Can you imagine what it might have been like to play football in 1918?

World War I was raging in Europe and the Spanish flu was raging here at home.

This was a tragedy in our family. My father’s oldest sister, a nurse, tended the sick, caught the flu and died. So did 675,000 Americans. It was especially fatal in 20 to 40 year olds.

In comparison, covid-19 infections killed more than 180,000 this year and the US has more than 3 times the population of 1918.

Why would universities in 1918 forge ahead with football while a virus decimated the ranks of young, healthy men? Rachel Bachman asked in The Wall Street Journal recently.

The answer is arguably even bigger than a global pandemic: World War I, the war to end all wars.

The lead-up to that 1918 college football season was similarly chaotic to this year’s, which starts in earnest Thursday with about half of the nation’s major college teams opting out. But the overlay of World War I made 1918 unique and gave weight to the metaphor of football as a battle.

The US War Department warned in September 1918 that college football could be canceled because it would distract from military training. That left many young men “stuck on a military base with not a lot to do,” said Jeremy Swick of the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.

The government reversed course 2 weeks later. Football could help build the aggressiveness and grit to endure grinding days in the trenches of France.

“It would be difficult to overestimate the value of football experience as a part of a soldier’s training,” President Woodrow Wilson said.

Military leaders included giants like former Yale coach Walter Camp, who was advising the Navy on athletics.

Boot camps formed teams after the US entered the war in April 1917. Many contained former college stars.

In 1918, the mighty team at the Naval Station Great Lakes had 3 players later enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: George Halas, Jimmy Conzelman and John “Paddy” Driscoll.

On college campuses, football teams were depleted of students who’d left for the war, so many called upon freshmen to play. Teams also got help from the ranks of the Student Army Training Corps. Some colleges played games against military teams.

The 1918 and 2020 college football seasons carry a few striking parallels. The virus has wreaked havoc on team schedules.

Without a vaccine, masks and social distancing remain two of the primary weapons to slow the pandemic.

Today, billions in TV and ticket revenue are at stake as Clemson, USC and other colleges begin their seasons.

What do you think of this? Please write me at ChronicleSports@yahoo. com .