Resource Comes in Handy!
Friday, February 18, 2005 at 10:57PM I mentioned earlier tonight that I was going to watch the movie Rudy.
Needless to say the experience was enjoyable. But thanks to the
research capabilities here, I was able to do some research about some
of the more general college football claims of the movie.
Two items particularly interested me.
When Rudy loses all hope for suiting up for the final game of the season, one
of the players to vouch for him was an "All-American" defensive back
and team captain. Coach Dan Devine was incredulous at the
player's request to have Rudy dress in his place, and Devine counters
by saying something to the effect of, "you're an All-American, and
Georgia Tech is one of the country's best offenses, you can't do this."
The year was 1975.
I don't have a direct link to the various All-American lists on here,
but using the links directory at left I quickly found a linking of
consensus All Americans from the various years. It was under
"Heisman Trophy and Awards" under "Award Winner Databases."
The link I was looking for was consensus All-Americans
1937-1976. According to that list, Notre Dame did not have a
consensus All-America defensive back in 1975. Defensive tackle
Steve Niehaus was Notre Dame's only consensus All American. That
year, the All America defensive backs were Navy's Chet Moeller, Texas
A&M's Pat Thomas and Ohio State's Tim Fox. As an aside, look
at the All America backfield in 1975; Ohio State's Archie Griffin,
USC's late, great Ricky Bell, Pittsburgh's Tony Dorsett and
California's Chuck Muncie.
Wow.
The second bit of trivia I was after was the scoring total for Georgia Tech's vaunted offense.
This time, I went to "Tradition and History" and found an excellent link
under "Historical College Football Information" titled All-Time NCAA
D-1A Standings Since 1950. That link provides not only
information about standings, but you can click on a small button to
bring up a team's entire schedule from year to year with the score
totals.
In 1975,
Georgia Tech went 7-4-0, scoring 270 points and allowing 200.
That translates to an average score of 24.5 to 18.2. For that era
24.5 points per game was fairly good. Certainly not incredible,
but perhaps Dan Devine's character was justified in his claim.
Upon further inspection, Georgia Tech had an inconsistent offensive
season, opening with just 17 points against South Carolina before
rattling off four straight games over 30 points, including 38
twice. They then scored 27, 23, 21, a season-low 3 against Notre
Dame in the "Rudy" game, and then 14 and 26. Whatever magic they
had during the early-season scoring binge was lost after a
disappointing 31-27 loss to Auburn.
The preceding is just a small example of the power this website can
have for a fan of the game. I strive to categorize the links as
intelligently as possible. This is all to your advantage if you
take the time to learn what is available here.
Administrative, General, History
Reader Comments (4)
From Dustin's Ohio State bio page-"Son of Randy and Jean Fox ... brother Derek played football at Penn State and for the Indianapolis Colts ... uncles Kenny Kuhn, Dick Kuhn, Mark Stier and Tim Fox played football at Ohio State (all started and Tim was a first team All-American) ..."