It seems improbable now, but for a long time Sunday was not America’s football day. “When we grew up, pro football players were … a bunch of pot-bellied longshoremen,” broadcaster Vin Scully has recalled, say, of pre-1960. By contrast, Auburn played Alabama. Penn State met Syracuse. Ohio State warred v. Michigan. Saturday was our day, bub, and don’t you forget it.
On the first week in December, Army and Navy forged football’s greatest rivalry. More than a hundred thousand jammed Philadelphia’s Municipal Stadium to see each year’s game — the epitome of who we were: “duty, honor, country.” In 1961, John F. Kennedy, a World War II Navy war hero, sat on the Army side in the first half, then crossed the field at halftime. The entire Navy section rose to chant: “Welcome home! Welcome home!” It was magical. The 35th President beamed.
At high tide, Army-Navy trailed only the World Series as America’s grand divertissement. A baseball highlight film said, “Each autumn comes a day in this great land of ours when … almost everyone is stricken with WORLD SERIES fever.” Service academy football’s boiling point was national, even global. In 1944, General Douglas MacArthur wired victorious West Point coach Red Blaik: “We stopped the war [in the Pacific] to celebrate your magnificent success.”
Army-Navy is still magnificent, as we observed again recently, watching a spectacular that no one who saw or heard it will forget. No Bowl Championship Series berths were decided. No Heisman Trophy candidates prowled the late-autumn turf. No future NFL star paraded his resume. It didn’t matter. It never does. The series has never needed them, crying gotcha to the soul.
Navy’s Midshipmen entered the game 7-4-1. Army’s Black Knights of the Hudson — among sport’s great monikers — were 2-9. Worse, they had lost to Navy 10 straight times: akin to England losing soccer time and again to France. Each team’s corps marched into the pre-game stadium at Philadelphia, a sight announcer Dick Enberg, 77, still calls “chilling.” The game then began: a brio of West Point rushing (370 yards) and Navy leading (17-13) and din rising above the field, crashing against the roof, and ricocheting off the tiers.
With a minute left, Army, still behind, reached Navy’s 14-yard line, first down and surging. Senior quarterback Trent Steelman, thrice losing to the Middies, gave the ball to his fullback, who mishandled it, at which point Army lost its third fumble. Steelman, the only Knight to ever run and pass for 2,000 yards, his career 44 rushing scores topping even Heisman Glenn Davis’s 43, went back to the bench, sat by himself, and began to cry, softly, then inconsolably.
It seems improbable now, but for a long time Sunday was not America’s football day. “When we grew up, pro football players were … a bunch of pot-bellied longshoremen,” broadcaster Vin Scully has recalled, say, of pre-1960. By contrast, Auburn played Alabama. Penn State met Syracuse. Ohio State warred v. Michigan. Saturday was our day, bub, and don’t you forget it.
On the first week in December, Army and Navy forged football’s greatest rivalry. More than a hundred thousand jammed Philadelphia’s Municipal Stadium to see each year’s game — the epitome of who we were: “duty, honor, country.” In 1961, John F. Kennedy, a World War II Navy war hero, sat on the Army side in the first half, then crossed the field at halftime. The entire Navy section rose to chant: “Welcome home! Welcome home!” It was magical. The 35th President beamed.
At high tide, Army-Navy trailed only the World Series as America’s grand divertissement. A baseball highlight film said, “Each autumn comes a day in this great land of ours when … almost everyone is stricken with WORLD SERIES fever.” Service academy football’s boiling point was national, even global. In 1944, General Douglas MacArthur wired victorious West Point coach Red Blaik: “We stopped the war [in the Pacific] to celebrate your magnificent success.”
Army-Navy is still magnificent, as we observed again recently, watching a spectacular that no one who saw or heard it will forget. No Bowl Championship Series berths were decided. No Heisman Trophy candidates prowled the late-autumn turf. No future NFL star paraded his resume. It didn’t matter. It never does. The series has never needed them, crying gotcha to the soul.
Navy’s Midshipmen entered the game 7-4-1. Army’s Black Knights of the Hudson — among sport’s great monikers — were 2-9. Worse, they had lost to Navy 10 straight times: akin to England losing soccer time and again to France. Each team’s corps marched into the pre-game stadium at Philadelphia, a sight announcer Dick Enberg, 77, still calls “chilling.” The game then began: a brio of West Point rushing (370 yards) and Navy leading (17-13) and din rising above the field, crashing against the roof, and ricocheting off the tiers.
With a minute left, Army, still behind, reached Navy’s 14-yard line, first down and surging. Senior quarterback Trent Steelman, thrice losing to the Middies, gave the ball to his fullback, who mishandled it, at which point Army lost its third fumble. Steelman, the only Knight to ever run and pass for 2,000 yards, his career 44 rushing scores topping even Heisman Glenn Davis’s 43, went back to the bench, sat by himself, and began to cry, softly, then inconsolably.
Teammates left the son of Bowling Green, Ky., whose grandfather served in World War II and uncle in the Gulf, alone. He was desolate. Steelman lifted his jersey over his face. Traditionally, the losing Army-Navy team sings its alma mater first. For four years Steelman, Army’s captain, had vowed to “sing second.” Now he sobbed as Army’s alma mater began. Hundreds of practice hours and thousands of dreams and a single vision — “Beat Navy!” shared by plebes and cadets and alumni around the world — lay, ruined, around him. It broke your heart to watch.
In the melee on the field, Steelman’s mates, coach, and others hugged their quarterback. Somehow Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo found him, put an arm around his shoulder, and whispered that despair too would pass — a less random than moving act of kindness. No wonder the Gallup Poll calls the military our most admired institution.
In World War II, General George C. Marshall was asked if he had a secret weapon to win the war. “We do indeed,” he said. “The best damn kids in the world.” As Army-Navy shows, they still are.
Curt Smith is the author of 15 books, former speechwriter to President George H.W. Bush, and Associated Press “Best in New York State” radio commentator. He is Senior Lecturer of English at the University of Rochester. Email: curtsmith@netacc.net
