“Playing Through a Pandemic: Football, Flu and the 1918 Nebraska Cornhuskers,” the new online exhibit curated by Pete Brink, assistant archivist in University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections, tells of the grit of the 1918 football coaches, players and university administrators.
Images and information from yearbooks, school and local newspapers, and football materials help tell the stories of players, like Roscoe Rhodes, and the 1918 football season challenged both by war and influenza.
Brinks said that archives staff had been interested for a while in looking at how the university handled the 1918 flu epidemic and saw similarities between the past and the present. The football experience was one way to draw comparisons.
Brink will continue to work on expanding the exhibit by including more information on coaches, players, and games. One of the challenges of the 1918 season was developing a complete player roster because players would rotate in and out due to being called up for service or illness.
This exhibit and others covering the topics of women’s suffrage on campus, Shakespeare, University History, Psychological warfare in World War II and more can be found online.
