The 1918 Buffalo Niagaras

Buffalo (NFL)

Buffalo, New York had a turbulent, early-era National Football League team that operated under three different names and several different owners between the 1910s and 1920s...

 season was the fourth season of a top-level professional football team in Buffalo, New York. The team, which was the successor to the Buffalo All-Stars (1915-1917) and predecessor to the 1919 Buffalo Prospects, was one of four teams that played in the newly-created Buffalo Semi-Professional Football League. The league was created to accommodate the travel restrictions put in place because of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and the 1918 flu pandemic, which required a delay in the start of the season (not starting until October 27) and prevented Buffalo's teams from leaving the city.

Because of the greatly fewer number of teams playing across the country in 1918, the Niagaras had greater access to the remaining players who were not in the war. The 1918 Niagaras, whose name was borrowed from an earlier (and later) semi-pro team, were the first Buffalo team to employ former Michigan Wolverines and Youngstown Patricians

Youngstown Patricians

The Youngstown Patricians were a semi-professional football team based in Youngstown, Ohio. In the 1910s, the team briefly held the professional football championship and established itself as a fierce rival of more experienced clubs around the country, some of which later formed the core of the...

 quarterback Ernest "Tommy" Hughitt

Tommy Hughitt

Ernest Fredrick Hughitt , was a National Football League utility player and coach. He was also an All-American quarterback for the University of Michigan in 1913....

; Hughitt would go on to play for the Prospects and its NFL successors through 1924. Under Hughitt's leadership, Buffalo compiled a perfect season

Perfect Season

A perfect season is any sports season, excluding the playoff portion of a season, in which a team remains undefeated and untied. The feat is extremely rare at the professional level of any team sport, and has occurred more commonly at the collegiate level in the United States.A perfect season may...

 of five wins, a sixth game was scheduled but canceled due to it being rendered moot. Because of the travel restrictions, the Niagaras were not allowed to challenge the other teams in the nation (such as the first-place Dayton Triangles

Dayton Triangles

The Dayton Triangles were an original franchise of the American Professional Football Association in 1920. The Triangles were based in Dayton, Ohio, and took their nickname from their home field, Triangle Park, which was located at the confluence of the Great Miami and Stillwater Rivers in north...

, the still-active Detroit Heralds or even Buffalo's regional rivals, the Rochester Jeffersons

Rochester Jeffersons

The Rochester Jeffersons from Rochester, New York played in the National Football League from 1920 to 1925.Formed as an amateur outfit by a rag-tag group of Rochester-area teenagers after the turn of the century , the team became known as the Jeffersons in reference to the locale of their playing...

), leaving it unknown how the team would have fared compared to the rest of the country.

Schedule

Game	Date	Opponent	Result
1	October 20, 1918	Buffalo Hydraulics	Cancelled
2	October 27, 1918	Buffalo Hydraulics	W 20-0
3	November 3, 1918	Buffalo Pierce-Arrows	W 27-0
4	November 10, 1918	Pittsburgh Colored Stars	W 24-0
5	November 17, 1918	Buffalo Hydraulics	Postponed
6	November 24, 1918	Buffalo Hydraulics	W 18-7
7	November 28, 1918	Buffalo Pierce-Arrows	W 20-0
8	N/A	Pittsburgh Colored Stars	Canceled