When It Rains, It Punts, 65 Times

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We have games in recent times where punters have seldom taken the field. These are generally either high-scoring affairs or games with a bunch of turnovers, or both.

Times have changed. it used to be that punting was one of the most successful weapons of an offense. A team may even doi it on first down to try and flip the field.

Timothy Brown explores this with us in a conversation about one of his Tidbits on football archaeology.com but also tells of a game with a crazy amount of punts.

-Transcribed Conversation of Punting 67 Times with Timothy Brown

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to The Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. Welcome to another edition, where we will visit with our friend Timothy P. Brown of FootballArcheology.com. Tim, welcome back to The Pig Pen.

Good to see you again. Looking forward to having a little chat about football history. Yeah, this is a really interesting and unique point in football history.

I don't know if I've ever heard of this before until I was reading your tidbit recently, and you titled it, when it rains, it punts 65 times. Now, tell us, somebody punted in a game, or two teams punted a game 65 times. Can that actually be? Yes, it's even worse than that.

In another game, they punted 77 times. Oh, my goodness. So this is, I mean, I think a lot of times with people are kind of football history geeks, they're aware of the 1939 Texas Tech Centenary game.

And that was played in Shreveport. So Centenary was the home team. And it was just, I don't know if there was a hurricane that had come through or whatever, but it was raining.

And just, you know, so you just think about it. It was raining a lot in Louisiana that weekend. And so they, you know, play their game on a Saturday afternoon.

And it was just such a mess. I mean, back then teams punted a lot anyways. But it was just at the Centenary game, it was just, it's like a quagmire, just a muddy field, just puddles of water, you know, a couple of inches of water standing on the field.

These teams, basically, couldn't move the ball very well. You know, the balls were just like waterlogged. You certainly couldn't pass it.

So they just resorted to pretty much punting on almost every down. You know, they get the ball, and they just turn around and punt it, hoping that the other team is going to fumble it. And there were a lot of fumbles in the game.

But, you know, so they were basically playing the field position thing. And so, in the Texas Tech Centenary game, they literally punted 77 times in the game. So that was the all-time record.

There were 12 NCAA records set in that game, the record for most punts, most punt yardage, most punt returns, most punt return yardage, and then like individual records for most punts, most punt returns, most punt yardage, yada, yada, yada. And so actually this game also holds the NCAA record where most records set in the game. So it's just one of those really bizarre games and it ends in a 0-0 tie.

So I'd been aware of this game for some time. And then, one way or another, while researching something else, I came across a game that was played the same day and two hours north by interstate today. Now there weren't interstates then, but you know, so somewhere not that far north.

And it was a game between Wichita Baptist and Arkansas Teachers College, now Central Arkansas. And so, like the Centenary Texas Tech game, it was tied 0-0 at the half. You know, same kind of thing; they're punting all the time.

So then six minutes into the third quarter, Wachita punts for the 46th time or between the two teams, you know, they executed the 46th punt of the game, and it goes out of bounds at the yard line of Arkansas teachers. So, what do Arkansas teachers do? They say, okay, we're going to punt. So on first down, they try to punt, but the ball's blocked, or the punt is blocked, rolls into the end zone, and the punter falls on it for a safety.

And then, you know, so now it's 2-0. And basically, the rest of the game is the same stuff. It's one punt after another or nearly so.

And so, you know, they ended up this in that game, they ended up 65 times they punted from scrimmage. There was also the punt following the safety. So, you know, they really had 66 punts in the game.

So, but at least, you know, the game ended in a 2-0 score. So, at least, they did that. They punted all those times, and at least they came out with a winner.

Whereas the other game was a tie game. So it was like, yeah, nothing even happened, right? So anyway, it's just absolutely crazy to think about, you know, in the days before effective drainage systems on a lot of these fields, and you get enough water, and there's just not a whole lot we can do. Yeah.

Okay. Now I've got a question. All right.

Now, I understand the concept of punting. The rules, you know, were somewhat different back and back even before this. White teams punted when they got in trouble deep in their own end, but in an era where you're not throwing a forward pass as much as we do today. And we know, you know, like the old saying, there are only three things that can happen when you throw a pass, and two of them are bad.

Well, snapping a punt, which is, you know, a long backward pass, somebody going between their legs to something they're not really seeing really well, they're snapping somebody standing back there. That seems like a pretty dangerous operation. And why would you do that so often on a muddy field? I understand if you're deep in your own territory. Wouldn't it be safer to try to run and maybe get some yardage and punt on fourth down? Yeah.

And I suspect that they weren't long snapping the way we do today. You know, so you know, back then, a lot of times, even, you know, a lot of times, teams punted in much more of a, a quick kick kind of style. So they might snap back to the tailback and a wing, single-wing formation.

And, you know, just the nature of it was that people had such trouble. The players had so much trouble getting footing that they couldn't, you know, typically they weren't able to rush the punter very effectively. Now, you know, obviously, they did once, once in the game, because they blocked that punt, you know, and it ended up, you know, in safety, but there, there weren't a bunch of punt blocks, you know, despite all the punts.

So, and, you know, just like you see it every once in a while with kids in like youth football, if you don't have a decent long snapper, you know, what people used to do, and even before really long snapping developed, they'd, they'd snap the ball to the quarterback and then he'd it back to the, to the punter or to the fullback at the time. So, you know, they may have had to resort to that too, but yeah, I mean, I just, they just were having so much trouble moving the ball at all, you know, run, you know, they were just, they were more scared of fumbling the ball, mishandling it, fumbling it in their own backfield. So they were just trying to get any kind of field position they could because they'd pump the thing, and it would just plop and stay there.

It's not like it rolled just wherever it landed. I can imagine. Wow.

That is something. And I guess that's something to really think about, you know, 77 times you had a couple of really tired punters. I'm sure they had to soak their legs in ice or something that evening after the game.

Wow. Well, Tim, great stuff, as always. And, you know, we really appreciate these tidbits that you do each and every evening.

Maybe you could share it with the folks so they can enjoy your tidbits. So they're getting the action every single night at seven. Yeah.

You can just go to footballarchaeology.com. You can subscribe there. And if you subscribe, you get an email in your inbox every night at seven o'clock Eastern. And then, you know, read them at your leisure, or you can follow me on Twitter, on threads, or on the Substack app.

But basically the way Twitter is working nowadays, at least for me, you know, even if you follow me on Twitter, you're probably not going to see it. So if you want to see this stuff, you're better off subscribing. All right.

Well, Tim Brown, we thank you very much for sharing with us again. And we will talk to you again next Tuesday about another great historical football attribute. Very good.

Look forward to it. Thanks, Darin.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.