SMU beat Houston 77-63 Saturday, a modern CFB regulation record. SMU beat Houston 77-63 Saturday, a modern CFB regulation record. (Sickos Committee on Twitter.)
College FootballBy Andrew Bucholtz on

Saturday had plenty of remarkable results amongst the top CFB teams, with three teams in the College Football Playoff rankings’ Top 10 falling (No. 1 Tennessee, No. 4 Clemson, and No. 6 Alabama). But the day’s zaniest score may have come from two unranked teams, the SMU Mustangs and Houston Cougars. There, SMU posted a 77-63 home win. That  featured a bunch of ridiculous stats, including 16 combined passing touchdowns from the teams:

This was the highest-scoring DI FBS regulation game in modern college football history (Texas A&M 74, LSU 72 in 2018 was higher, but that was a seven-overtime game that produced a rule change). This also produced a unique score:

But maybe the most remarkable thing here was how this was higher-scoring than the last basketball game between the teams. That game, on Feb. 27 of this year, was a 75-61 home win for Houston. So both sides in that basketball game scored less points than their football counterparts here.

There are many wild stats that can be drawn out of the box score here. For one, both quarterbacks averaged almost 10 yards per pass attempt.  SMU‘s Tanner Mordecai threw for 379 yards (on 28 completions on 37 attempts, 75.7 percent) and nine touchdowns with no interceptions, an average of 10.2 yards per attempt, while Houston’s Clayton Tune completed 36 of 53 attempts (67.8 per cent) for 527 yards with seven touchdowns and three interceptions, averaging 9.9 yards per attempt.

The rushing games were no slouch here, either. Tune picked up 111 rushing yards and a touchdown on 12 carries, an average of 9.3 yards per carry, while Stacy Lane added four carries for 71 yards and a touchdown. For SMU, Tyler Lavine had 25 carries for 146 yards and a touchdown, an average of 5.8 yards per carry, while Velton Gardner added 68 yards on eight carries (8.5 yards per carry), and Mordecai had eight carries for 54 yards (6.8 yards per carry) and a touchdown.

Beyond that, the teams went back and forth on touchdown drives an incredible amount. Here’s an indication of that:

And here are a few highlights from the game:

This was certainly a score we don’t see regularly. We’ll see what the SMU and Houston offenses do going on from here.

[ESPN; screenshot from Sickos Committee on Twitter]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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