Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – He arrived in town only days shy of his 29th birthday, a former football star and team captain at Wisconsin eager to get started as the new football coach and athletic director at the University of Florida.

There was no way for Alfred Leo Buser to know the storms ahead when he planted foot here in September 1917 to replace Charles J. McCoy as head of a Gators football program early in its second decade of existence.
 

An All-American player for the Badgers, Buser's reputation as an intelligent and disciplined student of the game preceded his arrival. He displayed a determined attitude to succeed in one of his first interviews.

"I like the situation here and only hope we can turn out a team that will be a credit to the University of Florida, the state and the alumni. I can assure you that the 1917 team will be a bunch of fighters –  football fighters -- and shall never know what the word 'quit' means,'' Buser told The Tampa Times.
 
Taking over a team that finished winless in five games the previous season, Buser faced immediate challenges, primarily filling out a schedule after Georgia, Mercer and Chattanooga canceled games due to looming concerns over America's increased involvement in World War I.

In Buser's first season, the Gators took their lumps – they finished 2-4 and lost all four games by 48 or more points – but as the offseason commenced and the calendar flipped to 1918, Buser's focus was squarely on building a competitive team and to increase enthusiasm and awareness for his program.

According to various newspaper reports of the day, in his role as UF's first athletic director, Buser created UF's first intramural sports system in early 1918 and spoke of the improvements he expected on the football field in the upcoming season.

By February of '18, however, the realities of war stretched from the Irish Sea to UF's campus.
 
The tragedy of the war strikes home at the University of Florida, in the torpedoing of the Tuscania, which carried among its men a brother of A.L. Buser, the efficient coach of the University of Florida. – Lede to a story in the Feb. 11, 1918, edition of The Tampa Tribune
 
The Gators host Idaho on Saturday less than a week since the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918. As tens of thousands of fans file into Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on a day the Gators will pay tribute to military veterans, many of those fans will likely be unaware of two bronze plaques attached to a wall above the north end zone at Florida Field.
 

In October 1934, four years after the Gators unveiled their new stadium in 1930, Florida Field was dedicated to those Florida veterans who served their country in World War I. Former UF President John J. Tigert, who assumed the position in 1928 and was a World War I veteran, spearheaded the movement during his tenure. Another plaque, created in 1990 during the stadium's expansion, lists the names of 17 UF veterans killed in World War I. The names were retrieved from a nearly 60-year-old scroll that was placed in a pouch and sealed in the wall behind the original plaque.

In what is often referred to as the Great War for its unprecedented carnage and destruction, an estimated 16 million people (military and civilians) lost their lives as the battle raged in Europe from the summer of 1914 to Armistice Day in November 1918. In its summary, the Encyclopedia Britannica describes World War I as a conflict that pitted the Central Powers – mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey – against the Allies – primarily France, Russia, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and, starting in 1917, the United States.

As U.S. troops made their way to aid the war efforts, the UF football program was impacted in February of 1918 when Buser learned that his brother, Arnold A. Buser, was at first unaccounted for in the sinking of the Tuscania, a luxury Transatlantic Ocean liner that had been converted into a troopship once America got involved in the war.

As it transported more than 2,000 passengers for what would be its final voyage, the majority of them American servicemen, the Tuscania was attacked by a German U-boat and sunk to the bottom of the North Channel Sea on the evening of Feb. 5, 1918.

Newspaper reports later in the week relayed the news across the Atlantic.

Arnold A. Buser, a brother of Alfred L. Buser, athletic coach at the University of Florida, was attached to the 107th supply train, one of the units aboard the Tuscania according to the War Department's report of yesterday. His fate is not known. – The Ocala Evening Star, Feb. 8, 1918, edition.

Stationed at Camp MacArthur in Waco, Texas, after his Wisconsin National Guard unit was deployed into action, Arnold A. Buser's fate was not as grim as once feared. Buser was not among the 210 souls who vanished in the Tuscania's demise.
 
Arnold A. Buser not only survived, he returned to the Buser family's hometown of Madison, Wis., following the war and operated the family's grocery store for many years.

Buser's memory of the war never faded, though.

"We were firing and giving them plenty during the entire morning. Dispatches had been received that all activities were to cease at one hour before noon,'' Buser is quoted in the Eau Claire (Wis.) Leader-Telegram on Nov. 10, 1925. "When the time arrived there was no great joy shown by anyone. The noise ceased; everything was quiet. We were in no mood to do any celebrating. The soldiers who were back in the cities had a merry time, but there was no time for us to celebrate. Our march into Germany followed and preparations had to be made. The 32nd Division had no rest until it reached the Rhine."

Buser recalled that instead of joy, he saw relief on the faces of his fellow soldiers.
 
World War I and an influenza epidemic rendered the 1918 college football season to footnote status. The biggest game that season was a matchup between Pittsburgh and Georgia Tech at Forbes Field to raise money for U.S. military relief efforts.

The Gators played one game – a 14-2 loss to Camp Johnson that remains shrouded in mystery based on sketchy newspapers accounts of that era. It's a contest that doesn't appear to have included the presence of second-year coach Alfred L. Buser.
 

The U.S. War Department requested on Sept. 12, 1918, that no fall football schedules be arranged by educational institutions with student army training corps. Florida was among the 400 colleges and universities across the country under that directive.

By the late spring of 1918, Buser was among those members of the University of Florida called to serve. According to his World War I service card, Buser reported with his Army ROTC unit to the training base in Plattsburgh, N.Y.


There is no evidence Buser was ever deployed to Europe during the war and little information is gleaned from his duties in the service from subsequent newspaper reports. The most notable reports that touch on Buser's military stint is when he returned to UF in January 1919 with his wife and young son.


University of Florida football coach A.L. Buser, 1917-19 Mon, Jan 20, 1919 – Page 3 · The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Palm Beach, Florida, United States of America) · Newspapers.com
Buser's first task after the war was to reboot the football program, starting with assembling a schedule for the upcoming season. Multiple headlines that spring focused on Florida scheduling a game against Georgia to be played in Tampa. The game came to fruition, a 16-0 Gators loss that remains the only meeting in the storied rivalry to be played there.

In Florida's first game after the war, Buser led the Gators to a 33-2 home win over Georgia A&M. The following week, as they prepared to host Mercer, Buser appears in a column by Walter Camp, a prominent football writer of the era whose name remains linked to the sport 100 years later.

Buser spoke about the uncertainty of what kind of team the Gators would be in his first season back.

"I don't know whether or not I can make the team, but someday I intend to teach school and when I do the boys are going to expect me to be able to teach them football, so I am going to learn the game from the ground up, by experience'' Buser said.

Florida defeated Mercer 48-0 – Camp predicted a big win in his column that ran in the Oct. 16, 1918, edition of The Miami News – before losing three in a row. The Gators recovered to win their final three games to finish 5-3.

Four months after representing the Gators at the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association's annual convention in Birmingham, Ala., in December 1919, perhaps the most unusual career of any Gators head coach ended. Buser announced his resignation in April 1920 and was replaced by William Kline.

Buser eventually settled in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and followed through on the plans he shared with Camp the previous year. He spent time as athletic director and football coach at Central High in Minneapolis prior to leaving coaching behind to focus on education as long-time principal at Roosevelt Junior High in St. Paul.

His brother, once feared lost in World War I, died in January 1950 from a heart attack at age 59 in their hometown. Alfred Leo Buser, career record of 7-8, died in December 1956.

He was 68 years old, a former football star at Wisconsin and a World War I veteran.