2014 GT 3rd conversion rate best in recorded history

To be fair, when GT was beating folks 223-0, they probably didn't see third down that often.
 
but when you look at Ohio State and Oregon were #'s 4 and 5 respectively it shows it is a relevant stat.

It is clearly evidence of an "efficient" offense.
 
law_bee said:
but when you look at Ohio State and Oregon were #'s 4 and 5 respectively it shows it is a relevant stat.

It is clearly evidence of an "efficient" offense.
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It's definitely a great stat. I confirmed the date. It's only been tracked since 2005. My point was that it's a relatively hollow record, since it ignores much of college football history.

That said, I'm glad to have it and öööö proud of it. I hope the record stands for a long time.
 
My impression is that the down reset rules were different in 1916. Otherwise that would mean GT scored or failed to get 10 yards on every play, which seems unlikely. We would only have run about 35 plays for that score.

I could actually buy scoring on every play though.

The most likely explanation is that they didn't reset to first down until after four downs, regardless of whether you'd already made the yardage or not. At least that's my guess.
 
Is there actually an existing source anywhere in the world ever even possible in the remotest way not involving time travel that one could gather play by play data prior to the information age? Does, say, the Nebraska SID have this data for it's 1971 team, and could I FOIA it or something? I would be willing to troll all of these sources for a couple of years to come up with a stats database of this stuff, then we could really get some 'all time' records. It just seems like almost nothing is known about college football that happened prior to Y2K unless you were there. I can find stuff like W/L, total offense, game scores, and other tidbits, but play by play data is nowhere.
 
why would you doubt that we scored on every play when the score was 222-0?
 
clapper said:
Another oddity from that link. There were four times in the first quarter that we scored and Cumberland kicked off to us afterwards.
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Yes!! That's what I was referring to when I said it didn't look accurate to me. Still cool.
 
Yup. Back then (not sure if still true) the team that was scored on could choose to kick or receive. Because of differences in rules and strategy, games had more emphasis on defense (holding rules were much stricter iirc). Often, not being able to move the ball on offense meant that you punted and held with the defense to improve field position.
 
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