World War I was raging in Europe, an influenza pandemic was moving around the globe. And so an incipient, but already intense, football rivalry was on hold.
It was 1918.
The University of Minnesota and Michigan had been set to renew the rivalry for the Little Brown Jug. The Gophers were coached by Henry Williams, Michigan by Fielding Yost, original players from the jug's inauguration as a traveling trophy.
It had been eight years since they last met, a gap created by Michigan's temporary exit from the Big Ten.
But Michigan was back, and the battle for the Little Brown Jug — the fabled, oldest-in-college-football trophy whose legend was still in its nascent stages — was about to be renewed.
It didn't happen.
As the Gophers prepare to face Michigan on Saturday in a season opener delayed by the COVID-19 outbreak, this 104th installment of the rivalry offers a chance to look back to another time college football faced a pandemic.
The deal-breaker for Minnesota and Michigan 102 years ago wasn't the deadly influenza outbreak, but the United States' involvement in World War I.