The last article I wrote was about the blue blood programs of college football. I dove through the historical resumes for about thirty programs; looking at national championships, Heisman trophies, all time wins, and several other stats. After a lot less deliberation than I expected honestly, I made my case for the top six programs in history, and the two programs that just missed the cut.
One small anecdote in the article got more feedback than anything else, and that was my reference to Ohio State winning a national championship during WWII.
I had a ton of people reach out to me asking me about what college football was like during WWII, honestly probably more people asked me about that one paragraph than anything else I’ve written before. A lot of it was just positive feedback saying it was cool learning a bit more about a period in college football just isn’t talked about that much; which is understandable because there were significantly more important things going on. Several folks reached out asking questions about what college football was like during the war.
Enough people asked about it that it became a no brainer to make it the subject of my next article. After football, history is one of my favorite things to learn about, specifically American history and the different wars our country has fought in. Naturally this was one of my favorite pieces that I’ve written and hope you enjoy it as well.
WWII officially began on September 1st, 1939 when German forces led by Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. The United States wouldn’t become involved in the war until December of 1941, though. On December 7th, 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed the U.S. Naval Station at Pearl Harbor; killing 163 Americans and injuring nearly 400 more. The next day, December 8th, 1941 the United States declared war on Japan. Germany and Italy, the other Axis nations, officially declared war on the United States in support of Japan. By December 11th, 1941, the United States Congress responded and declared our country at war with both Germany and Italy. By the end of the week we found ourselves in the middle of a war we’d hoped not to participate in.
Nowadays the college football regular season and conference championships go well into
December. In 1941, though, the regular season was over by late November. Duke finished their season by beating NC State 55-6 and winning the Southern Conference; finishing as the second ranked team in the country and earning a Rose Bowl bid against Pacific Coast Conference champions Oregon State.
On December 15th, 1941, one week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, United States Army officers met with Bowl Officials and decided to move the game out of Pasadena and the west coast and to have Duke host the Rose Bowl game in Durham, North Carolina. Oregon State won the game, spoiling the only Rose Bowl that Duke is likely to host.
When the Rose Bowl moved to Durham it created my all-time favorite trivia question: what is the only state to host both the Rose Bowl and the Maui Invitational? It’s North Carolina, who hosted the 1942 Rose Bowl and the 2020 Maui Invitational in Asheville due to covid and travel concerns in Hawaii. Covid also moved the 2021 Rose Bowl to Arlington Texas, marking the second time that the Rose Bowl hasn’t been played in Pasadena.
The 1941 season was all but over when the United States entered WWII, but by the start of the 1942 football season we were all the way in it. Over fifty college programs dropped football ahead of the 1942 season; mostly because they had either lost so many players to military service or relied too heavily on profit from spectators who weren’t going to be spending their money on college football. A lot of the teams that did play had to rely on either freshman or those who had been excused from military service due to medical conditions. Smaller programs like Gonzaga and NYU made the decision that they weren’t going to be able to financially support football during the war.
All of those football players turned soldiers still liked playing football, many of them found ways to continue playing even while they were enlisted.
Over sixteen million Americans joined the armed forces during WWII, compared to just about 119,000 U.S. soldiers in 1935. The United States had made efforts prior to Pearl Harbor to increase their armed forces due to the world threats in Germany and Japan. With so many soldiers enlisting, the military had to find a place to train them, and a lot of soldiers found themselves at different universities.
The Navy opened four preflight schools at the University of North Carolina, the University of Iowa, the University of Georgia, and St. Mary’s University (California). They weren’t enrolled in the University, but were naval aviation candidates who were completing their training on those respective campuses. There were also “military schools” outside of college campuses, Fort Knox and the Great Lakes for example played home to these military schools that were distinct from the service academies in West Point and Annapolis.
These military schools not only developed football teams, but they actually competed against regular universities in the 1942 season. The North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters competed separately from the University of North Carolina, but both called Chapel Hill and Carolina’s campus home. Both the Cloudbusters and the Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers were fortunate to have a young Paul “Bear” Bryant as an assistant; and Iowa Pre-Flight had future Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson as an assistant.
When schools like Gonzaga and NYU dropped out of the 1942 season and military schools started competing against universities it was definitely a weird season. The 1943 season though is when things really got nuts.
In addition to the roughly fifty programs that dropped football ahead of the 1942 season, approximately two-hundred schools dropped college football ahead of the 1943 season. These were big time programs too; Alabama, Michigan State, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Virginia Tech and other major programs all suspended college football in 1943.
Maybe even a bigger change than Alabama and Auburn not playing in the 1943 season, was that service teams became eligible for votes in the Associated Press Poll. In the final poll of the 1943 season there were five of the pre-service military schools that finished in the top twenty-five; that doesn’t even include Army or Navy who both finished in the top twenty-five in 1943.
Bainbridge, March Field, Del Monte Pre-Flight, Great Lakes Naval, and Iowa Pre-Flight all finished in the top twenty-five, which is quite remarkable considering that their players spent most of their time trying to get ready to go fight a war on the other side of the world.
Iowa Pre-Flight actually finished as the second ranked team in the country, behind national champion Notre Dame. Iowa Pre-Flight’s only loss in 1943 was actually to Notre Dame in the second to last game of the season. Both teams came into the game 8-0 and ranked as the first and second best teams in the country respectively. Iowa Pre-Flight lost 14-13, missing a late field goal and failing to capitalize on an Irish turnover in the final minutes. An 8-1 final record and #2 AP ranking isn’t too shabby for a military training base.
Iowa Pre-Flight finishing second in the country in 1943 was the highest that a military school would ever finish. The number of military schools that finished in the top twenty-five doubled from 1943 to 1944, though. Ten different programs would finish in the final AP Poll in 1944; Second Air Force, Saint Mary’s Pre-Flight, Fort Pierce, Great Lakes Navy, El Toro Marines, Norman Pre-Flight, March Field, Iowa Pre-Flight, Bainbridge, and Randolph Field all finished in the top-ten in 1944. That doesn’t even count Army who was crowned as the 1944 National Champ.
So not only were our boys dominating in Europe and Japan, they were dominating college football as well. I’ve never lived through a full on war, and obviously didn’t live through WWII. I’ve always imagined it as this all-consuming cloud that just hung over every aspect of American life as we sent eighteen year olds to go save the world.
It was refreshing to learn that even though college football looked very different for a few years, that was still something that we got to enjoy as a country. More importantly I enjoyed learning about all the football our actual troops got to play. With everything going on in the world and all the responsibility thrown their way, I’m glad a lot of them got at least a small distraction with football.
I think all of us love college football because in one way or another it’s a distraction for all of us. For twelve Saturdays a year all of our actual problems go away and become centered around some teenagers' ability to move a ball into a different colored section of grass. I’m grateful for those teenagers who play college football today, and grateful for the ones who played football while saving the world during WWII.
-By Jake Cowden
Photo: Alamy
SOURCES:
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day
https://www.military.com/off-duty/books/what-us-military-was-attack-pearl-harbor.html