95 Years Ago Today, Georgia Tech Defeated Cumberland 222-0
by Winfield Featherston on Oct 7, 2011 11:08 AM EDT
in Georgia Tech History
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PrintOctober 7 is quite a celebratory day for Georgia Tech:
27 years ago, your FTRS statistician and PTFE'r Bird was born.
95 years ago, Georgia Tech beat Cumberland 222-0.
113 years ago, Georgia Tech opened its doors to students.
Bird's Birthday
We all know what Bird brings to the table on this site. Without him, we wouldn't have our number crunchings, powerpoint picture open threads, or blended RGB-value posts of the ACC. Happy Birthday, Bird, you old man.
Old drivers back in the day
Georgia Tech vs. Cumberland and The Game of The Century
On this day in 1916, the biggest blowout in college football happened and the losers are probably more prideful about it than the winners but more on that in a second. The story goes that John Heisman was bitter towards the Cumberland Bulldogs going back to the previous year's baseball season where he believed they purposefully ran up the score (Cumberland beat the Jackets 22-0).
During the 1916 football season, Cumberland tried to back out of the ensuing football matchup but John Heisman was such a sumbitch that he threatened them with a cash forfeiture fine of $3,000 if the Bulldogs refused to show up. Nevertheless, a kid by the name of George Allen, Cumberland's student manager, put together a team of Cumberland students to go and take the bullet for the honor of Cumberland. It was literally men against boys.
The story of Cumberland is quite embellished but a quick internet search let's you find a website put together by the school's historian, G. Frank Burns who discusses the game in greater detail than any of us can but here are some of my favorite quotes:
Cumberland's longest gain was NOT a two-yard loss; there was one forward pass completed for a ten-yard gain. Unfortunately it was fourth and 22 at the time. The truth is bad enough. Neither team made a first down. Cumberland couldn't, and Tech scored every time it got the ball.
Forty years later, a reunion was created for both teams. Here is a picture of them meeting at the line of scrimmage one last time.
There are plenty of other pictures available on Cumberland's website as well. Check them out here.
October 7, 1898: Georgia Tech Opens Its Doors
Ma Tech let in its first students on this day 113 years ago. The first class was 129 students and only 28 of them actually earned degrees. There were only two buildings back then, Tech Tower and the burnt down Shop Building. You had one choice in a major, Mechanical Engineering.
If you are interested in learning more about the very early days of Georgia Tech, I suggest you head over to the Archives Department near the library. You can literally spend hours in that building pouring over old year books, class exams and photos.
So Happy Birthday Bird, John Heisman et al, and especially you Georgia Tech. I cursed you, I thought about quitting on you, and even briefly hated you. But in the long run, we all know that I love you.
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Just know that Tech does not always love you back.
/almost out
My years in marching band have made me an authority on football.
Oh, and I have a Twitter.
Going to Tech is like going to a professional Deep Tissue masseuse...
Hurts like hell, and no happy ending. But when it’s over you feel like it was worth it.
by TBuzz on Oct 7, 2011 12:28 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Happy Birthday Bird!
Just got in from New York late last night, early this morning and have been wondering about all the omens for this day. Yesterday ran into people wearing ACC sweatshirts everywhere I went. First at Rockefeller Center, then later at Penn Station. Noticed that they were all teams Tech has vanquished either this year or last year.
by Atlanta's original team on Oct 8, 2011 8:36 AM EDT up reply actions
That photo
is not of the original shop building. The original was an architectural masterpiece which was built as Tech Tower’s fraternal twin (similar Victorian revival style, different elements involved). If you wanted an indication that this new school’s rigor levels were going to be evil, it literally had “The Two Towers.” Picture:
by GT_Jason on Oct 7, 2011 11:44 AM EDT reply actions 3 recs
So the Shop building was on the west side of Tech Tower along North Ave? Or north of Tech Tower where the smoke stack and whistle are?
by TBuzz on Oct 7, 2011 12:38 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
The street in the etching is Cherry Street and Tech Tower faces South.
So the Shop building stood immediately to the West of Tech Tower and set back to the North a few yards. As you can see in Winfield’s picture in the story they replaced this building with a more functional one which was razed in the ’60’s. The site of both buildings is where the old steam engine and Civil War marker sit along Cherry Street. There is a plaque on the North side telling the story.
I may have mentioned this before
but I’m pretty sure they moved the grave marker of Sideways when they redid the landscaping around the Tech Tower in the ’80s.
pretty sure that marker has been moved around multiple times
Better to have died a small boy than to drop this football - John Heisman FromTheRumbleSeat
by Winfield Featherston on Oct 7, 2011 1:55 PM EDT up reply actions
Should be
“Here lies Sideways…
SIDEWAYS"
Come worship at the Heavy Metal Altar of Molten British Steel....
Come...Smoke with the Priest
by DressHerInWhiteAndGold on Oct 9, 2011 1:15 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
good work in grabbing this picture
and supplying the facts behind it.
Better to have died a small boy than to drop this football - John Heisman FromTheRumbleSeat
by Winfield Featherston on Oct 7, 2011 1:33 PM EDT up reply actions
… you should know two things about the “Classroom Building” and the “Shop Building.”
1) They were meant to aesthetically convey the New South’s heated commercial competition with the North while also visually distancing Tech from the Antebellum South (which had been defeated.) The architectural grandeur was supposed to take a dig at MIT and other “polytechnic schools” which were partly blamed as the reason the Union possessed a technological advantage in the “War of Northern Aggression.” The shop building conveyed the “doing” while the classroom building was the “thinking.” This was the “Institute of Technology” format just like up North, but with a new twist. The popular phrase “the South will Rise Again” was supposed to be evoked upon seeing these two magnificent buildings rising from the Southern pines in neo-Victorian style. Not Northern but not Antebellum Southern. You were looking at the New South’s great southern Institute of Technology. Confederate ties were strong, however and the tune of Dixie is still hidden in a trumpet flourish in “Up with the White and Gold” to this day.
2) Agnes Scott College (opened in 1889) has the shop building’s sister:
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Where did you find this information source that still refers to it as the “War of Northern Aggression”? Was it from a press clipping from the early 1900’s or something?
by TBuzz on Oct 7, 2011 12:26 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I added that phrase in as a joke.
Hence the quotes. Historical sources will definitely refer to it as the Civil War.
Sorry.
I’m an amateur historian and that phrase always perks my ears up…
by TBuzz on Oct 7, 2011 12:39 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
It was the "School of Technology" until the '40s
My grandfather attended Tech in the ’20s. His major was “General Engineering”, since there was no EE yet. He worked for Georgia Power in the Co-op program and quit working for them when he retired..
Right
The use of “polytechnic Institute” and “Institute of Technology” was a comment on format, not nomenclature. It is a separate format (or was, at the time of founding) than the traditional Northeastern-style university (UNC or Virginia, for example) or the other A&M-style institutions (Clemson or NC State, for example). Georgia Tech’s founders took the “polytechnic institute” format from RPI, MIT and other northeastern technological schools which focused on the twin-disciplines of “thinking” alongside “doing.” Hence the two buildings and the name “School of Technology” rather than “College” or “University.”
Alabama Polytechnic Institute didn't change its name until 1960
but, even back in the 19th century, everyone called it “Auburn”.
Couldn't help but notice that Tech let up on Cumberland in the 4th quarter...
I hope Heisman had them running up and down the bleachers for that!
by TBuzz on Oct 7, 2011 2:14 PM EDT via mobile reply actions 1 recs
I thought they shorten the fourth even more
like closer to five minutes.
Happy Birthday
Wishing for a 6-0 Start for your Gift??
Come worship at the Heavy Metal Altar of Molten British Steel....
Come...Smoke with the Priest
by DressHerInWhiteAndGold on Oct 7, 2011 11:00 PM EDT reply actions
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