Friday, October 7 — This date a century ago was a football Saturday for many of the 92 U.S. colleges with active programs. It was also game day for small Cumberland College of Lebanon, Tennessee, which dropped its football team after 1915. It had a commitment to play Georgia Tech, and was threatened with a substantial fine if it broke the engagement. So a student manager rounded up 13 players, many of them fraternity brothers, and took the field against Georgia Tech. Although neither team registered a first down, it wasn’t a defensive struggle. Tech scored quickly every possession, and edged Cumberland by 222 to zero, college football’s greatest rout. Today, of the nearly 4,700 colleges and universities across the nation, over 770 have football programs rather more prepared than Cumberland 100 years ago.
Profile America is in its 20th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
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