Now THAT was quite a football road trip
Life can seem tough for college football players these days. They’re playing almost every Saturday, sometimes after long plane rides.
But now imagine the guys at the University of the South, better known as Sewanee. (Shown here is a painting of the backfield.) Their story is told in “Unrivaled: Sewanee 1899” on PBS World (7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 16) and then on pbs.org.
In 1899, the team’s manager, a student, booked a game with Texas. Still, that wouldn’t make enough money to pay for the 1,000-mile train ride from the Cumberland Plateau, near Nashville, to Austin.
His solution? On the way back, they would play four more games against top schools. That’s five games in six days, plus 2,500 miles on the train.Sewanee won each game, with a combined score of 91-0. The full season was 12-0, with a combined 322-10. In 2010, the College Football Hall of Fame voted it the best team ever. Read more…