman was in no mood to accommodate the Bulldogs, perhaps because Tech's baseball team had lost 22-0 the previous year to a Cumberland team that Heisman suspected to have included professional players posing as Cumberland students. He insisted on the schools' scheduling agreement, which required Cumberland to pay $3,000 (a lot of money in 1916) to Tech if its football team failed to show. So, George 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 (some being his Kappa Sigma brothers) to travel to Atlanta as Cumberland's football team.

Cumberland received the opening kickoff and failed to make a first down. After a punt, the Yellow Jackets scored on their first play. Cumberland then fumbled on their next play from scrimmage, and a Tech player returned the fumble for a touchdown. The Bulldogs fumbled again on their next play, and it took Tech two runs to score its third touchdown. Cumberland lost nine yards on its next possession, then gave up a fourth touchdown on another two-play Tech drive.

The Yellow Jackets led 63-0 after the first quarter and 126-0 at halftime. Tech added 54 more points in the third quarter and 42 in the final period.

Several myths have developed around the game. Some people have written that Cumberland did not have a single play that gained yards; in fact, its longest play was a 10-yard pass (on 4th-and-22). One page on Cumberland's website says the Yellow Jackets scored on every offensive play, but the play-by-play account of the game posted online says otherwise.[6]