Seven weeks of the college football season are in the book and so far, if there are plans to make a movie of this book, chances are the film won’t completely suck. Big plays; record setting performances — both good and bad — wild finishes and other oddities worth noting are what this column is all about and the past weekend of action didn’t disappoint, but chances are they occurred off your radar screen because they happened, “Elsewhere in College Football”…
Biggest Blowout of the Week
Once again the schedule makers scheduled mismatches throughout college football. Princeton downed Brown 53-0 in the Ivy League; the Indianapolis Greyhounds, the #5 team in D-II, ran a full autopsy on Quincy winning 55-0; Benedictine shutout Graceland in NAIA play 56-0; Shippensburg matched that by throttling Cheyney by the same score and perennial power Mt Union won by 58 but it was Mary-Hardin Baylor, the top-ranked team in D-III, who made the strongest statement in week 7.
The Cru cruised past Howard Payne 65-0 in an American Southwest Conference mis-match-up Saturday afternoon in Belton, Texas. Mary-Hardin Baylor rolled up close to 430 yards in offense and limited the Yellow Jackets to 110 total yards. On 56 plays. Howard Payne averaged 2.6 yards per play and they were only 1 of 14 on third down. Numbers like that against a #1 team add up to 56-point defeats.
Mary-Hardin Baylor improves to 6-0 on the season and HPU drops to 1-5
Fewest Points by a Winning Team
Charleston Southern opened Big South play on the road with a 7-0 victory over Presbyterian making the Bucs the kings of this category this week. Defense dominated play as the only score came with 3:43 left in the game. Noah Shuler’s two-yard TD run came four plays after Presbyterian fumbled deep in their own territory. The two teams combined for just 399 total yards and they each turned the ball over 3 times.
Most Points by a Losing Team
The Kenyon College Lords were looking for their first win of the season and usually, scoring 56 points, would go a long way to accomplishing that goal, but a long way wasn’t enough. They needed to go all the way and didn’t as they fell to the Terriers of Hiram College 62-56. This North Coast Athletic Conference shootout featured a 159 plays and more than 1,300 yards of offense. Kenyon totaled 549 yards of offense—a season high—and the 56 points were the most the Lords had scored since 2007.
Kenyon quarterback Thomas Merkle accounted for 434 of his teams’ yardage and 6 TD’s. The sophomore from York, PA was 32 of 57 and five touchdowns passing and he added a rushing TD.
For the Terriers, their QB Rodney Myers Jr. passed for 268 yards and three scores and he ran for another 93 yards and a score but the player of the game was senior running back Danny Robinson who rushed 22 times for 220 yards and 4 touchdowns. Robinson had TD runs of 1, 32, 47 and 75 yards.
If You Thought Your Team Had a Bad Week, Consider the Week a Cheyney Fan Had
The Wolves of Cheyney University were shutout 56-0 by Shippensburg as reference above. This was the second consecutive week they were shutout. They dropped 62-0 decision to Lock Haven last week. That’s being outscored 118 to zip in the last fortnight.
If you were a Cheyney fan, which I’m not, and you went to the official web site of Cheyney athletics to see how they fared, which I did, it may have struck you as a bit unusual that the only game photo included in the coverage was of a kick-off.
Well at least it seemed odd to me and I visit a lot of official sites to get information on various games to include in these articles and when I saw the photo, I wondered is it possible this kickoff was the highlight of the day for the Wolves. And you know what? It was. In case you’re interested, here’s a link:
More interesting to me was it was the kick-off to start the second half. That was the acme of action for Cheyney. Imagine the Bad News Bears having an official web site back in the day and following their loss to Coach Turner’s Yankees, the only photo account of the game action was Buttermilk drinking a beer and that’s how Cheyney summed up their game Saturday. And it’s incredibly accurate.
The kick-off to start the second half was easily the best play of the day for the Wolves. Alex Rummell kicked it 58 yards to the Shippensburg 7-yard line—the deepest the Raiders touched the ball all day and even then, Charles Headen returned it 36 yards to their own 43-yard line.
How bad was it for Cheyney? This bad:
- The Wolves had 2 first downs
- They ran the ball 23 times and lost a total of 23 yards
- They averaged -1.0 yards per carry
- Cheyney threw the ball 24 times and gained a total of 20 yards
- They punted 10 times
- The Wolves went 0-13 on third down
- Cheyney had the ball for 24:23 and ran at total of 47 plays
- Those 47 plays netted a total of -3 yards
I’m not sure I’ve seen a team finish a game with negative yards but it happened to Cheyney on Saturday and 311 people watched it at O’Shields-Stevenson Stadium in Cheyney, PA. The good news for the fans was it only took 2:38 minutes to play.
47 plays and minus 3 total yards. In 2:34 minutes the Wolves of Cheyney University went 9 feet the wrong way so the photo does cover the best action of the day.
Does the loss your team suffered seem a little better at this point? You’re welcome.
Directional Game of the Week
Central Missouri set a school record with 726 yards of total offense—or about 250 times what Cheyney accumulated—in a 71-22 win over Missouri Southern. The Mules of Central Missouri used a balanced attack—377 yards rushing and 349 through the air—to earn their second consecutive victory. UCM had 32 first downs; averaged 10.4 yards per play; went 7 of 9 on third down and didn’t punt.
Devante Turner carried the ball 14 times for 122 yards and 3 TD’s and QB Brook Bolles threw for 337 yards and two more scores in leading the Mules to a Homecoming Day win and the most points in a game since the 2006 season opener.
Central Missouri is now 5-2 on the season and the Lions of Missouri Southern fall to 0-7.
Finally, Box Scores We Love
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | Total | |
| Gannon University (3-4,2-2) | 14 | 19 | 29 | 14 | 76 |
| Seton Hill (0-7,0-4) | 14 | 3 | 0 | 14 | 31 |
Gannon set school records for yards rushing and points in a game in their win over Seton Hill. The Golden Knights ran for 567 yards with Marc Jones, the NCAA’s leading rusher, racking up 247 on 19 carries. Jones scored three touchdowns including a 52-yarder in which he hurdled over a defender. He added a fourth TD on a 4-yard catch early in the second quarter.
Tyler Palka matched Jones with 4 TD’s. He rushed for 175 yards on just 9 carries. He averaged 19.4 yards per carry and 4 of the 9 times he carried it he scored.
Seton Hill scored first going 65 yards in 3:21 to open the game but the managed only 305 yards the rest of the day. Senior QB Christian Strong scored three times to lead the Griffins who have lost 10 straight games dating back to week eight of last year.