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D-Day was 80 years ago. Tennessee football stopped for a war. Four players never returned.

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D-Day was 80 years ago. Tennessee football stopped for a war. Four players never returned.

Mike Strange
 |  Shopper News columnist

Today in college athletics, coaches and fans worry that their school’s roster could be decimated by the transfer portal.

Once upon a time, a world war cleared out locker rooms.

This week is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France in 1944. The massive assault on the Normandy beaches was a turning point in World War II.

The United States had entered the fight after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The war ended in August 1945.

Among the hundreds of thousands of Americans who served were fellows who would otherwise have been playing college sports.

Tennessee felt the bite early. Coach Robert Neyland, a graduate of West Point, had already been called to active service in 1941, before Pearl Harbor. Assistant John Barnhill assumed head-coaching duties 1941-45.

The 1942 season was played as usual – other than the Rose Bowl moving to Durham, North Carolina, for fear of a Japanese attack on the West Coast. Barnhill’s Vols went 9-1-1.

Neyland would eventually serve in the Asian theater. But in ’42, he was coaching football for the Army. His Eastern All-Stars – comprising active-duty athletes – played NFL teams in a fundraising campaign.  

The ’42 Vols concluded their season in the Sugar Bowl, beating Tulsa 14-7.

It would be the last Tennessee football game for a while – for three Vols, the last ever.

In that Sugar Bowl, Bill Gold scored the first UT touchdown. Denver Crawford blocked a Tulsa punt for a safety. The final touchdown was scored by Clyde “Ig” Fuson.

Gold and Crawford were among a dozen or so lettermen on the ’42 team who served in and survived the war then returned to play again in 1946.

Fuson didn’t come back. He was killed in Europe in December 1944.

Two other ’42 lettermen also died in Europe in the months after D-Day, guard Rudy Klarer and fullback Bill Nowling. Also, Willis Tucker, a 1940 letterman from Knoxville, was killed in November 1944.

By the 1943 season, the war had caught up with football. Tennessee was one of many schools lacking enough bodies to field a team.

Only five SEC schools played on: Georgia Tech, Tulane, LSU, Vanderbilt and Georgia.

Nationally, it was an unusual season, to say the least. Of the schools that played in ’43, some of their games were against military-based teams. The No. 2 team in the final Associated Press poll was Iowa Pre-Flight. National champion Notre Dame’s only loss was to Great Lakes Naval.

Notre Dame star Angelo Bertelli was activated into the Marines six games into the season. When he found out he won the Heisman Trophy, he was already at officer training school.

Football returned at Tennessee in 1944, four months after D-Day. Barnhill’s Vols went 7-1-1, then 8-1 in ‘45.

By 1946, a bunch of grizzled veterans, discharged, came back to campus. So did Neyland.

Walt Slater, a tailback from Rhode Island, lettered in ’41 and ’42. While serving as a navigator on a bomber, Slater’s plane was hit and made an emergency landing in Sweden.

He returned in ’46 and made an iconic play, a 78-yard punt return in a 20-14 win over North Carolina.

Dick Jordan, an end from Mississippi, was a bomber pilot in the war. He came back in ‘46. Other 1942 lettermen who returned in ’46 included tackle Dick Huffman, guards Royal Price, Ray Drost and Jim Myers, end Franklin Hubbell, wingback Bill Hillman and blocking back Charles Mitchell.

The Vols went 9-2, won the SEC title. Huffman, three years away, was a first-team All-American.

If football can survive a world war, it can survive the transfer portal.

Mike Strange is a former writer for the News Sentinel. He currently writes a weekly sports column for Shopper News.

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