Add a world war to a pandemic and you’ve got the 1918 college football season
The COVID-19 pandemic brings uncertainty to the 2020 college football season, just as World War II did to the sport in the 1940s.
Imagine dealing with both of those conditions at the same time.
Welcome to the 1918 season.
Somehow, a college football campaign unfolded across the nation in the midst of the deadliest pandemic on record and the final weeks of World War I.
Today, major colleges are proceeding cautiously with the coronavirus raging on as the traditional fall season approaches. The Power Five conferences have reduced regular-season schedules to 10 or 11 games, and some have pushed the season’s start to late September.
The news is bleak below the major level. NCAA Divisions II and III have canceled fall sports championships, including football. The NAIA and National Junior College Athletic Association have moved football championships to spring.
In 1918, most college football forged ahead under the most difficult circumstances.
Emphasis on most.
Missouri was one of a handful of schools not to get in any games. But it wasn’t for lack of effort. Here’s how that season was summed up by the school’s 1919 yearbook, The Savitar.
“Everything was arranged for the first game of the season when the “Flu” quarantine went on. The second game and third were postponed in the same manner, yet the team worked steadily on … Work continued with the idea of playing the next game on the schedule, and so it went throughout the season, each game being canceled two or three days ahead of the date of battle.
“One enterprising Tiger follower has figured that some 250 hours were spent in practice but not a single game played.”
This was a time of soft leather helmets, long before widespread integration and two decades before the first game appeared on yet-to-be-invented television.
Still, the sport was popular nationally — the NFL wasn’t formed until 1920 — and games were important to college athletics’ bottom line. And although there was some confusion about whether the War Department believed football should be played in 1918, most seasons started in late September or October.
The sport also had the President’s support.
“It would be difficult to overestimate the value of football experience as part of a soldier’s training,” Woodrow Wilson wrote in a letter that was eventually published in 1919.
But influenza tempered morale when the second wave, the one responsible for the most deaths, crashed directly into the football season.
By then, the United States had entered its second year in the war in Europe, and in early 1918 the War Department had created the Student Army Training Corps on campuses as a way of preparing soldiers. Students would enlist in the SATC, take college courses and train for the military.
It was in SATC barracks at Kansas, where servicemen were living in close quarters, that the flu spread quickly. On Oct. 8, 1918, the Kansas State Board of Health closed the KU campus. Students were urged not to leave the school grounds.
“This is a patriot duty,” Chancellor Frank Strong said in the proclamation. “You are on your honor. Prompt compliance will, we hope, prevent any serious epidemic in Lawrence.”
Kansas got in some games that season, finishing 2-2.
One of those victories came against Kansas State, the only Wildcats’ loss in five games. At least three K-State games were canceled.
“In 1917 and 1919, eight games in a season was about the average,” said Kent Stephens, an historian and curator at the College Football Hall of Fame. “In 1918, typically a school played four or five.”
Before the season started, the War Department issued travel restrictions: Teams couldn’t play a road game that required an overnight stay. Also, because of rosters depleted by enlistment, freshmen populated many teams.
“We all assume the 1918 season was screwed up because of the pandemic, and it certainly played a role,” Stephens said. “My conclusion is the war had a bigger impact.”
With the armistice signed on Nov. 11 to end the war, some restrictions were lifted. Nebraska played four of its six games after that date, including a scoreless tie against Notre Dame in Lincoln that had been rescheduled three times.
Some conferences declared champions that year. The Kansas City-based Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association of Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska, Iowa State, Drake, Grinnell and Washington (Mo.) did not.
At least one program in the Heartland won a conference championship. College of Emporia “Fighting Presbies” finished 6-0 to capture the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference. The school closed in 1974.
Influenza gripped the nation through the third wave, subsiding in the summer of 1919. According to the CDC, an estimated one-third of the world’s population was infected by the flu virus, resulting in at least 50 million deaths. Some 675,000 occurred in the United States.
About 117,000 Americans were killed among the 2.1 million who served during World War I.
It’s difficult to imagine a more disruptive school year than 1918-19. Every day during the football season proved to be a challenge, according to the 1919 Cornhusker, Nebraska’s yearbook:
“It was never surely known even on the eve of a game whether teams would clash the following day or not, for bans on public gatherings were being enforced and lifted at all hours of the day and night.”
There are no statistics on the impact of the gatherings at the games, or the percentage of people who wore face masks. Some groaned about having to wear them, as now.
But after perhaps the most difficult year in college football history, the sport returned strong a year later. The hope now is for a similar comeback next year.
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 12:00 AM.