My high school teacher mentioned to my class that there is a game that has been going on for 300+ years at a British academy. The rules are that two teams push a very large boulder around with nothing but their heads and shoulders into a goal. My teacher said that they only have scored a dozen or so points over the centuries that they have been playing it. Does anyone know what game he is talking about? I couldn't find any details about it on google so and I'm wondering now if it is even real.
Not aware of any such game. The closest I can think of (and even there very distant) would be the Eton wall game where goals are uncommon to put it mildly (one was scored in 2016 with a fair sized gap before that). Points scored through other mechanisms are slightly more common. The ball is of a fairly normal size however the game does result in a lot of physical pushing up against the wall.
Other candidates would be the various things that get lumped under the general description of medieval football. Haxey Hood (where the “ball” is the shape of a very large sausage and can't be thrown or kicked) involves a lot of pushing but the rules require one goal per year. The Atherstone Ball Game is the only one I can really think of that involves an oversized ball.
Historically it wasn't that uncommon for local areas or schools to have their own sports (fives is another) with variations on the theme of football being pretty common despite the efforts of the authorities to stamp them out over the years. The various "odd" sports that turn up at private schools can be thought of as fossilised versions of these.