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Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Army’s Mr. Inside and
Mr. Outside once ruled
college footballMR. Outside was inside. It's getting colder in Philadelphia. It's football weather. It's fall.
Army is 0-11 now, as it comes into Aloha Stadium to play Hawaii tomorrow night. Army is in its worst season in 114 years of football. These are the days when you reach back into your history for a little hope. And Army has a history that just might trump them all.
This is the day to tell the stories again.
A perfect time to hear from Mr. Outside himself about the days when the Cadets were in the midst of going undefeated for three years straight, of winning three national titles in a row, of featuring back-to-back Heisman Trophy winners in the same back-to-back backfield.
Of perhaps the best team college football has ever assembled, and the best backfield, and the best nicknames, too.
Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside.
There hadn't been anything like it since the Four Horsemen. And there hasn't been since.
This is the legacy of the team Hawaii is playing this week.
Doc Blanchard was a one-man physics lesson (an object in motion tends to continue in motion at constant speed and in a straight line; the force of an object is equal to the product of its mass and acceleration). Glenn Davis was a speedy touchdown machine. "I had a little ability," he said, 50-something years after Time magazine wrote that he ran as if he'd sprouted wings.
He led Army in rushing for four years. He averaged 11 yards per carry twice.
The Cadets rolled over the nation like a gathering force.
Davis counted it up once.
"I figured in those three years I played with 12 All-Americans," Mr. Outside said.
That was Army football.
In 1944, the Cadets gave up 35 points all season, and beat Notre Dame 59-0 before 74,437 in Yankee Stadium.
After the final game against No. 2 Navy, in which Blanchard bruised the Midshipmen and Davis sprinted 50 yards for the final score, there came a telegram:
The greatest of all Army teams -- STOP -- We have stopped the war to celebrate your magnificent success. MacArthur.
The next year was more of the same. "Their blocking and tackling were murderous," a sportswriter of the time wrote. "Their team speed blinding."
The Cadets beat Michigan at Yankee Stadium, rolled over Notre Dame 48-0. Beat Navy in front of more than 100,000 fans to cap a perfect season again.
Blanchard, Mr. Inside, became the first junior to win the Heisman Trophy.
"He's the best I've ever seen," Mr. Outside said, remembering.
"He was, of course, a great runner, a good blocker, a good receiver. He kicked off. Every time he kicked off, the ball went over the goal line."
They were together on the cover of Time magazine.
In 1946 Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside were seniors, national icons (this time on the cover of Life), and each game was bigger than the next. They played at the famed Polo Grounds again, and at Michigan, and against Oklahoma and Penn.
"It's all a big thrill for a young person," Davis said.
But it would be tougher, this time. In the first game of the season, the impossible happened.
Blanchard got hurt.
Oh, he came back, and toughed it out. But he wouldn't be the same. And Davis had to be at his all-around best.
At Michigan -- "it's a real thrill to play in front of 105,000 people," Davis said -- the Black Knights pounded out a 20-13 win. One Wolverine player would say it took him three months to recover from that game.
If a laugh could convey humility, Davis' did, when asked about that quote.
"Well," he said. "You know."
Notre Dame, at Yankee Stadium, was the hottest ticket in sports. Scalpers reportedly asked for as much as $200 (and this was in 1946).
It ended in a 0-0 tie, both teams still undefeated. Both teams would be national champs.
And in the end Army beat Navy again, in a game for the ages, and Davis, who had scored 59 touchdowns in his West Point career, won the Heisman at last.
But that's not important.
Davis remains proudest of the winning, and of his coach, and West Point tradition. And of having graduated from an academic institution that made him study harder than he knew how.
And of the teammates with whom he shared it all. Including the one who is still the best football player he's ever seen.
Blanchard and Davis have always been linked. You can't say one name without following with the other. But they were in different regiments at West Point. Different worlds. "Just like being in Chicago and New York," Davis said.
But then they were together in football, and in the backfield, and in history. In their junior and senior years Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside were next to each other in the team picture, and in a multitude of pictures. They'll be there forever, in those black uniforms.
They look like their nicknames. Davis like a fleet athlete. Blanchard looks fierce, like a tough, tough man.
Davis laughed.
"He is," he said. "He was."
You can feel the football weather. It's fall, and Army is coming to town.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com
