Led by third year coach Bill Fetzer, the Wildcats competed as a member of the South Atlantic Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SAIAA).
Despite a record of 6–4 (1–2 SAIAA), some would call Davidson the second best southern team that year.
[1] Davidson defeated Auburn 21 to 7, in one of the great upsets in Southern football history,[2] and scored the most on the 1917 Georgia Tech Golden Tornado, for many years considered the greatest football team the South ever produced,[3] in a 32 to 10 loss.
The team included a 17-year-old Buck Flowers, and two other All-Southerns in Wooly Grey and captain Georgie King.
The backfield consisted of Flowers, quarterback Henry Spann, halfback Jack Black, and fullback Buck Burns.