The cheer from here come Saturday? Go Navy! Beat Army!

By Tony Zonca — MikeDragoSports.com senior contributor

Before NCAA national championship playoffs, before ESPN, before College Gameday and two jillion bowl games that nobody watches, the must-see football attraction was the annual Army-Navy game.

Played since 1890, mostly at three sites in Philadelphia, starting at Franklin Field, the game was played usually on the second Saturday in December.  Back in the day, before TV coverage, football fans across the nation and abroad — especially military veterans — had their ears glued to their radios, caught up in every play.

My earliest recollection of the game came when I was in the first grade.  The heroes of the day were Army’s running back tandem of Doc (Mr. Inside) Blanchard and Glenn (Mr. Outside) Davis.

Twice, in 1944 and ’45, Army was undefeated and national champion, with Blanchard winning the Heisman Trophy as a junior, Davis as a senior.

They may have been the most famous names in America at the time.

For the record, Navy led the series 60-49-7 going into the 2022 game.

Flash forward to 1958 and Navy running back Joe Bellino, who at 5-9 and 175 pounds was not an imposing figure.  But he was unusually strong in the legs and had the speed and agility to run past defenders as well as run over them.

From a small town near Boston, Bellino was a three-sport star in high school who turned down an opportunity to sign a baseball contract with the Pirates.

Bellino was a two-way player who also returned punts and kickoffs.  In other words, he almost never left the field.  In 1960, his senior year, he intercepted a pass in the end zone to preserve a 17-12 Navy win.

That season he was first-team All-American and won both the Heisman Trophy and Maxwell Club Award, the ultimate prizes in college football.  After fulfilling his military commitment he played three years in the AFL with the Boston Patriots, injuries shortening his career.

Navy’s most iconic player over the years was arguably Roger Staubach, who went on to capture two Super Bowl trophies with the Dallas Cowboys.  The 1963 Heisman Trophy recipient, Staubach led Navy to a 21-15 victory that year over the Black Knights.

That game was originally canceled due to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy the previous month.  The Kennedy family interceded, said JFK, a Navy veteran, would have wanted the game to be played.

There were other greats who played in the game including Army running back Pete Dawkins and Midshipmen WR Phil McConkey along with RBs Chet Moeller and Napoleon McCallum, who broke many of Bellino’s school records.

And then there was Earl (Red) Blaik, the Army coach from 1941 to ’58.  His teams won three national championships and he finished with a record of 121-33-10.  Blaik was a living legend, known — he was called The Colonel — for his attention to fundamentals and as a strict disciplinarian.

He was one of the first to change to the two-platoon system and the first to use game film to scout his own team.  He also was innovative.  In 1958 he moved junior WR Bill Carpenter out wide and away from the huddle; Carpenter got his signals from the QB.  Nicknamed “The Lonesome End,” as a senior Carpenter caught 43 passes for 591 yards, at the time a team record.  This was still the 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust era.

Twenty Blaik assistants went on to become head coaches including Vince Lombardi, Sid Gilman, Bobby Dodds, Eddie Crowder and Paul Dietzel.

I had some personal ties to several of the academies’ players.  The first was George Welsh.  I went to Lansford High in Carbon County.  In the early 1950s Welsh was a terrific quarterback for Coaldale, our arch-rival.  Even so, all of us kids pretended we were Welsh in our playground games.

Welsh was an All-American QB at Navy in 1955 before becoming an assistant under Rip Engle and then Joe Paterno at Penn State from 1963-72.  He took over a struggling Navy program in 1973 and left with a 55-46-1 record and three bowl appearances.

After his stint with the Midshipmen he rescued an awful University of Virginia program — it had two winning seasons in 29 years — and left with a record of 189-132-4 and 15 bowl appearances.

After Carpenter, the second lonesome end at Army became Paul Zmuida of Schuylkill Haven.  How do I remember?  Well, it was Zmuida, a defensive back at the Haven, who tackled me with two minutes left in the second game of my senior season, fracturing my ankle.  You don’t forget those things.

John (Butch) Kanuch, who was a senior at Lansford High when I was a freshman, and who lived in my neighborhood, was a two-year starter at end for Navy in the late ’50s.  Bill Whitehead, a year behind me at LHS, started at least one season at center for Army.

The game has lost much of its attraction, its significance, and it’s rare when either team is ranked in the Top 25.  But I’ll watch the entire spectacle, from pregame to postgame.  As a Marine veteran I’ll be saying, Go Navy, Beat Army.