A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game That Rallied a Nation

One of the greatest stories in American sports history: how the 1944 Army team beat Navy, captured a championship, and inspired a nation at war.“There never has been a sports event, perhaps never an event of any kind, that received the attention of so many Americans in so many places around the world.” So wrote a reporter on December 2, 1944, about the greatest Army-Navy football game in the long history of that storied rivalry. World War II raged; President Roosevelt was seriously ill, only a few months away from death; and Americans on the home front suffered through shortages—including, just days before the game, a Thanksgiving without turkey or pie. But for one day, all that was forgotten. Army’s team was ranked number 1, Navy’s number 2.