If you’re curious about what the return of sports might look like post-pandemic, just take a look back to 1918 when the Spanish Flu swept across the nation.
The Spanish Flu not only claimed millions of lives but also prompted fans to don medical masks for protection. College football expert Tony Barnhart shared a photo on Twitter revealing fans attending a 1918 football game at Georgia Tech, all wearing masks in a bid to stay safe, resembling the situation we face today.
Barnhart, in his coverage for Sports Illustrated, highlighted the challenges faced during the 1918 college football season, with many schools struggling to commence their seasons.
“One of the teams that played almost a complete schedule in 1918 was Georgia Tech, coached by the legendary John Heisman,” Barnhart wrote. “The Golden Tornadoes, as they were known then, played a seven-game schedule with six of those games played at home at Grant Field.
“And despite the threat of the flu, fans turned out at Georgia Tech. The photo that accompanies this story is of an undetermined 1918 Georgia Tech home game that was taken by a student, Thomas Carter, who graduated in the 1920s with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. It’s clear that the vast majority of the spectators in the photo were wearing masks in what published reports said was the peak of the flu in October and November.”
Fast forward to 2020, the upcoming college football season hangs in the balance, and if schools are still shut down in the fall, the possibility of teams playing at their home stadiums seems uncertain.
“There isn’t a model I can run to fix the problem of not having any football,” UCF athletic director Danny White stated to ESPN in April. “I don’t think there’s anybody in my position with a big football fan base that could make decisions to fix that. I don’t know what happens — there’s not a model, there’s not a solution, there’s not an action I can take that’s going to solve that problem.”
