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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/Davidellias on 2025-10-15 19:07:18+00:00.
Case in point: I want to introduce you to Paul Zaeske. According to the Wikipedia article on NCAA Records, the record of most receiving touchdowns in a single game, belongs to Paul Zaeske of North Park University on Chicago’s northside. The NCAA D-II Record Book confirms this on page 7.
Zaeske did this during a very unique game. In 1968 his North Park Vikings played against Chicagoland rival North Central College. The game ended up bad, with the final score being a notoriously insane scoreline of 104-32. This was in a big boom period for scores of 100+ points, between 1967-1969 100 point games happened four times, with this being the third of its kind in that period. The game also gets recognized as having the most points scored by an opponent in a game which a team scored 100+ points.
Now the astute of you may have noticed that the opponent, North Central is a pretty big powerhouse school in Division III Football. So when did they jump from Division II to Division III? Never, they never played D-II football. They were in D-III since its formation.. So why does Paul Zaeske have the D-II Record for TD Receptions in a game?
In the 1960s the NCAA created the College and University divisions. While I can’t find a source that tells me how they divided the schools other than “Larger/Smaller” schools, the NCAA College Division counts for the D-II Records books. If you look at the D2 Records you can see multiple cases of this, such as Allegheny’s Mike Ganey, who set the record for most consecutive pass completions, doing so in 1967. Or Henry Schaefer, the Johns Hopkins QB who in 1965 throw a record 9 interceptions in a game vs Haveford. So yeah a lot of Division II Records were set before D-II was officially a thing.
Now is Paul Zaeske’s record the overall record for CFB? Well lets look at the NAIA Record book and see if the record holder has more than 8tds in a game. It’s on page 5 and…oh it’s Paul Zaeske and its from the same game. Yeah so this was partially spoiled if you looked at the 1973 D-III season as it was a common practice at the time for schools to have membership in both the NCAA and NAIA, a practice that largely died down in the 70s but as recently as 1998. A similar case is brought up when you look at the D3 Record Book and see a 1977 game between Concordia-Morehead and Macalester where Concordia scored a D-3 record 12 rushing TDs, but would two years later play in the NAIA D-II Playoffs.
So yeah older record are genuinely wild. You could have had people set records in both NCAA and NAIA or set them in a division the school never officially played in. Back in the day it was a wild west of football in terms of teams.