A Civil War - Army vs Navy

John Feinstein is the best sports writer around period; end of story. This is an author that Dan turned me on to several years ago. His modus operandi is to pick a sports topic, spend a year living in the system and then write these incredible books about the sport and, more importantly, the people that live them. His most well known book is called A Good Walk Spoiled about golf although I haven't read that one yet. He's tackled subjects like a year in the life of ACC basketball and, in what I think is his best book, The Last Amateurs, a year of Patriot League basketball -- the last college league that did not allow scholarship athletes.

Army vs Navy is -- surprise, surprise -- about the rivalry between West Point and the Naval Academy. As always, Feinstein, essentially lived with the teams for a year culminating in the 1995 Army/Navy football game (or as its called in Annapolis, the Navy/Army game). There is a lot of detailed discriptions here about the 20 or so football games the two teams played, but most of this book lets you get to know the players on these teams. In the last 20 years or so, the academies have not been terribly successful in football. They are both schools with high academic standards and your education requires at least a 5 year commitment to the military after graduation. On top of that, the environment is very difficult. About 80% of entering football players don't remain on the team until graduation. This means that the best high school football players, i.e. those with NFL hopes, can't qualify or aren't interested in the academies. The flipside is that those players who do end up here, are totally dedicated to their teams, knowing that this will probably be the last football they ever play.

One of the best stories in the book is about Shaun Stephenson, a kid who ended up at the academy in a somewhat backwards way. He did quite have the grades to qualify coming out of high school so, like his older brother Dion, joined the Navy. While in Iraq during Dessert Storm, Shaun learns that his brother has been killed by, what they later learn, was friendly fire. Shaun escorts his brother's body home and, when he gets ready to return to Iraq, learns about US policy to avoid sending a deceased soldier's brother back in to a combat zone. Shaun is told he can have any other assignment and asks for admission to the Naval Academy. After moving up the chain of command, he eventually gets a phone call from the President Bush telling him that he'll be going to Annapolis. I pull this one guy because its a good illustration of where the emphasis in Feinstein's writing is. While Shaun appears throughout the book, its a story of his struggle through academics and injuries that has him waiting until his senior year to play and then only playing a few plays in a few games.

Reality is this book is probably only going to appeal to hardcore sports fans and that's really a shame. It's a book made of great stories about interesting boys and men. Those of you who are married to sports fanatics would probably understand a little better why we're fanatics by reading a book like this.