Pitt beat Syracuse on Saturday, 76-61. The teams’ 137 combined points were the most ever in an FBS or 1-A game, regulation or overtime. It narrowly beat out a pair of 136-point efforts that happened in 2007: Navy-North Texas (74-62 in regulation) and Boise State-Nevada (69-67 in four overtimes). Considering the thousands of games that have been played in major college football, that’s a whale of a record to set.
Pitt beat Syracuse in the highest-scoring major college football game ever. 137 points!
That’s an awful lot of offense.
Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
Wyoming and UNLV gave the record a good run in a three-overtime bonanza earlier this year, but they fell just short: 135 total points. That puts into deeper perspective how remarkable it is that Pitt and Cuse backed 137 into a game of just 60 minutes and with a hefty but not historically outrageous 165 total plays.
A broader collection of stats:
Pitt averaged just shy of 11 yards per offensive snap (59 plays), while Syracuse ran 106 plays at a 6.3-yard clip. The total yardage was 1,312, which is huge but a good bit shy of the 1,640 gained between San Jose State and Nevada in 2001, on 168 plays.
Pitt quarterback Nathan Peterman was 9 of 18 passing, but those nine completions went for 251 yards and four touchdowns (i.e. an average of .44 touchdowns and 28 yards per completed pass). Syracuse’s Amba Etta-Tawo, a grad transfer who’s exploded this year, had five touchdowns and 178 receiving yards.
Here’s a highlights collection of Pitt doing offense:
I’m still waiting for Syracuse’s supercut to become available. It’ll be similarly detailed, but a bit less efficient.
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