when saturday mattered most; the last golden season of army football

7/31/2019 When Saturday Mattered Most; The Last Golden Season of Army Football

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THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS .An imprint of St. Martins Press.

WHEN SATURDAY MATTERED MOST . Copyright 2012 by Mark Beech. All rightsreserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, addressSt. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks .com www.stmartins.com

Design by Steven Seighman

ISBN 978-0-312-54818-6 (hardcover)ISBN 978-1-250-01356-9 (e-book)

First Edition: September 2012

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S and go from there. In January 1958, EarlHenry Blaik was a month away from celebrating his sixty-rst birth-day. But at six feet two inches tall, the gure he cut still recalled hisform from nearly four decades before, when he had been a sleek182-pound end on the Army football team. He had kept his body tthrough a lifelong aversion to both drinking and smoking, as well asadherence to a diet that was as bland as it was meagerhis goodfriend Stanley Woodward, the urbane sports editor of the NewarkStar-Ledger , often referred to Blaik as strictly a Shredded Wheatman. A long nose and deep-set blue eyes accentuated his angular,

patrician face. And the thatch of auburn hair he kept neatly partedto the side, a provision of his Scottish heritage, as well as the inspira-tion for the nickname Red, which he would carry throughout hislife, was almost as thick as it had been the day he played fty-eightand a half minutes of a 60 loss to Navy in 1919. He had beencoaching football for over twenty-four years, the last seventeen ofthem at West Point, but he looked nothing like a man in the waning

days of his career.In addition to being a teetotaler, Blaik was also something of a

prude. Te closest he typically came to vulgarity was the starchyphrase Jeebers Katy! Only rarely Jesus Katy! But such exclama-tions were infrequent. Publicly, he hardly ever betrayed emotion or

Chapter 1

LINING UP IN THE SNOW


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raised his voice, save to issue one of his crisp commands on the prac-tice eld. Tough he despised being described in the press as aus-tere or aloof, Blaik carefully cultivated his manner of digniedcool. He stood apart at practice and remained mostly mute through-out each ninety-minute session. Indeed, he almost never spoke toplayers. And rather than y into a rage when he saw someone make amistake, it was instead his habit to summon the wayward cadet to hisside, where he would dispense a quiet, private correction. His com-mand presence was overwhelming. Despite having been off activeduty for nearly forty years, Blaik was known to just about everybodyat West Point, including his civilian assistants, as the Colonel, andthey addressed him that way. Tey did it not just out of deference tothe rank hed held at retirementhed been recommissioned in thereserves in the early days of World War IIbut also out of respect forhis authority.

Blaiks dominance over his program was total. o his players, mostof whom were old enough to remember Armys storied, unbeatennational-championship teams of 1944 and 45, their distant and im-perturbable coach was not so much a mentor as a living, breathingartifact of Americana. Tey held him in awe and accorded him therespect usually reserved in the army for general offi cers. o his civil-ian assistants Blaik was a powerful executive. Instead of dictatingpolicy, he set agendas and left it to them to formulate solutions. Heencouraged vigorous debate, and it was only after he had heard every-

body out on a matter that he would render his decision, at whichpoint all discussion came to an end. So compelling was the force ofBlaiks personality that it had once brought to heel the man who

was soon to become footballs most famous authoritarianVinceLombardi, who when 1958 began was just a year away from becom-ing the head coach of the Green Bay Packers. As Armys line coachfor ve seasons beginning in 1949, the unpolished and volatile Lom-

bardi could become surprisingly meek in Blaiks chilly presence.Indeed, Lombardi came to see his boss as both a mentor and a fathergure. Years later, after he turned Green Bay into itletown, U.S.A.,he rarely missed an opportunity to say that all he knew about orga-nizing and preparing a team to win hed learned from Red Blaik.


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Te Blaik persona was the result of the nearly four decades hehad spent emulating Douglas MacArthur, his idol, whom he hadmet as a First Class, or senior, cadet in 1919. Tat was the year thethen-thirty-nine-year-old brigadier general, who had risen to nationalprominence as the second-most-decorated offi cer of the First World

War, had become the youngest superintendent in the history of theacademy. Behind Blaiks desk in his offi ce on the top oor of the ca-det gymnasiums south tower hung an enormous portrait of MacAr-thur rendering a salute, and any visitor who climbed the steps to thecoachs aerie could not help but notice the physical resemblance be-tween the two men. It was no coincidence. Blaik had been devotedto MacArthur since their rst encounter at West Point, when at aformal reception for members of the First Class the superintendenthad made a simple gesture of goodwill. Ignoring academy protocol,he greeted the star-struck Blaik and a handful of his classmates, allof them decked out in their full-dress uniforms, with an informalhandshake and a pat on the arm. He then offered them their choiceof cigarettesFatimas or Melachrinos. Never mind that smoking

was strictly forbidden for West Point cadets, or that Blaik, thentwenty-two, didnt smoke. It was MacArthurs effort to put his guestsat ease that won him over. From that moment forward, as far as Blaik

was concerned, the general could do no wrong.Te two men saw each other frequently that rst year. On New

Years Day 1919, Blaik had been among the rst cadets to discover

the body of Fourth Class cadet Stephen M. Bird, who had shot him-self in the chest with a Springeld rie. Te shooting was obviouslyintentional; the freshman had tied one end of several feet of string tothe trigger and wrapped the other around the butt- end of the rie,giving himself the necessary leverage to re the weapon. Bird wasapparently distraught over a hazing session from the night before,

which began after several upperclassmen had discovered him writ-

ing poetry in his room.* Public outcry over the suicide had persistedthrough the spring and became especially intense in the halls of

* Wrote Blaik years later, Tat this had disturbed him and that he was probably moroseby nature was indicated by the poetry itself.


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Congress. When MacArthur assumed command at West Point in June 1919, the issue of hazing was at the top of his agenda. He ap-pointed seven cadets, including Blaik, to a Fourth Class CustomsCommittee and tasked them with spotlighting areas of abuse in thetreatment of plebes. Among the recommendations made by the com-mitteeof which Blaik was chairman were that upperclassmenshould not be permitted to lay hands on fourth classmen and thatplebes should not be denied food. MacArthur, who two decades be-fore had been the subject of some particularly brutal hazing sessionsas a Fourth Class cadet, threw his weight behind Blaiks committee,adopting a number of its recommendations.

Te relationship between Blaik and MacArthur grew even closeras a result of the superintendents obsession with Army football. wodecades earlier, accompanied by his doting mother, Pinky who

would reside in a room at a nearby hotel for the next four yearsMacArthur had arrived at West Point a gawky teenager, standingve foot eleven and weighing just over 130 pounds. MacArthur hadgrown up in the army. His father, Lieutenant General Arthur Mac-

Arthur, had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in theCivil War, and Douglas, the youngest of his three sons, always likedto claim that his rst memory had been the sound of bugles.Driven by his family legacy, MacArthur would go on to graduate in1903 as the most decorated cadet in academy history, becomingboth the top student in his class and the highest-ranking member

of the Corps of Cadets. But for all his academic and military accom-plishments, Dauntless Doug had never been able to achieve thesuccess in athletics that he craved. As a scrappy, light-hitting rightelder on the baseball team, the highlight of his three-year careerhad come in 1901, during a 43 loss at Annapolis in the inaugural

Army-Navy game. MacArthur, notorious for his inability to hit acurveball, went hitless in three at-bats but also walked, stole a base,

and scored a run. Te closest he had come to playing football was inthe autumn of 1902, when he had served as the teams manager.

Upon his return to West Point as superintendent, MacArthurquickly set about establishing himself as Armys number-one foot-ball fan. Whenever he could make time in his offi cial schedule, he


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liked to summon Lieutenant Elmer Oliphant to headquarters fora visit. Oliphant was then a young Army assistant coach, but just afew years before, as a member of the Cadets backeld, hed beenperhaps the nest fullback in the country, twice named All- America.Te offi ce visits were mutually benecial: MacArthur got an insideperspective on the team, while Oliphant received weekend passes totravel to upstate New York, where he earned as much as two hun-dred dollars a game playing Sunday football for the Buffalo All-

Americans.Even more than talking about the Army team with Oliphant,

however, MacArthur loved to see it up close. On fall afternoons, it was not uncommon for him to leave his offi ce early to walk over tothe Plainthe academys vast parade ground doubled as a practiceeldso he could watch as the coaches put the squad through itspaces. Tere he would walk the sidelines holding his signature rid-ing crop, the same one hed so famously carried in lieu of a sidearmacross the battleelds of France just the year before. He made him-self conspicuous, and his presence did not go unnoticed by Blaik,already the generals committed disciple, who was Armys star rightend.

During the war, MacArthur had been profoundly impressed byhow well athletes among the armys offi cer corps had performed incombat compared to nonathletes, and he also took note of howgreatly enlisted soldiers tended to admire accomplished sportsmen.

His love of football sprang from his conviction that the game pro-vided a nearly perfect metaphor for warfare. In this he was hardlyalone. Walter Camp, the venerable Yale coach so inuential as aframer of the game, often referred to teams as armies and the kick-ing game as artillery work. MacArthur took things even further,formalizing the academys intramural program at the same time he

was broadening and upgrading its academic curriculum, and pro-

claiming that every cadet would be an athlete, and every athlete would be a cadet. He also vigorously promoted varsity sports, withthe goal of raising the academys national prole. No longer would

Army leave West Point only to play Navy. MacArthur sent his teamsout into the world. In 1921 the Cadets made their rst trip away


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from West Point, traveling to New Haven, Connecticut, where theyfell 147 to mighty Yale in the Yale Bowl. Te ambitious younggeneral harbored dreams of luring the nations gridiron superpowersto the banks of the Hudson and had plans drawn up for a hundred-thousand-seat football stadium that would sit on the rivers westernshore, hard against the rocky bluffs on which the academy stood.* It

was during this time that MacArthur uttered one of his most oft-quoted lines, of which he was so fond that he ordered it carved intothe stone portals of the cadet gymnasium:

UPON THE FIELDS OF FRIENDLY STRIFEARE SOWN THE SEEDS THAT

UPON OTHER FIELDS, ON OTHER DAYSWILL BEAR THE FRUITS OF VICTORY

Te young Blaik believed every word. In MacArthur, he saw amana great man, in his estimation who not only loved footballbut who had also articulated precisely why it was the best game ayoung man could play, especially if that young man was a soldier.Te affi nity Blaik felt toward the general was reciprocated, in partbecause Blaik, never the total cadet that MacArthur had been, wasnamed the best athlete in the Class of 1920an honor that cer-tainly impressed the superintendent. When Blaik was laid up in thehospital over Christmas after his nal game against Navy (an ungen-

tlemanly Midshipman had stuck a nger into his right eye, causinga corneal ulcer), MacArthur sent his personal aide to visit him daily,and even arranged with the academic board to excuse Blaik from hisrst-semester examinations, a special exception made for a specialcadet.

When MacArthurs tour at West Point came to an end in 1922and he was reassigned to the Philippines, he wrote to Blaik and in-

vited him to become his aide de camp. Te young lieutenant was

* MacArthurs stadium was never built. In 1924, two years after his tour at West Pointcame to an end, the academy opened Michie Stadium, a sixteen-thousand-seat structurethat sits on a high bluff overlooking the river valley.


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bride, Merle, spent their honeymoon at the Polo Grounds in New York City watching Army and Navy play to a scoreless tie. Te nextautumn, he began volunteering as a part-time ends coach at Miami.More coaching jobs followed, rst a temporary job at Wisconsin andthen a permanent one at West Point. By 1934, when Dartmouthhired him away from Army to become the Indians head footballcoach, his course through life was set.

Te game consumed Blaik. Hed been infatuated with it sincehis days at Daytons Hawthorne grammar school, when as a fourth-grader he had formed a neighborhood team, the Riverdale Rovers,and appointed himself its coach, captain, and quarterback. Nowthat football was his profession, he rarely thought, or spoke, of any-thing else. It was a labor of love, and Blaiknever a social creatureenjoyed few things more than drawing up game plans or breakingdown lm, play by play and position by position. He had been oneof the rst coaches in the country to make extensive use of lm study,and his enthusiasm was so great that, even in the off-season, he hadbeen known to phone up assistants after the workday had ended andorder them to meet him at the gym so that they could brainstorm

with him late into the evening.In January 1958, nobody in college football had been a head

coach as long as Red Blaik. Such titans of the game as Amos AlonzoStagg and Pop Warner, whose careers stretched back into the nine-teenth century, were still active when he had landed his rst job at

Dartmouth in 1934. And the men alongside whom he had domi-nated the game in the following decadeMichigans Fritz Crislerand Notre Dames Frank Leahyhad long since departed the arena.

A new generation whose legends were still to be written, including Woody Hayes at Ohio State, Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma, and BearBryant, then making preparations for his rst season at Alabama,had taken their place. None of them was more than forty-four years

old, but Hayes and Wilkinson had already combined to win three ofthe last four national titles. Blaik had not won an outright champi-onship at Army in more than twelve years, and his teams hadnt wonmore than seven games in a season since 1950. Football, it seemed,might nally be passing him by.


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when saturday mattered most; the last golden season of army football

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