The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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the first-ever season-ending matchup between the Wolverines and the Buckeyes. A Nov. 2 contest against Northwestern also got the ax. "There were no Michigan games four weeks in a row," Rosiek said. "The reason was, the state health officer in Michigan issued a ban on outdoor sports. That wiped out the October games in Michigan, and that Nov. 2 game." So Michigan's schedule became November dominated, with a scramble to even make it a five-game slate. Those issues paled in comparison to what was happening in Europe and other parts of the U.S. On Aug. 8, the allies dominated the Battle of the Amiens, marking the kickoff of the Hundred Days Offensive, which led to the end of the war. Armored divisions for the allies hammered through German trenches previously thought impenetrable. As late summer became fall, the Central Powers were coming apart in every direction. Major defeats and an Arab revolt devastated both the Ottoman economy and land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the allies in October. The war ground down to near completion. Not so with the pandemic, which expe- rienced its initial peak in October and No- vember 1918. According to the ACEP, in September, Dr. Victor Vaughn, acting Surgeon General of the Army, received urgent orders to report to Camp Devens near Boston. What he wit- nessed stunned him. "I saw hundreds of young stalwart men in uniform coming into the wards of the hospi- tal," Dr. Vaughn said. "Every bed was full, yet others crowded in. The faces were a blu- ish cast; a cough brought up the bloodstained sputum. In the morning, the dead bodies are stacked about the morgue like cordwood." Some 12,000 Americans died of influenza in September 1918, fueling half of two na- tional movements with conflicting purposes. The push toward the end of the war effort demanded that many operations speed up. The epidemic advised a national shutdown. The ACEP noted the following: • On Sept. 28, some 200,000 gathered in Philadelphia for a Liberty Loan Drive in support of the war effort. In a matter of days, 635 new flu cases arose. The city ac- knowledged the full-fledged epidemic, or- dering the closing of churches, schools and theaters, along with other "places of public amusement." Two weeks later, Philadelphia recorded 289 flu deaths in a single day. • On Oct. 3, the epidemic hit the West Coast, some 700 cases and one death reported at the Washington Naval Training Station in Seattle. • In mid-October, New York recorded 851 flu deaths in a day, with 195,000 Americans dying of the epidemic in the month of Octo- ber. According to the ACEP, funeral homes hired armed guards to halt people from steal- ing coffins. • Violence flared nationally over people not wearing masks, and the homicide and suicide numbers spiked across the nation. Dr. Andrew Milsten made this observa- tion: "An epidemic erodes social cohesive- ness because the source of your danger is your fellow human beings, the source of your danger is your wife, children, parents and so on. So, if an epidemic goes on long enough, and the bodies start to pile up and nobody can dig graves fast enough to put the people into them, then morality does start to break down." The Games Begin Amid all the national turmoil, Yost's crew kept its Oct. 5 opening-game date with Case. Michigan faced little resistance, pummeling the visitors 33-0 in the first of four shutouts the Wolverines were to record. The crowd, estimated at close to 4,000, gath- ered on a sunny day to witness the common non-conference opponents meet. Steketee, in his first collegiate contest, scored three touch- downs from close range, more than enough to make things comfortable in the opener. The Wolverines then experienced a bye month, not playing again until November. The epidemic and governing authorities in- tervened to put football on hold, and Yost's crew went back into workout mode. That gave them plenty of time to prepare for traveling to the Windy City, to meet conference foe University of Chicago, coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg. Yost no doubt had this game circled, underlined and boxed in, given that he hadn't squared off against Stagg since 1905 — and he remembered that one all too well. Yost, of course, never lost a game his first four seasons at Michigan. His "Point-A- Minute" squads went 55-0-1 until the final contest of 1905, pummeling opponents by such audacious scores as 130-0 and 128-0. His 1905 squad looked well on its way to- "So there was some controversy over who was champion. … Illinois declined that invitation [to play a conference championship game], owing to bad weather, which may have been an excuse to not play. A good guess would be, when Michigan whipped Ohio [State] by a point worse than Illinois did, they got cold feet." U-M HISTORIAN BOB ROSIEK ON THE 1918 WESTERN CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP The 1918 squad was the first under legendary coach Fielding H. Yost to claim a national title since Michigan won four in a row for him from 1901-04. PHOTO COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ATHLETICS THE WOLVERINE 2020 FOOTBALL PREVIEW ■ 33