Pittsburgh State vs Georgia Baptist, 11/23/1918

1918 COLLEGE FOOTBALL YEAR-IN-REVIEW

The 1918 College Football season was unique in many ways due to the combined effect of the First World War and the global Influenza pandemic. Many scheduled games were simply eliminated and of those that were played, many were designed as a bolster to the morale of the men about to be sent to France for the Allied offensives that were planned for the spring of 1919 (and which thankfully never proved necessary). These morale-boosting games pitted the collegians against a wide variety of military organizations, from Ambulance Corps to Air Bases, Naval Yards and, most impressively, the Mare Island Marines team.

Mare Island was the first naval base established by the U.S. on the Pacific coast, 25 miles off the coast of San Francisco. It became one of the country's largest shipyards and one of two Marine Corps training depots - and these Marine Corps trainees turned out to be excellent football players (largely because most of them were in fact former college football players). The Marines posted a 10-1-0 record in 1918, earning a berth in the second East-West Bowl game, which was set up as an all-Military affair, where the Mare Island Marines faced off with the Great Lakes Naval team. The Navy recruits handed the Marines their lone loss in the big game, a 28-13 victory.

Mare Island played an almost-exclusively military schedule (they defeated Golden Gate 38-13, and Idaho A&M 34-0 so they were good enough to beat actual college programs too), but many of other military teams played more games with the collegians. The class of the college group was (depending on who you asked) Georgia Baptist (7-0) or for someone from Texas, Travis College (9-0). Georgia Baptist had a star-studded backfield that included, occasionally, Jake Cheeks, who would be an excellent professional, and who played both tackle and back and end Eugene Bell. Among notable programs not fielding a squad in 1918 was again Noble Jones College.

Mott's All-American Team for 1918:

QB Dan Dillon (SO) Sadler
HB Earnie Flowers (FR) Pittsburgh State
HB Everett Wolcott (SO) Annapolis Maritime
FB Mike O'Neill (SR) Pittsburgh State
E Earnest Hart (SR) Garden State
T Alf Brewster (JR) Henrietta College
G Lou Weber (JR) St. Pancras
C Edwin Austin (SO) Lincoln
G Thomas Moss (SO) St. Pancras
T Jake Cheeks (SR) Georgia Baptist
E Eugene Bell (SO) Georgia Baptist