The year is 1918 – the Big Ten, previously known as the Western Conference, has had 10 teams in the league for just one (1) season after the addition of Ohio State (1912) and re-addition of Michigan (1917), IU has a football coach named Jumbo and the planet Earth is in the midst of both its first World War and a pandemic.
Here at CQ, we’ve previously taken stock of the 1918 college football season and mined it for lessons for this fall. The SparkNotes takeaways were that there may not be uniformity from conference to conference or school to school this fall, which is OK, but you’ll be sure to hear grievances from the affected parties or their regional media.