Tech over Alabama, others?
Tech over Alabama, others?
LA Tech over Alabama II. The Tide were SEC champs that year. Sean Cangelosi --who had also scored a TD against Bama in Tech's 1997 win over the Tide-- solidified his place in LA Tech history as the "Bama Killer" with the go ahead TD in the end zone with a couple of seconds left.
http://static.espn.go.com/ncf/1999/9...ap/llgaad.html
Clearly, Tech's win at Michigan State was also huge. People forget that LT's Chris Norwood made an incredible catch in the end zone with only 13 seconds left that was ruled "out of bounds" (3:23 mark on the video) just 2 plays before the final TD pass completion to DJ Curry. Also, I can't remember who recovered the onside kick for Tech with 1-min left in the game, but that play was obviously huge too. He wore #35. (I'm sure someone will recall the answer to this question.)
Norwood did go out of bounds (barely) on his incredible end zone catch at Michigan State. The player that recovered the onside kick for Tech was freshman DB Dez Abrams. http://www.latechsports.com/sports/m...091303aaa.html
Not on the same scale as Alabama x2 or Michigan State but Tech's win against LSU men's basketball in Baton Rouge in 1988 was big to me and had the good fortune to see in person. Video includes a very young TMo. I know that there have been bigger wins in the tournament (Pitt and Ohio State the year we lost the close one to Oklahoma), but this was really big at the time.
https://youtu.be/NMgxtO5cbtg
While we all remember the 1997 Alabama win my recollection is that it was a "mild" upset. I know someone has posted some rankings but I think the 1999 win was a much bigger upset. After the loss there was considerable talk about firing their coach (Mike Dubose) who subsequently won SEC coach of the year as Alabama won the SEC.
Ok State in Shreveport. Not so much because of the team, but down 36-18 late, Les Miles decides to throw the ball to try and run it up when they had been running all over us to that point. Tech wins 39-36. Should have beat them the year before too, but our punter fumbled late...
Absolutely dominating Fresno after they nearly beat usc was fun too
The 1990 CSU victory at the Joe was certainly in the top ten. (If you were there, you might vote it at least top 5) It was an incredible game.
Here they are ordered by the difference in Elo rating at the time we beat them:Poor Fresno.
- Bowling Green (OH), 1995 (-1012)
- Fresno St. (CA), 2008 (-736)
- Alabama, 1997 (-735)
- Toledo (OH), 1996 (-714)
- Fresno St. (CA), 2005 (-680)
- Nevada, 2011 (-600)
- Fresno St. (CA), 2004 (-599)
- Hawaii, 2009 (-479)
- Alabama, 1999 (-401)
- Ball St. (IN), 1978 (-400)
- Ouachita Baptist (AR), 1929 (-399)
- Southern Arkansas, 1930 (-389)
- Houston (TX), 2012 (-361)
- Louisiana-Lafayette, 1926 (-340)
- Mississippi St., 1996 (-328)
Some of the other upsets mentioned here (while amazing games by other metrics) fall closer to the center of the bell curve for wins and don't quite make the Top 15.
The thing I remember most about the game was at half-time. The LSPoo mascot went to the foul line, shot the ball and made it. He then turned to Champ and indicated the line. Champ made a dismissive wave of his paw, went to the half court line and had nothing but string music. The tigger threw up his hands in surrender and left the court.
This is great stuff!
Poor MAC, too.
Did you calculate this yourself, or is there a website that has this info on it?
I'm curious what it would look like with end of season Elo rating.
Also curious if the 2014 NWST debacle is #1 the other way around. That was the #2 biggest upset that season according to some computer ranking, maybe Elo. VT upsetting tOSU was #1.
Caclulated myself. 538 has their own version, but I wanted a total history from Game 1 (similar to what is done for international soccer and rugby) that includes the pre-poll era and the wild early days of college football. I had to scrape it all from College Football Data Warehouse, but then the site went down for some reason. I need to update the code and results on my GitHub at some point, but you can read about my process there.
Unfortunately, I don't compare games between non-divisional opponents, only teams that were in the "top division" (whatever that was at the time). So OBU games count before 1936, but not after that. I'd intended to add them into the system, but I need the data, which CFB Warehouse had but no one else did (no one cares about defunct Div III teams). I would imagine that it's certainly the biggest Tech loss in the last 30 years though.
Good point. I still stand by my statement, but:
Going into the NWSt game we had an Elo of 952. Going into the SFA game we had an Elo 1006. So by that measure, SFA was the worse loss since we should have been "better." But then again, that whole decade was not exactly our greatest.