On October 1, the U of M Bisons football team were in Saskatoon to play against the Saskatchewan Huskies. It was a game that Manitoba fans would rather forget, as the Bisons were absolutely dominated in a 64-3 blowout. It will go down as the worst loss for the Bisons football program in decades. In light of this embarrassing loss, let’s take a moment to look at some of the more memorable blowouts throughout sports history. Some of these games are memorable not just for the one-sided score, but because of the intriguing and occasionally humourous stories behind the blowouts. Without further ado, I present the top five worst blowouts in sports history:
- Back-to-back Banjo Bowl blowouts
In the past two years, the Labour Day Classic rematch between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers has resulted in two huge blowouts, one apiece for each team. In 2009, the Riders dominated the Bombers 55-10, but just one year later the Bombers were the dominant team, routing the Riders 31-2. That’s a combined score of 86-12 for the winning team over the last two years. Will there be a third blowout in a row in 2011? If there is, here’s hoping that the Bombers are the team on top.
- Redskins poke the Bears and get mauled
Way back in 1940, the Washington Redskins and the Chicago Bears played each other in the NFL championship game. The two teams had played each other earlier in the season, a 7-3 Redskins victory that led to the Redskins owner telling newspapers that the Bears were “crybabies and quitters.” Chicago coach George Halas reportedly decided to use the newspaper clipping as extra motivation for his team and posted it on the wall in their locker room. The motivation must have worked, as the Bears went on to destroy the Redskins 73-0 in a blowout victory that stands as the largest victory in NFL championship history (before the 1966 introduction of the Super Bowl game, between the NFL and AFL champions).
- Basketball blowout leaves bad taste
On Jan. 13, 2009 two high school girls’ basketball teams in Texas made national headlines in a controversial blowout victory, when the Covenant School Knights beat the Dallas Academy Bulldogs 100-0. What made the beat down so controversial was the fact that Dallas Academy is a private school for students with learning disabilities. Having not won a game in five years, the Knights came out and lead 59-0 at halftime. They didn’t stop there, as the Knights kept up a full-court press until they hit the 100-point mark, midway through the fourth quarter. After the story of the embarrassing blowout made the national news, Covenant School officials apologized. The coach for Covenant School, however, refused to apologize or admit that he had intentionally run up the score on a post made on a website. He was fired the next day.
- Bulgaria women’s hockey team woes
In the run up to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Bulgaria’s national women’s hockey team took part in an IIHF Women’s Hockey Olympic qualification tournament. To say that the Bulgarian team was outmatched by their opponents might just be the understatement of the decade. In the four games they played, Bulgaria let in 192 goals on 398 shots, scoring only one goal in a 30-1 loss to Croatia. The worst blowout came in their last game of the tournament against Slovakia, who scored 31 times . . . in the first period. They would eventually win 82-0. In case you were still wondering, the Bulgarian national women’s hockey team did not qualify for the 2010 Winter Olympics
- Georgia Tech gets their revenge on Cumberland
For the final and greatest blowout we’re going way back to 1916. Before the year’s football season, Cumberland College had officially discontinued their football program, but due to an agreement with the Georgia Institute of Technology they were unable to cancel the game scheduled between the two schools that year. Not wanting to pay a $3,000 fine to Georgia Tech for not showing up, Cumberland sent 14 students to Atlanta to represent Cumberland in the game. Legendary Georgia Tech football coach John Heisman, supposedly bitter over a baseball game blowout between the two schools the previous year — where Cumberland had allegedly enlisted semi-pro baseball players to beat Georgia Tech 22-0 — decided to make a statement. In what will likely stand as the most lopsided game in college football history, Heisman decided to stick exclusively with the running game, racking up 1,620 yards and 28 touchdowns, as the Georgia Tech Engineers beat the Cumberland Bulldogs 222-0.
