Tennessee football had no official team during last pandemic

There’s no historical precedent for how the Tennessee football Volunteers could handle coronavirus.

Amidst a recent spike in COVID-19 cases in many states, the questions about college football happening have returned. Tennessee football fans once again now have to worry if there is going to be a season.

ESPN’s Laura Rutledge reported that players are concerned about the pandemic, and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey says the fate of the season won’t be known until July. There have been a wide range of cases on different teams, from 0 with the Vols to 23 with the Clemson Tigers.

Taking all this into account, what’s the historical precedent for having a season during a pandemic? Is there anything that the last pandemic could show as a sign for this one? Unfortunately, when it comes to Tennessee football, there isn’t much anybody can look to.

The last global pandemic was the Spanish Flu, and that killed tens of millions of people. It began to spread in the U.S. in early 1918, around almost the same time frame of when coronavirus began to spread in the U.S. However, the second wave was the deadly period for this virus, and it began in August of 2018, peaking in October.

Because the second wave, which was killing hundreds of thousands of people by the week, occurred during the Fall, you would think that there was a college football season to look to for precedence. However, like many programs, the Vols did not field an official team that year. They suspended play due to involvement in World War I beginning in 1917.

So in 1917 and 1918, Army recruits and students at the school formed unofficial football teams. They went 0-3 in 1917, and during the heart of the second wave in 1918, they went 3-2. However, nobody counts these years in UT history.

One program that did field an official team, however, was the Vanderbilt Commodores, and they beat the Vols that year 76-0. Of course, it was a team of varsity players against an unofficial team of students, but Vandy still decides to count this game as a win in its history books. That’s a testament to how pathetic the Vanderbilt football program is.

With the war ending in 1918 and the second wave dying down in the Winter of 1919, Tennessee football resumed play that next Fall. Now, we can say the Vols did field a team during the pandemic, as there was a third wave in 1919, and UT did play. They went 3-3-3 that year. However, that wave wasn’t as deadly.

Before the war shut down play, Rocky Top went 8-0-1 in Bender’s first year in 1916 and won its second SIAA title in three years. In 1920, they went 7-2 under Bender. M.B. Banks took over in 1921, and Robert Neyland took over in 1926, which took the Vols to a national level.

No documented evidence existed that showed the men’s basketball or baseball seasons were not official during World War I. However, at the time, coaches usually coached all three sports, and Bender was listed as head coach of the baseball program in 1917 and 1920 and the men’s basketball program in 1917-1917 and 1919-1920.

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Meanwhile, Bender’s name as head coach is conspicuously absent from the 1918 and 1919 baseball teams along with the 1917-1918 and 1918-1919 men’s basketball teams. What’s clear is that he was not coaching any of the programs in the 1917-1918 and 1918-1919 academic school years, which would cover the years Tennessee football didn’t have an official team.

Furthermore, the Vols played anywhere from 14 to 18 games in baseball during that time, but they only played 10 games in 1918. They also played 12 to 16 games in basketball but only played eight in 1918-1919. As a result, it seems pretty obvious that those teams in those sports were not official at that time either, and it’s timeline matches the war more than the pandemic.

It’s hard to say what will happen later in the year at this moment. We obviously have no way of knowing what a second wave of the coronavirus could bring. However, we also don’t know what Tennessee football would have done in 1918 if there was no war.

We should note that the college football season did take place, as some programs did field official teams. Technically, the Michigan Wolverines and Pitt Panthers split the national championship. That suggests that if there was no war, teams would have fielded play all over the country. But we still have no idea for sure what would have happened, and this year is in limbo as well.