STARKVILLE — Mississippi State sports have come to a historic standstill.
Following the Southeastern Conference’s announcement Thursday that all spring sports will be canceled due to the ongoing spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, the 2019-2020 athletic season at MSU has come to an abrupt close.
And while the stands at Dudy Noble Field, Humphrey Coliseum and Davis Wade Stadium will remain bare for the foreseeable future, it’s not without precedent.
In 1918, the Mississippi A&M (MSU’s previous name) football team saw its season delayed due to a global influenza pandemic, but the Aggies marched to a 3-2 record in a season marred by sickness, uncertainty and war.
“Never before have conditions been so unfavorable for football at A&M as during the season of 1918,” read the 1919 edition of The Reveille, the university yearbook.
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Following a 1917 campaign in which Mississippi A&M (The previous name for MSU) matched a program record in wins (seven) and downed LSU, Kentucky and in-state rival Ole Miss, the 1918 season should have been met with optimism.
Instead, worldwide plague and the end of World War I decimated not only the Mississippi A&M football roster but the school itself.
As the Spanish flu pandemic killed more than 20 million people between 1918 and 1920, 52 students at the university died from infection while another 1,800 students were infected, according to the Oct. 12, 1918, edition of The College Reflector, the school newspaper that remains in circulation today.
Then a student at Mississippi A&M, future New York Times editor Turner Catledge documented the Spanish flu’s impact on the school.
Training to be a soldier at the time, Catledge recalled being sent to the school hospital to help with patients. Following a sergeant to the first-floor ward, he and longtime friend Peter Minyard were forced to hold down a delirious patient for almost an hour until he died.
“I saw three men die that day,” Catledge wrote in his autobiography My Life and The Times. “They wouldn’t let Peter and me leave. We had gained too much needed experience. After three days I was assigned to be assistant to the undertaker. By then I wanted out of there, so I faked a faint. I didn’t know how people fainted so I fell to the floor and kicked my feet. The undertaker reluctantly released me.”
With the flu gaining a foothold across campus and the globe, the football team too felt its wrath. Games against Alabama, LSU and Mississippi College were canceled as all three schools abandoned football for the 1918 season. A home meeting against Marion Military Institute originally scheduled for Oct. 5 was bumped back a month before also being axed after the visitors were quarantined.
Struggling to find collegiate competition, former coach and then-athletic director William Chadwick helped add contests with teams composed of soldiers from Payne Field (West Point), Park Field (Millington, Tennessee) and Camp Shelby (Hattiesburg). Two games against Ole Miss were also added to the final ledger — marking the only time in the schools’ 119-year rivalry they’ve played twice in a season.
With a smorgasbord schedule now complete and a roster in which just seven of 25 players returned to school in September 1918 due to the United States’ induction into World War I just a year and a half prior, the Aggies were set for the 1918 season.
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After a month-long delay and a plethora of cancellations, Mississippi A&M opened its season Nov. 2, 1918, against Payne Field.
Due to a scheduling error, the Payne Field squad didn’t arrive at the game until 5 p.m., forcing the teams to agree to shortened, eight-minute quarters and that if the game had to be called off for darkness, the visitors would return for a full game at a later date.
Seeing their first action of the season, Mississippi A&M converted their first score of the year on a touchdown pass from quarterback C.E. Russell to right end R.T. Davis.
After the Aggies missed the ensuing extra point, Payne Field — which boasted collegiate stars from Virginia Tech, Notre Dame and Yale — took the lead on a second-quarter rushing touchdown.
Despite field-length drives, the Aggies failed to score before the halftime and third quarter whistles sounded. With darkness enveloping the playing surface, the game was called at the end of the third quarter with Payne Field claiming victory despite prior agreements.
Loss aside, football had returned to Starkville.
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With a win over Camp Shelby the following week courtesy of two touchdowns from Russell and a 6-0 loss to Park Field in Memphis — a game staged to benefit the War Activities Fund — Mississippi A&M marched into their final two contests against Ole Miss needing at least one win to finish .500 or better for the 10th straight year.
After struggling to just 19 points in its first three games, the Aggie offense rebounded resoundingly against its Rebel counterparts at home on Thanksgiving Day.
Facing an Ole Miss squad coached by future MSU baseball coach and field namesake Dudy Noble, the Mississippi A&M offense led by Russell and running back R. Mallory — who starred in place of the injured W.H. Baskin — raced to a 34-0 onslaught of the Rebels in their first meeting of the season.
“The ‘Lambs’ from ‘Ole Miss’ were led to slaughter under the watchful eyes of ‘Duddy’ Noble on Thanksgiving Day,” the Dec. 7, 1918 edition of The College Reflector read. “Eleven ‘Cowboys,’ as the A and M team has been called by the ambitious youth who writes the athletic dope at The Mississippian, acted as the butchers, leading some to believe they were missing their vocation in the study of agriculture, engineering, etc.”
With a victory over their in-state rivals in tow, the Aggies prepared for a rematch with the Rebels without Chadwick. Having succumbed to the flu, the 34-year old athletic director and coach turned his duties over Stanley L. Robinson.
Robinson — who spent the previous two years as the Aggies’ head coach — had missed the earlier portions of the season after enlisting with the Navy Aviation unit in the summer of 1918. Returning to Starkville ahead of the first Ole Miss game, Robinson helped Mississippi A&M to a 13-0 victory and clean sweep of the Rebels in Oxford on Dec. 7, 1918.
Less than a month removed from the end of World War I, the Aggies had completed another season of .500 or better despite a world plagued by conflict and disease and left onlookers abundantly optimistic about the years to come.
“With the material developed during this season, together with the return of a number of A&M stars who have been in the service, prospects look bright for a Southern Championship next year,” the 1919 Reveille read.
Ben Portnoy reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @bportnoy15.
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