A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game That Rallied a Nation

by Randy W. Roberts

One of the greatest stories in American sports how the 1944 Army team beat Navy, captured a championship, and inspired a nation at war.

“There never has been a sports event, perhaps never an event of any kind, that received the attention of so many Americans in so many places around the world.” So wrote a reporter on December 2, 1944, about the greatest Army-Navy football game in the long history of that storied rivalry. World War II raged; President Roosevelt was seriously ill, only a few months away from death; and Americans on the home front suffered through shortages—including, just days before the game, a Thanksgiving without turkey or pie. But for one day, all that was forgotten. Army’s team was ranked number 1, Navy’s number 2. Army’s years of football misery had been lifted by a wartime team and a brilliant coach who made them a contender. If they beat Navy, they would be national champions. For a few short hours the war seemed to stop, as U.S. soldiers around the world tuned in to a broadcast of the game and turned their thoughts toward home. Randy Roberts has interviewed surviving players and coaches for nearly a decade to bring to life one of the most memorable stories in all of American sports. For three years, Army football upperclassmen had graduated and joined the fight, from Normandy beaches to Pacific atolls. For three hours, their alma mater gave them back one unforgettable performance.

Genres: Sports, Football, History, World War II, Nonfiction

268 pages, Hardcover

First published November 29, 2011

Reviews

[Brian Eshleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much game-by-game and play-by-play retelling to keep me constantly enthralled. Nevertheless, he picks interesting times and details to switch back and forth between what was going on on the football field and the campus versus the maelstrom engulfing the rest of the world. His note on the irony that with all these kids preparing for war the West Point routine tended to keep them so busy that they were the last to get conventional sources of news. Then there's the double irony points out that by scuttlebutt they knew every twist and turn of the war anyway. Worth reading, but kind of at a quick pace.

[Dachokie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Fine Tribute to a Bygone Era of Football ...

This book was reviewed as part of Amazon's Vine program which included a free advance copy of the book.

To be honest, the storied Army-Navy rivalry has never really manifested much excitement in me, mainly because the teams haven't been major players in college football for almost half a century. To most post-baby boomers it is hard to fathom these two military schools ever being equal to today's LSU or Alabama, but during World War II, they were gridiron titans and their annual contest actually did matter. With A TEAM FOR AMERICA, Randy Roberts takes readers back to a time where these service academies simultaneously prepared young men for war on the football field, as well as the real one raging in Europe and the Pacific.

The full title, A TEAM FOR AMERICA: THE ARMY-NAVY GAME THAT RALLIED A NATION, is somewhat deceptive. While the book culminates in the storied 1944 matchup between these two rivals, the game itself receives scant coverage. The bulk of Roberts' work (about 90%) is dedicated to the build-up of the powerful 1944 Army squad (the Team for America) that went undefeated and became national champions ... the final game against Navy game was a symbolic icing on the cake.

Where Roberts takes readers is to a time when sports provided an outlet for a war-weary nation and nothing was more symbolic than Army's football program paralleling its success on the battlefield. While football represents the central nervous system of the story, it is quite easy to become absorbed in the era in which the story was told. Roberts illustrates a clear and vibrant picture of all-American boys becoming men under the tutelage of the rough-and-tumble cavalryman that was their coach, Earl "Red" Blaik. With a global war looming in the background and West Point's purpose of manufacturing Army officers, it becomes clear that playing football at the academy was one last chance for fun and sport before life became deadly serious for most of these young men. What I appreciated most was the detail in which Roberts describes that particular era of football ... when the game was arguably more brutal, basic and raw. Ironically, considering the lack of equipment and technology the players played in a lot more pain back then and did less whining than they do today (one player loses his teeth to a cheap shot and returns to the game only to seek vengeance by breaking the culprit's ribs). It is an era when football at the academies really mattered ... so much that President Roosevelt himself played a part in ensuring the games continued during wartime. But, it is the individuals and the process of developing that 1944 Army team that make for such a special tale as it appeared to parallel the path of the US Army in World War II: initially unprepared to eventually becoming unbeatable.

I appreciated that the book was not a simple recap of one particular game (or season), but the inception and growth of what possibly became West Point football's zenith ... a symbol of what the actual Army had become ... a juggernaut. Sure, subsequent Army teams spawned two Heisman Trophy winners, five undefeated seasons and a future NFL coaching icon, but the success '44 Army team is truly special and A TEAM FOR AMERICA conveys this quite convincingly.

[Scott Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! Read it leading up to the Army/Navy game. Even though it centers around the Army team of 1944 and their rivalry game against Navy that year, it's broader than that. The book covers the war years and effects WW2 had on college campuses, the importance of sports in the fabric of America, and gives great short accounts of Pearl Harbor and D-Day. Worth the read!

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this book for class and although I wasn't really interested in the story at first, the book was written in a way that captured my attention and made it easy to finish. I would recommend it to people interested in the subject.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid read for fans of college football history, Randy Roberts highlights Army's football program in the era surrounding World War II. When "A Team for America," starts, the biggest problem the Cadets squad is facing is their losing streak to Navy. Former cadet "Red" Blaik is brought in to turn around the program, and his greatest success comes as America enters the war and the nation--and its soldiers across the globe--finds itself more invested than ever before it cheering for squads of servicemen on the field.

Roberts does a good job balancing a large cast of characters, introducing dozens of players from a five-year span. We spend a lot of time with the all-stars--Doc Blanchard, Doug Kenna, Glenn Davis and Tex Coulter--but we get to meet players from across the team. The author does a good job relaying the smashmouth football of this era, but he also notes how it evolves, taking us from the single-wing to the T-formation.

"A Team for America" focuses on the football, but it also does a good job capturing the harsh, bullying relentlessness of life at West Point. It illuminates how much of the success of the military squads during this era was because of flexible transfer rules and other big programs shutting down during wartime. Many of the star players on the Army squads detailed here had played several years at other programs; in a way, they were ringers.

I wish the book had pulled back for a larger look at American society during this time. Roberts is very focused on football and the squads, and while we get glimpses of what's going on in the war and how people are feeling during this global crisis, he stays steady and focused on his main subject. It's a good read, with a bit of a narrow focus.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and informative book that builds to the 1944 Army-Navy football game played in the final year of World War II. But the author tells us about more than just that one game. With college football (much bigger than the pro game at that time) struggling to survive during the war years, it becomes apparent how important sports were to American society. Despite the war, the games would go on, and both West Point and Annapolis would benefit from the ability to cherry-pick some of the most talented players in the country for their squads. That 1944 Army-Navy contest was viewed at the time as the game of the century, and in terms of importance to the psyche of a country at war, perhaps it was.

[Ruth York · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. Part military history, part sports (football) history. I was a bit distracted by the tidbit stories that seemed thrown in haphazardly. It seemed to disturb the flow of the story to me. But overall, good solid story, about the young men who played a game they loved, and went on to become men who led our country in battle.

[John McConnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, easy read.

[Patrick Tarbox · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a good educational read on that period of time. Maybe could do better blending in what he got from interviews vs. archives, but it was a good read.

[Lance · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay..and just okay. I was expecting more about the famous Army-Navy game in 1944 which was only the last chapter.

Review:
The years of World War II were certainly trying times for college athletics. Many of the potential athletes that would play sports in college were fighting in one of the military branches. The military academies were losing some of their players early as course work and military training was accelerated to get commissioned officers ready for combat duty quicker. This did affect the football teams at West Point and Annapolis, but despite these issues, the two service academies had some of their best seasons during this time.

The climactic game between them in this era was their meeting in 1944, which is the subject of this book written by Randy Roberts. The focus in the book is on West Point, as the book leads up to the big game with descriptions of how West Point was able to hire coach Earl “Red” Blalik, what was done to recruit some of the top athletes, and the overall mood of the campus. That mood, despite the success of the football team, is mostly gloomy and fatigued from war, much like the rest of the nation.

These are entertaining stories for the most part. There are also nice stories about the two top stars for Army, Glenn Davis and Felix “Doc” Blanchard. Davis’s comment about his speed, stating “God gave me that. I didn’t have to work for it” was a nice little human touch in the story behind a legendary player.

Descriptions of the game of football at the time are also well-written as the brutality of the game is illustrated. The story of All-American Robin Olds getting his teeth knocked out and how he made sure the opponent who did so received his payback is quite vivid with its detail. This was also the time when the current formation of the quarterback receiving the ball on a direct snap from center was introduced – by Army – and the early success of the formation was well-researched and described.

Some war stories are interspersed in the book as well, and this was one of the parts in which I felt the book was more difficult to read as it made the narrative somewhat jumpy and it also was not easy to see the connection between the war story and the football dialogue until well after the war story ended. The one other problem I had with the overall format of the book is that only 16 of the 264 pages on the Nook-formatted book were about the actual game. While this seems like it was enough, as it did not get too bogged down with a play-by-play recap, it felt like the buildup to the game was far more important to the book than the actual game. This seemed to be completely opposite to what the subject of the book would be.

Despite these issues, I enjoyed reading the book as it gives the reader a good look at what the state of college football was in the early 1940’s. For readers who want to learn more about the game at that time, or about that snippet of football history at West Point, this book is one to read.

[Jody Ferguson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dec. 12 marked the 121st game between Army and Navy on the gridiron. They have met every year since 1890, apart from two separate two-year breaks during World War I and in the late 1920s. This year they will play at West Point, in spite of the global pandemic. Even at the height of World War II, the game was played. The game on Dec. 2, 1944, will go down as one of the most momentous college football games ever to take place. No. 1 Army vs. No. 2 Navy. Army was undefeated and untied. Both teams had beaten perennial power Notre Dame. U.S. troops who were fighting across the globe in Europe and in the Pacific, took a short break to listen in on what was billed as the “Game of the Century.” It was the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, and the Indianapolis 500 all rolled into one event. The teams met at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The game captured the nation’s full attention during the grim months of late 1944 as American casualties mounted overseas. So integral was this game to the nation’s war effort that spectators purchased more than $58 million in war bonds. Army, led by back-to-back Heisman Trophy winners Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis (“Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside”), claimed the national championship with a tough 23-7 victory. Undefeated Army would repeat this feat the following year and take home a third national championship after beating an undefeated no. 2 ranked Navy team. No sporting event will perhaps ever capture the full rapt attention of the American nation as the Army-Navy game that was played in 1944.

The build-up to the game and the subsequent gridiron tussle are eloquently portrayed by Randy Roberts in his fine book “A Team for America.” Roberts profiles the main characters, choosing to focus on the Army team and players, such as Blanchard and Davis, as well as the Army coach Earl “Red” Blaik, the first man to coach the team that was not a serving officer. A mere two weeks after the game, a German offense in the Ardennes stopped cold the Allied advance in Europe. Two months after the game, U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima and incurred the single deadliest day in the history of the Marine Corps. The American public settled back into the grim routine of a world war, as 1945 proved to be the costliest year in the war for the United States. Some of the men playing that day would be thrust into the fire months after the game. But on the clear, cold afternoon of Dec. 2, 1944, the American public was able to forget about the war for three hours, and revel in watching (and listening to) two of the greatest teams in college football history to face off. Hopefully, tomorrow we can briefly forget about the terrible news of the losses in our current pandemic and focus on two tremendous teams of young men who will go off to serve their country wherever duty takes them.

https://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-footbal...

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This retelling of the 1944 Army football team is a refreshing example of sports & cultural history. Essentially, this book tells the story of the rise of USMA football in the World War II era, after falling on hards times during the Depression era. The strength of this book is that the author brings a historian's perspective, and not that of only a sports writer.

So in many cases, the strongest writing of this book deals with cultural details that a historian of the ear would be keenly interested in. Roberts writes with a great deal of insight about the role of popular music in the era, the news media, the restrictions on consumer goods and how WWII really forced many Americans to learn and experience more of their own nation than they had before.

Roberts, a history professor at Purdue University, focuses this book on the climactic 1944 game between the #1 & 2 ranked Army & Navy squads. He clearly shows how important this game was to not only the sporting world, but to the nation at large, and to service members serving around the world, listening to the game on short wave service. His descriptions of Army coach Blaik & some of the notable members of the team, including Blanchard & Davis are direct, without embellishment or without any kind of cynical irony. Roberts clearly came to have great affection for these men, some of whom would die in service to their nation in WWII & Korea.

This would be a wonderful book, particularly for teen & college students, and really anyone, to connect them to the really differently ordered world of that era; for it is increasingly hard to communicate what a total war effort looks like, and using these games would demonstrate that well.

The general reader should come away with a greater appreciation for how these men used college football as a teaching & morale tool then, and how servicemen around the world were stirred by this de facto national title game. As Roberts wrote, many men around the world listened to this game in the hope of remembering the joy of being boys again, of the joy of life before the harshness of war.

[J.S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

If the crisp chilly air on your cheeks, the sharp crunch of leaves underfoot, and the smell of a warm fire in the air sounds like football weather to you, you just might enjoy this one. Football is a game made for Fall as much as it is for rivalries, and the Army-Navy rivalry is an old one. But in the early 1940s Navy's dominance of Army was complete. In fact, with the war siphoning off talent everywhere, Army was losing more often than winning.

Brigadier General Robert Eichelberger worried that Army was producing "gracious losers," and brought in Earl "Red" Blaik (West Point, 1920) to turn around the team in 1940. It took him a few years but he managed to build a lineup that routinely trounced lesser opponents and eventually superior ones like Navy as well. The Army-Navy game of 1944 was watched by nearly 70,000 spectators but also broadcast to war-weary troops around the world, and went down in history as one of the great contests of the sport.

Randy Roberts has done a good job of researching and documenting the years leading up to Army's spectacular win. This is not a play-by-play account of that historic game - in fact, he doesn't even get to the game until about 200 pages into the 240 page book. And the game itself is covered in about a half-dozen pages. Instead, he focuses on Blaik's move to Army, the players he recruited, the troubles of each season, the accomplishments and the setbacks. He mixes in a little of the larger world history going on, such as D-Day, but it's mostly about football. Unfortunately, it's dragged down by a heavier emphasis on recruitment to play for Army than the actual games. The brightest parts are the action of the games, but it's too little to compete with the humdrum business of the team. I also wish it had given a little more background on how the game differs from today's contests.

It's a decent little book that's kind of fun to read at this time of year, but there's not enough excitement to really move it to a higher level of enjoyment.

[Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book that focuses on Army football leading up to the 1944 Army - Navy game. In telling his story, Randy Roberts describes not only Army football but the state of college football in the 1930's and through the war years. At times his description seemed more fiction than fact. For example in 1944 the Army - Navy game pits the No. 1 rated team versus the No. 2 ranked team; Army defeats Notre Dame 59 - 0 in 1944 (ND was ranked No. 2 at the time); in 1943 Alabama drops football (what???); college players transferring from SEC and Big Ten schools to play for Army and Navy. Also learned more about how through its V-officer training programs, the Department of the Navy kept Notre Dame football going through the war years and probably kept the all-male school's doors open. It's no wonder that Notre Dame will still play Navy anywhere - anytime; they owe the Navy a debt of gratitude. All in all a very enjoyable book about a much different time in college football and in our country.

[james · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very informative book about college football during World War II. The center of the book is Earle Blaik the head football coach at Dartmouth, who is recruited to coach the team at the US Military Academy. The latter had fallen on hard times due in part to height & weight restrictions for cadets.

The story builds to a conclusion with the Army-Navy game of 1944. Army hadn't beaten Navy for several years. This game was broadcast to US soldiers practically world wide.

Interspersed with the college footbal action there are reports about the progress of the war.

As someone born in 1937 this book brings back from memory the latter stages of the war and also of the great Army teams of 1944-46.

[Mike Seiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. I was expecting more talk of the actual 1944 Army-Navy game like the title inferred. Instead, it was a look as a whole at how the Army football team was built for this game. The actual game was maybe the last two chapter while the rest of the book looked how how the players that were apart of the game for Army came to play for them as well as their motivation for wanting win. A good and interesting book but the title is a bit misleading on what the books covers.

[Phil C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good quick read about an interesting sports era. Nicely explained the V-12 program. It did show how West Point came to dominate during this era, (lowering standards, other NCAA teams reduced to freshmen/soph or no team at all, hand-picking the best of the best) and some-what diminishing (in my eyes) some of the on-the-field acclaim.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to stop reading when the retelling of the 1941 Army-Navy game had Balik assigned to the role of coach for Army, Coach for Navy, and quarterback for Army all in the space of 3 pages. The gross typo made me wonder what else was false. Too bad, because the events and period portrayed were so exciting.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book felt it could have been more.

[N.M. Shevory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written piece about the army-navy football game

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A look at WW2 on the home front and at the military academies and the Army-Navy game.

[Chris Beach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love college football and I loved this book.