Who says it was a national record???

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The Times’ San Fernando Valley/North blogger Austin Knoblauch saw the following story on Rivals.com, and, out of respect for its editor, Mark Tennis, here it is in its entirety:

Many of you may have seen Associated Press reports this week (they ran in numerous newspapers around the country, including USA Today and the L.A. Times) as well as a clip on ESPN (it was one of their top 10 plays on Wednesday’s Sports Center) about a football team from Kansas setting a national record for scoring 72 points in one quarter.

While the focus of this web site is California, we can tell you that this is absolutely NOT correct. We have in our records at StudentSportsFootball.com a team with 81 points in one quarter and another with 73.

Doug Huff of West Virginia, who we work with on national rankings and who is by the way the person who started the national record book in the first place, also thinks that another team in Kansas actually may have the record. Doug says, ‘the all-time highest team score in a game is 256 by Haven, Kan., in 1927 and I’m sure Haven scored more than 72 in a quarter although there are conflicting totals at this time.’

The two totals from Doug’s files that are certainly superior to Smith Center’s total of 72 are 81 for DePaul of Chicago, Ill., in the first quarter of a 156-0 rout against St. Charles, Ill., on October 15, 1916 plus 73 points for Dobyns-Bennett of Kingsport, Tenn., in a 1926 game against Norton, Va. In that Dobyns-Bennett game, which the team won by a score of 193-0, press reports at the time showed a per-quarter line of 52-12-73-53 and it could have been worse. The second and fourth quarters of those games were shortened to just three minutes.

This reminds me of the time when a high school pitcher in Brooklyn threw back-to-back perfect games and became plastered all over the media -- including an appearance on Good Morning America -- because they all thought this kid had done something never before in the history of baseball. Of course, they were all wrong. In fact, there was a listing of a player from California with back-to-back perfect games in our own CalHiSports.com state record book.

If the founder of Cal-Hi Sports, the late Nelson Tennis, was the record book man for California, there’s no doubt that Doug is the record book man for the country. Any media people reading this need to realize that anytime there’s a question about a national record.

—MARK TENNIS