Synopsis
Brings to life one of college football's oldest and most heated rivalries through the 1994 season, explaining the struggles faced by each team
Reviews
Although neither Army nor Navy is a college football power anymore, their annual rivalry still attracts national attention, and the game between the two service academies is the most important contest for both schools every season. In chronicling the 1995 game (the 96th meeting between the two teams), Feinstein (A Good Walk Spoiled) provides readers with a comprehensive backdrop to the game by recounting the events leading up to Army vs. Navy. Given almost unlimited access to the players and coaches, Feinstein does a superb job of capturing the emotional and physical impact the long season has on the team members of both sides, while also giving a taste of what life is like at Annapolis and West Point. Feinstein focuses his story by concentrating on a number of players at the two schools, providing brief backgrounds and their reasons for attending the academies. Among the players featured are Army's Jim Cantelupe and the offensive linemen nicknamed "The Fat Men," as well as Navy's Andrew Thompson and Chris McCoy. Providing an extra touch of drama is the fact that 1995 was the last year of Army coach Bob Sutton's contract, and his future at the school would be determined by the Cadets' performance in the Navy game. It is to Feinstein's credit that, although the outcome is already in the history books, he builds a sense of excitement and anticipation throughout the book about what would happen in the contest. (Army won.)
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Feinstein, author of the bestselling A Good Walk Spoiled (1995), again delivers the goods, this time chronicling the 1995 season of the West Point and Annapolis football teams, culminating in their annual game. Once a contest that factored heavily in deciding the national college football championship, the annual Army-Navy showdown has gradually been relegated to something approaching sideshow status. Still, to Cadets and Midshipmen alike, no other event during the year means as much as the chance to wrest honor from their rival academy. Feinstein sets the scene by recounting how rigid military discipline and withering academic standards combine to make football at West Point and Annapolis unlike football at any other division I schools. As one former coach says, ``At every other school in America, the hardest part of any football player's day is football practice. At the military academies, the easiest part of a football player's day is football practice.'' Going into the 1995 season, Army and Navy seemed to be headed in opposite directions. Rocked by a series of academic scandals and other tragedies, Navy's morale was low. The West Point team, by contrast, seemed to be brimming with optimism and spirit. During the course of the season, however, both teams played with enough grit and skill to restore some luster to their somewhat tarnished football reputations. Both pulled off a few upsets; both won most of the games they were supposed to win; both lost close games to their mutual pigskin rival, Notre Dame. For Navy, however, the season's real goal was to break Army's recent stranglehold on the series. Army also had a lot at stake: namely, the chance for the team's seniors to be the first Cadet class since 1948 to go 4-0 against Navy. The game, a narrow one-point victory for Army, provided a stunning climax to the season. It also supplies a stirring ending for this exceptional book. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour; radio satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Feinstein has a formula: He gets on the inside of a sport and reports what happens over a period of time. He has done it for golf (A Good Walk Spoiled, LJ 2/15/95), tennis, basketball, baseball, and now college football. In this latest endeavor, he examines the rivalry surrounding the annual Army-Navy football game. Feinstein follows both institutions through the 1995 season and, as with all his books, he writes about much more than just the sport. In examining the military academies, Feinstein puts the reader there, describing daily routines for cadets and midshipmen. Part of what makes the book stand out is that the players involved are true scholar-athletes; they are not using their schools as a stepping-stone to the pros. Highly recommended for athletes and their parents, and for all public and high school libraries.
-?William O. Scheeren, Hempfield Area H.S. Lib., Greensburg, Pa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Feinstein has written books on basketball coach Bobby Knight, the pro golf tour, the pro tennis tour, and major-league baseball. This time he has chosen a topic less likely to achieve massive commercial success but one that appears to have been a labor of love. The Army-Navy football games were once showcases for powerful teams and great players. But times change. The service academies play big-time football schedules but can't compete for top recruits. The result is often poor records and lopsided scores. But it takes a special type of recruit to attend the service academies, and those young men are the focus of Feinstein's examination of one year leading up to the Army-Navy game. He sets the stage with an overview of daily life at the academies, emphasizing the extraordinary academic demands and psychological stress endured by the students, especially the first-year plebes. The discipline often seems arbitrary, but the young men endure it for the joy of playing the game at a competitive level that may have been out of their reach had they attended a conventional institution. Feinstein laces his overview with anecdotal profiles of the players and coaches on both sides that will leave readers unsure of whom to root for when the big game arrives. Amid an extensive body of fine work, this is arguably Feinstein's best. Highly recommended. Wes Lukowsky
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