For the average American, the Army-Navy football game is normally a curiosity at best and an afterthought at worst. On Dec. 2, 1944, however, the Black Knights and Midshipmen clashed in a matchup that enthralled a nation like none other since the service academies first met in 1890.
With Army ranked No. 1 and Navy No. 2 in most national polls, it was the first time that they met while both sat atop the college football rankings. Their lofty standing, though, did not drive all of the public’s interest as the game approached. Because nearly all Americans back home could claim a personal connection to the 16.4 million people who served in the U.S. military during World War II, it might not even have been the biggest factor.
For them, the significance of the matchup extended far beyond a football field. It was an opportunity to escape a general sense of war fatigue as the United States prepared to enter its fourth year of direct involvement in the deadliest and most wide-ranging conflict ever.
“The Army-Navy game symbolized the continuation of peacetime rivalries in a time of national crisis,” author Randy Roberts wrote in “A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game That Rallied a Nation at War.” “In a very real sense, it stood for exactly what Americans most desired, a return to the normality of American life.”
Originally set for Navy’s 12,000-seat stadium, demand for tickets was so great that the decision to relocate the game to Municipal Stadium in Baltimore, a much larger venue, was finalized just two weeks before kickoff. Tied to the purchase of war bonds, tickets sold out in an hour. The bigger takeaway: No matter which team won, more than $58.6 million was raised for the war effort — a far cry from when members of the Corps of Cadets contributed 52 cents each to pay half of Navy’s traveling expenses for the academies’ inaugural meeting more than a half-century prior.
Several military dignitaries — including Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall; Gen. Hap Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces; and Adm. Ernest King, chief of naval operations — braved freezing temperatures to be among the more than 66,000 people in attendance. Millions of other Americans followed the action at home or aboard on military bases on radio. (The first Army-Navy Game to be televised nationally came the following year, when both teams again were ranked Nos. 1 and 2.)
Determined to snap its five-game losing streak to the Midshipmen, the Black Knights received a little extra motivation from a pregame telegram from the South Pacific. Coach Red Blaik read the succinct message from Army Gen. Robert Eichelberger, a former West Point superintendent, to his squad: “Win for all the soldiers scattered throughout the world.”
Led by future Heisman Trophy winners Felix “Doc” Blanchard and Glenn Davis, Army entered the contest with an 8-0 record, having wiped out its previous opponents by an average margin of victory of more than 56 points per game. Navy came in at 6-2 and with a first-year coach, Oscar Hagberg, who previously had been in charge of a submarine command.
In a game that acclaimed sports writer Grantland Rice touted as “one of the best and most important football games ever played,” Army grabbed a 7-0 halftime lead and increased its edge with a safety in the third quarter before Navy pulled within 9-7 after a touchdown by Clyde Scott, a future NFL player and silver medalist in the 110-meter hurdles at the 1948 Olympics in London.
That two-point gap was all that separated the two teams until Army pulled away in the fourth quarter after Blanchard and Davis reached the end zone. The 23-7 victory clinched the Black Knights’ first national championship since 1914. (They did not play in a postseason bowl game.)
It was not lost on Blaik, who was considered such a hard-nosed coach that his first book was titled “You Have to Pay the Price,” how special Army’s undefeated season was. Showing a softer side, he gave each of his players a souvenir book with the following note:
“Seldom in a lifetime’s experience is one permitted the complete satisfaction of being part of a perfect performance,” Blaik wrote. “To the coaches, the 23-7 [victory] is enough. To the squad members, by hard work and sacrifice, you superbly combined ability, ambition, and the desire to win, thereby leaving a rich heritage for future Academy squads.
“From her sons, West Point expects the best. You were the best. In truth, you were a storybook team.”
Gen. Douglas MacArthur lauded the performance, calling the 1944 Black Knights “the greatest of all Army teams. We have stopped the war to celebrate your magnificent success.”
Sadly, the war “stopped” all too briefly. Two weeks after one of the service academies’ most memorable games ever, the Battle of the Bulge began.
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