Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

You might be forgetting his return yardage and scores. I noticed someone posted a link to his stats and I'd be willing to suggest that Grange amassed a lot of return yards and scores. That would include both punts and kickoffs.

JameisLoseston wrote:Any cfb experts here? I was searching for what we know of Grange's college stats, and the common figures I'm coming across are "3362 yards and 31 TDs". This seems pretty outlandish for 20 games in the 1920s and would likely make him far and away the best player in college football history, over 150 yards and 1.5 TDs per game in an era when competitive games often ended 7-0. Is this just a mythical record, or what is the reality here?

His most famous game was the 1925 contest against Penn. A lot of Eastern fans were not convinced that Grange was as great as Midwestern fans thought he was, but Grange convinced them in that game. Against a previously undefeated Penn team, he rushed for 237 yards on 28 carries, caught 2 passes for 35 yards, returned 2 punts for 12 yards, and returned 2 kickoffs for 79 yards. After the game, the Penn coach, Lou Young, said that Grange was better than Jim Thorpe. Young had played against Thorpe in 1912.

rhickok1109 wrote:

JameisLoseston wrote:Any cfb experts here? I was searching for what we know of Grange's college stats, and the common figures I'm coming across are "3362 yards and 31 TDs". This seems pretty outlandish for 20 games in the 1920s and would likely make him far and away the best player in college football history, over 150 yards and 1.5 TDs per game in an era when competitive games often ended 7-0. Is this just a mythical record, or what is the reality here?

His most famous game was the 1925 contest against Penn. A lot of Eastern fans were not convinced that Grange was as great as Midwestern fans thought he was, but Grange convinced them in that game. Against a previously undefeated Penn team, he rushed for 237 yards on 28 carries, caught 2 passes for 35 yards, returned 2 punts for 12 yards, and returned 2 kickoffs for 79 yards. After the game, the Penn coach, Lou Young, said that Grange was better than Jim Thorpe. Young had played against Thorpe in 1912.

More famous than his 1924 performance against Michigan?

conace21 wrote:

rhickok1109 wrote:

JameisLoseston wrote:Any cfb experts here? I was searching for what we know of Grange's college stats, and the common figures I'm coming across are "3362 yards and 31 TDs". This seems pretty outlandish for 20 games in the 1920s and would likely make him far and away the best player in college football history, over 150 yards and 1.5 TDs per game in an era when competitive games often ended 7-0. Is this just a mythical record, or what is the reality here?

His most famous game was the 1925 contest against Penn. A lot of Eastern fans were not convinced that Grange was as great as Midwestern fans thought he was, but Grange convinced them in that game. Against a previously undefeated Penn team, he rushed for 237 yards on 28 carries, caught 2 passes for 35 yards, returned 2 punts for 12 yards, and returned 2 kickoffs for 79 yards. After the game, the Penn coach, Lou Young, said that Grange was better than Jim Thorpe. Young had played against Thorpe in 1912.

More famous than his 1924 performance against Michigan?

A case could be made for either one, but to me the key thing about the Penn game is that all the nationally-syndicated New York sportswriters were there to see Grange play for the first time.

I look at it this way: After the 1924 game against Michigan, Grange was Bevo Francis; after the 1925 game against Penn, he was Wilt Chamberlain