Cumberland University

Cumberland's strangest record was set on a football field. On October 7, 1916, the school, which had dropped football the year before, still owed Georgia Tech a game in Atlanta under a contract with a $3,000 forfeit. Baseball captain George E. Allen gathered fraternity brothers and law students to make the trip. Tech's coach, John Heisman, also ran the baseball team Cumberland had beaten 22-0 earlier that year, and his side won 222-0, still the most lopsided score in college football. Cumberland never made a first down, and the last two quarters were cut to 12 minutes.

What the plaque says

Cumberland University As one of the oldest universities in Tennessee, Cumberland University has a storied history of academic excellence. Among its graduates are U.S. Supreme Court Justices Howell Edmunds Jackson and Horace Harmon Lurton; Nobel Peace Prize recipient Cordell Hull, known as the Father of the United Nations; numerous governors and senators. The original campus burned during the Civil War. In 1892 it relocated to the current campus and adopted the image of the Phoenix symbolizing the institution's rise from the ashes.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wynnewood State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A National Historic Landmark log inn at the Bledsoe's Lick springs, beside a Mississippian mound center and tied to the domestic slave trade.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 17 mi
  Andrew Jackson's cotton plantation east of Nashville, where visitors can walk to the quarters, Alfred's Cabin and the Enslaved Cemetery as well as the mansion.
• Stones River National Battlefield — 24 mi
  The Murfreesboro battlefield of December 1862, with a national cemetery built by Black soldiers, a Trail of Tears route and the story of the freedmen's settlement called Cemetery.
• Red Boiling Springs — 34 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.

More markers nearby

• Caruthers Hall — 0.3 mi
• Robert Looney Caruthers — 0.3 mi
• Judge Nathan Green, Sr. — 0.4 mi
• Wilson County Courthouses — 0.5 mi