Virginia Tech head coach Justin Fuente suggested earlier this week that his roster might be a little shorthanded when facing NC State Saturday in Blacksburg, Va., because of the large number of his players who have been quarantined due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maybe, maybe not. Who knows what is believable regarding injuries and illnesses these days?

It is absolutely true, however, that Virginia Tech once beat Wake Forest, NC State, North Carolina and every team it played during a global pandemic virtually one-handed.

That, of course, was in 1918 during the Spanish Influenza outbreak and in the midst of World War I. It also happens to be the most successful Virginia Tech season ever, as the Hokies completed the only unbeaten campaign in school history, including victories over NC State (25-0) in Norfolk, Va., and over an unsanctioned, non-varsity North Carolina squad (18-7) in Chapel Hill. (Long story short: North Carolina does not recognize this loss.) The touchdown scored on a 20-yard Tar Heel pass after a 70-yard interception return was one of just two scores given up that season by Virginia Tech’s defense.

Virginia Tech had an advantage that year. Already a military training school when the United States entered World War I, it did not shut down its extracurricular activities in October 1918, as almost every other school in the country did when the U.S. Army drafted every able-bodied 18- to 20-year-old in the country in the summer of 1918. While several games were postponed and training-camp opponents were substituted, Tech played a full schedule against available teams.

The Hokies’ team co-captain and star player that season was fullback Hank Crisp, from the Edgecombe County town of Crisp, N.C. When he was 5, Crisp’s family moved to the Pitt County town of Falkland, which is where Crisp tragically lost his right hand while helping his father fill a grain silo. His family moved around quite a bit, but Crisp ended up enrolling at Hampden-Sydney College in Prince Edward County, Va., in the fall of 1915 to play football for coach Charles Bernier.

Despite his physical loss, Crisp lettered in football, basketball and track at both Hampden-Sydney and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute for Agriculture and Mechanics (now known as Virginia Tech), where he transferred after Bernier was hired to coach the Hokies.

Crisp was a dominant player in his seasons at Hampden-Sydney, so much so that after a particularly impressive performance against VMI an opposing coach asked, “Why don’t you cut one hand off all your players?”

Crisp played for the Hokies from 1916-19, including three neutral-site games against the Wolfpack in Norfolk.

The 1918 game was the most critical for the Hokies, who won their first four contests over the Belmont Athletic Club, Camp Humphreys, Washington & Lee and Wake Forest. (Camp Humphreys was a temporary military installation in Fairfax County, Va., where the flu hit particularly hard. Its football team was allowed to play Virginia Tech because flu- and pneumonia-related camp deaths fell from 50 per day down to just 10 per day.)

This edition of the Hokies had an overall lack of depth, because of the flu and military service. For example, Crisp’s fellow co-captain, Monk Younger, never suited up to play that season because he was stationed in France with the U.S. Army throughout the fall of 1918.

When State College and VPI played in Norfolk, the flu outbreak had slightly subsided. Wake County reported more than 5,000 flu-related deaths that fall, according to the News & Observer, the second-highest total in the state.

The game was only eventful in that just one week after giving up a touchdown on all but one possession against Georgia Tech in a 128-0 loss, NC State’s defense held Virginia Tech without scoring for five full minutes. Eventually, the State defense allowed just four scores, with Crisp kicking Virginia Tech’s lone extra point in the 25-0 Gobbler victory.

The next season, with Crisp playing as a one-handed quarterback, the Wolfpack ended its decade-long streak without winning in the series with a 3-0 victory in a game that was again played in Norfolk. Crisp was inducted into the Virginia Tech Athletics Hall of Fame in 1987.

When his playing career ended, Crisp followed Bernier to Alabama, where Bernier took a job as basketball coach and athletics director. Bernier named Crisp head basketball coach after one season, a position Crisp held from 1923-42 and again from 1945-46. He was also a member of football coach Wallace Wade’s staff, mentoring both the offensive and defensive line on four Alabama teams that were selected national champions. He won his only contest against NC State, 23-17, in a Southern Conference game in 1931.

Crisp also holds a dear spot in the hearts of the Crimson Tide because he was responsible for going to Fordyce, Ark. — hometown of current NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson — to recruit a young lineman named Paul Bryant, who later had some success as head football coach at Alabama, working under the pseudonym “Bear.”

Crisp twice served as Alabama’s athletics director, naming Bryant to succeed him in 1957. He died in 1970 of a heart attack at the banquet at which he was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. In 1991, Alabama renamed its indoor football facility in Crisp’s memory.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.

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