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I’m going to be 45 years old in the next few weeks. While I contemplate my mortality and look forward to required medical procedures due to my age, I realize I don’t really know much about the college football season in the year I was born. Being bored in the off-season happens all the time, so I decided to just head on over to the Wikipedia page for the 1981 NCAA Division I-A Football season.
Michigan started off the year as a preseason-ranked #1 but lost in the first week to Wisconsin. The eventual National Champion, Clemson was unranked until Week 3, when they made the AP Poll at #19 on their rise all the way to #1, which didn’t occur until the last week of the regular season. It’s remarkable but this is the Sickos Committee, I am not writing about that. I continue to scan the wiki page and just start randomly clicking on teams.
Random thoughts continue to pop in my head:
“Northwestern’s losing streak was still going on, that’s right.”
“Yikes, Virginia was 1-10 with only a win over VMI 13-10?”
“Strange, Texas Tech was 1-9-1 with a random 39-39 tie against TCU?”
“I’m sorry, Georgia Tech finished 1-10 but their only win was against preseason ranked #2 Alabama? And Bama finished 9-2-1 ranked #7? Guess Bama has always gotten off to slow starts against bad teams.”
“I think the Sickos Game of the Year would have been winless UTEP vs winless Colorado State in the Sun Bowl” UTEP finished 1-10 and Colorado State finished 0-12.
Huh, Notre Dame was preseason #3 but went 5-6??
Yikes, preseason 18 Stanford lost seven out of their first eight to finish 4-7
“Ouch, Eastern Michigan was 0-11, what happened there?” clicks…
1981 Eastern Michigan apparently was in the middle of a losing streak of their own. You could say an overshadowed losing streak since Northwestern was still mired in theirs during this year. Northwestern ended theirs in 1982 with a 34 game losing streak, and Eastern Michigan ended theirs in 1982, finishing with a 27-game losing streak, ending it with a 9-7 win over Kent State just three games after Northwestern ended theirs.
I really had no clue about this Eastern Michigan losing streak at all. It’s like it was buried due to Northwestern. Maybe EMU wants to keep this one buried, and I won’t go into too much detail here because I want to keep this to 1981.
The band spelling out EMU at a football game from Eastern Michigan’s year book
What really caught my eye about the 1981 Eastern Michigan season was how many points they scored each game. They were remarkably consistent in how much or how little offense they generated the entire season.
Their highest scoring output of the year was 14 points, then they scored 13 points and 12 points, and then they were shut out once.
In the remaining seven games in their 11-game season, they scored exactly SEVEN points. They did this SEVEN times. No missed extra point or anything. They basically could get one touchdown and one extra point consistently. Now this is something the Commish could dig into to see how the hell this happened. When were the touchdowns scored in these seven games? Were they all garbage time? Did Eastern hop out to a 7-0 lead with a perfectly scripted drive and just couldn’t do anything else the rest of the game?
Am I about to do a post on an 0-11 team from 1981? Yes.
BREAKING DOWN ALL THE EASTERN MICHIGAN GAMES WHEN THEY ONLY SCORED 7 POINTS ON 7 DIFFERENT OCCASIONS IN 1981
Akron 14 - Eastern Michigan 7
Akron ended their six game losing streak. Eastern Michigan took a lead in the second quarter for a 7-0 lead with a 2 yard TD run, Akron scored 6 but missed the extra point. Then the Zips added a TD and 2 point conversion in the 3rd Quarter for the 14-7 win.
Illinois State 28 - Eastern Michigan 7
Scoreless first half, the Redbirds scored three TDs in the first 8 minutes of the second half. Matter of fact, all the scoring was in the 3rd Quarter. 28 straight points by the Redbirds and 7 again for Eastern Michigan to wrap up the quarter.
Maybe need to bring back to the EMU on the shoulder pads here.
Toledo 42 - Eastern Michigan 7
Eastern Michigan led early 7-0 thanks to an 82 yard punt return in the first quarter and Toledo rolled from there.
Ohio 29 - Eastern Michigan 7
Ohio led 3-0. Eastern Michigan got a 62 yard touchdown run for a 7-3 lead in the first quarter. Ohio then scored 20 in the second quarter and that was it.
NIU 30 - Eastern Michigan 7
Eastern Michigan capped off a 14 play, 72 yard drive with a 1 yard TD run and had a 7-3 lead at the half. However, short punts for Eastern doomed them in the second half. Two different 16 yard punts lead to NIU scoring drives.
TWO DIFFERENT 16 YARD PUNTS
Kent State 13 - Eastern Michigan 7
Eastern got out to a 7-0 lead in the second quarter again after a 9 play 63 yard drive with a 13 yard TD run. Then Eastern gave up an 82 yard pass for a TD and another 82 yard TD this time of the rushing variety. We just had two 16 yard punts in the previous game and now two 82 yard TDs, what was going on in Ypsilanti this year???
Eastern nearly had 1,000 yard rusher this year as Richard Calhoun had 971 yards on an 0-11 team!
Western Michigan 38 - Eastern Michigan 7
Western Michigan scored first and rather quickly in the first quarter. Eastern Michigan answered back immediately and tied the score 7-7 with 13:20 left in the game. It was only 14-7 at halftime. The Broncos got a TD in the 3rd to make it 21-7 and added 17 in the final frame.
Eastern Michigan scored exactly 7 points in 7 games in 1981.
Only one of the TDs were garbage time points against Illinois State, after a 28 point third quarter onslaught.
The one touchdown earned them the lead in five out of the seven games and the other one earned them a tie score.
Six out of the seven touchdowns were in the first half.
Does this mean anything? No.
GIANT EMU on the Shoulder Pads
Yeah, I think we need the giant EMU on the shoulder pads again. Maybe this was the random reason for me writing this silly blog post, just to discover the EMU shoulder pads.
EMU on the shoulder pads
Their coach was named Mike Stock and I though this was clever in the Yearbook
Thanks for reading! Hey maybe I can use this information and random wiki search to crown the retroactive Sickos National champion for 1981 now? Hmm…
Also, PLEASE CLICK THE LINK, I know you see this ad all the time but the others are weird AI stuff and it helps support the committee with every click. NO NEED TO PURCHASE.
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