When Saturday Mattered Most

July 1, 2012
Sports Illustrated editor and writer Beech debuts with an account of Army football's last great season, 1958, when the team finished 8-0-1 and declined a Cotton Bowl invitation. There are no structural surprises here. An introduction tells how football fans began shifting their allegiances to the NFL after 1958, how that year was "the end of an era." The author then proceeds through the season, game by game, pausing to sketch settings and biographies of his principals. The leading character is the coach, Earl Henry "Red" Blaik, who retired at the end of the season after a 121-33-10 record at the U.S. Military Academy. Beech portrays the coach as a near-divine presence on the campus (players waited to be spoken to), a man whose assistants always deferred and who maintained a close relationship with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who received game films every week. The author also deals with the great crisis of Blaik's life--the 1951 academic cheating scandal that involved his own son, who was dismissed from the academy along with scores of others--and profiles a number of players, including Heisman-winning halfback Pete Dawkins, the talented runner Bob Anderson and the celebrated "Lonesome (or Lonely) End" Bill Carpenter, who never entered the huddles but stayed far down the line of scrimmage, where he received signals from his teammates. The author deals carefully with the intrateam rivalries and jealousies and relates highlights of each game, sometimes excessively so, with occasional sports cliches ("blaze of glory"). Beech neglects discussion of the racial composition of the lily-white Army team, and the final chapters belong to the where-are-they-now genre. A competent sports book, but a sharper edge on the author's narrative knife would have sliced more deeply below the surface.

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September 1, 2012
Football began as a college game, and for decades, before the pro game captured fans' imaginations, college-football Saturdays mattered most. For many of those years, the Army and Navy service academies fielded some of the very best teams; Beech focuses on the 1958 Army team coached by Earl Red Blaik. The Cadet football program was decimated by an academic-cheating scandal in the early fifties, and Blaik had been slowly rebuilding the team. Beech shows in fascinating detail how Blaik designed his schemes around the skills he had at hand (many elite athletes couldn't meet the academic requirements to attend West Point). But in '58, Blaik knew he'd brought the Cadets all the way back. Beech provides an extensive context by detailing the scandal and the anguished years it took Blaik to rebuild the program. He also profiles the key players, coaches, and opponents. His research consisted of first-person interviews as well as secondary print sources. Best of all, he re-creates the milieu of honor, dedication, and service to country in which the service academies flourished athletically. A memorable account of a bygone era. For a look at contemporary Army football, see Soldiers First.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)