Saturday, September 18, 2010

Has any college player ever had a perfect 1261.6 QB rating?

A perfect QB rating of 158.3 has been accomplished in the NFL by 35 different QBs. However, the college QB rating system differs rather drastically from the NFL system in that the upper limit is 1261.6 (every attempt is a 99-yard completion for touchdown), and the lower limit is -731.6 (every attempt is completed, but results in a 99-yard loss). It's a lot to ask for a QB to throw a 99 yard TD on every play, but if you throw away minimum pass attempt rules, there may have been a case where a player has come in for 1 play and thrown a long TD pass.

Former Tennessee WR Lucas Taylor is a good example of this, as he has a career passing rating of 866.8 including 1 game with a passer rating of 900.4.



But, has any player gone 1 for 1 for a 99 yard TD? It may have happened during the course of the 1977 Florida/Rice game. Current NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth was a freshman QB for Florida that year and came in during garbage time to throw a 99 yard TD pass for his
first career completion.


Since no box score seems to exist of this game, I can't confirm if this was his first pass attempt, or if he threw any more passes during the game (though this is a safe assumption). If that was in fact his first pass attempt, then he at one point during the game had a QB rating of 1261.6!

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Portland St. had 4 points at halftime vs EWU



Unfortunately they had to kick 2 field goals in the 2nd half and ruin the score even though they were getting blown out anyway. I think this is reason enough for Jerry Glanville to be fired. You'd think a man who's immortalized in a Sega Genesis game would be aware of how important it is to achieve the holy grail of weird football scores.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

When did the 1 point safety start popping up in video games?

The scenario where a team can score 1 point in a game involves the most improbable of events, running backwards 97 yards into your own end zone on a 2 pt conversion attempt. Since it'll never happen in real life, the only way we can simulate it is through video games. But when did college football games actually add this most obscure of scoring possibilities?

I tried to go back as far as I could and downloaded some of the very first NCAA football games for SNES: bill walsh's college football (1994), USA college football (1996), and NCAA football (1994).

The results:

bill walsh's college football gave me 2 points for the safety




USA college football and NCAA football gave me no points and counted it as simply a failed try:




Note: I had to take 20 delay of games in NCAA football in order to accomplish a 1 point safety as it was impossible to outrun the defense from tackling me running backwards. Excellent AI mobygames!

So we've determined that no one had any clue about the 1 point safety in the 90s, especially not video game programmers.

Anecdotally, I was able to also find out that 2002 NCAA football for Sega Dreamcast counted it as a failed conversion try.

Now here is a screenshot from NCAA 2006 which came out the year after the Texas/Texas A&M 1 point safety game, still the only DI-A recorded instance of this type of scoring.



In conclusion, that game made the 1 point safety well known enough that video game programmers had to include it in the latest versions of NCAA Football, although I've been told its actual inclusion has been sporadic from year to year.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Have 4 NBA teams (playing each other) ever had the same exact point total at halftime on a given day?

Yes, it happened on 2/23/09. Who knows if this has happened prior to this but some rough math puts the possibility at 110,000-1. Imagine parlaying that with the odds of Devin Harris hitting a half-court game winning buzzer beater!

Monday, September 29, 2008

4 points in a football game? Yes, it has been done!

In an ESPN game no less. Iowa 6 Penn St. 4 10/23/04. Props to Kirk Ferentz for contributing to the annals of weird football scores and giving Penn St. their 2nd safety instead of punting from the 1 yard line. No wonder you always hear his name when NFL jobs become open.

What about 4 points during a game?

Check out this amazing box score for last year's game between UMass and URI

3rd 13:15 UMASS - Victor Cruz safety
UMASS 4 - URI 6


The final score was an ordinary 12-6, which is too bad, because UMass scored their 6 points on 3 safeties! Kyle Harrington had to ruin everything by getting another safety making the score completely forgettable. They ended up losing in overtime anyway, so I hope he learned his lesson. You could've been part of history Kyle. You could've been a contender.

Also worth noting, the first ever college football game in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton ended in a 6-4 Rutgers victory. Obviously scoring was vastly different in those days, as were attitudes about the game. One professor was seen waving an umbrella during the contest, yelling "you will come to no Christian end!"

Besides Auburn/Miss. St., has any football game ever ended with a 3-2 score?

Yes, it has happened 6 other times in NCAA history.

Clemson 3, Duke 2 - Oct. 16, 1965 at Durham, N.C.

TCU 3, Texas 2 - Nov. 12, 1960 in Fort Worth

TCU 3, LSU 2 - Jan. 1, 1936 at New Orleans, La. (Sugar Bowl)

Iowa State 3, Kansas State 2 - Nov. 20, 1926 at Manhattan, Kan.

Iowa State 3, Kansas State 2 - Nov. 9, 1929 at Manhattan, Kan.

VMI 3, Kentucky 2 - Nov. 2, 1912 at Lexington, Ky.


This game also came very close to ending in a 4-3 final score. In the 4th quarter, with Mississippi St. down 3-2 and on the Auburn 45 or so, facing a 4th and 15, I was gearing up for a pooch punt that would pin Auburn back and allow the possibility of another safety. Inexplicably, Sylvester Croom went for it, to the shagrin of not only me but the color commentator, who lambasted him for this decision. Sure it didn't make sense football strategy wise, there was plenty of time left to force a 3 and out and get the ball back, but it also killed a relatively decent chance that the bulldogs would finish with 4 points, which also should've been taken into account. In conclusion, fuck Sylvester Croom.

Has an American Football team ever scored 1 point in a game?

No.

BUT

In 1948, the AAFC's (predecessor of the AFL) Brooklyn Dodgers played a pre-season game against the CFL's Montreal Alouettes in which the first half featured Canadian rules and the 2nd half featured American rules. The final score was 27-1, with the Dodgers beating the Alouettes. Presumably the 1 point was scored on a "rouge", whatever that is.

Source: http://www.luckyshow.org/football/BkDodgers.htm

The only way this would occur in a non-Canadian rules game would be for the defensive team to get a 1 point safety after they gave up a TD. More details here.

You can simulate this in NCAA Football for Playstation or XBox. Just score a TD, then on the 2 point try, run all the way back into your own end zone and either get tackled there or step out of bounds. The score should end up 6-1! Unfortunately, it appears that this little quirk wasn't included in the latest version.