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Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside

World War II, Army's Undefeated Teams, and College Football's Greatest Backfield Duo

Triumph Books

The Professor's Recruit

Like many college football coaches, earl "red" blaik received plenty of tips on potentially good college football players — even from a few generals — but never before had he gotten one from a college dramatics professor, as he did in early 1943, his third year as the head coach at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. The tip came from a friend, Warren Bentley, a drama professor at Dartmouth, where Blaik had coached for seven years before returning to West Point, his alma mater, as head coach in 1941. Bentley had attended college in Pomona in Southern California and along with occasionally vacationing in the area, had relatives there, one of whom, a grocer, told him about a football player in Los Angeles County whose mother had told him her son was interested in going to West Point.

"Everybody in California talks about a football player at Bonita High School in La Verne, which is not far from Pomona," Professor Bentley wrote to Blaik. "They say that this kid is the fastest halfback ever seen out there. He's an all-round athlete: baseball, basketball, and track, as well as football. Since I'm told he is interested in going to West Point, I thought you would want to know about him. His name is Glenn Davis."

Not only had Blaik never heard of Davis, he had never even tried to recruit a player from the West Coast, either while he was at Dartmouth or since his arrival at West Point. "I didn't know anything about West Coast football," Blaik said years later. Even if he had, Blaik knew recruiting would be difficult. For one thing, most people still traveled by train in the 1940s, and the transcontinental trip from the West Coast to New York took at least four days. For another, it was hard enough recruiting players from the Northeast, the South, and the Midwest because of the rigorous academic schedule at West Point and the commitment after graduation to serve three years on active duty.

However, in 1943 it was considerably easier to recruit players since they knew that by enrolling at the military academy they would be exempt from the draft, which the previous year had been lowered from 21 years old to 18, the age many high school students usually graduate. So long as a high school or prep school student could get a Congressional appointment, usually from a congressman or congresswoman in his congressional district, and pass the somewhat exacting entrance examination, he would in effect be getting a four-year all-expenses-paid scholarship at an outstanding, albeit very demanding, educational institution where athletes were shown no favors.

The young Davis, who had broken every offensive football record at Bonita Union High School, had been considering accepting an offer from the University of Southern California, as had his twin brother and football and track teammate, Ralph, both of whom had thought of applying for the navy's V-12 program at USC, which would have provided free tuition and eventually commissions in the navy. After receiving Professor Bentley's letter, Blaik checked with some friends and West Point alums in the Los Angeles area and was assured by those who had seen or heard about Davis that he not only had been an outstanding high school running back at Bonita High but probably could already start in the backfield at both USC and UCLA.

Indeed, a West Coast scout had told Davis' coach, John Price, "I have seen every one of the Coast Conference college teams play, and not one of them has a back as good as Davis." Not only was Davis an outstanding all-round athlete, he also seemed to have been a real-life All-American boy in the mold of Jack Armstrong, the fictitious and heroic star of the popular 1930s and 1940s radio program Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy. Handsome, unpretentious, soft-spoken, totally without ego, and well-liked by his classmates, Davis, as he was to say some years later, "I was the kind of guy who dated one girl all the way through high school and West Point," which he did.

In an era when high school football games were rarely filmed, as was the case at Bonita High, college coaches usually had to rely on unpaid scouts or assistant coaches to check on potential recruits. But by early 1943 it was too late to do that with Davis, since he had already played his last high school football game. Thus, apart from the glowing verbal and written reports he had received on the 5'9" 160-lb. Davis, Blaik had little else to go on, and thereupon wrote to Davis' parents in the spring of 1943, and after talking to them by phone later, succeeded in convincing the 18-year-old Davis to come east to take the entrance examination at the military academy — but only after Blaik agreed that Davis' twin brother also could take the same exam.

What Blaik heard about Davis during his research was almost too good to be true, though he was somewhat concerned about Davis' relatively small size. During his senior year, Davis had accounted for a California state record of 236 points, an average of 26 points per game over nine games, the equivalent of almost 40 touchdowns. In one game, Davis, playing left halfback out of the single-wing formation, scored three touchdowns on runs of more than 50 yards. Then in the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Division championship game against Newport Harbor High School, Davis, playing quarterback in the T formation, which Price also occasionally used, threw three touchdown passes, one to his brother, on three consecutive plays, but all three were nullified by offensive penalties. On the next play, which was sent in by Price, Davis faked another pass and then sprinted almost 50 yards for one of his three touchdowns — he threw for two others — en route to a 39–6 Bonita victory. Not surprisingly, Davis was unanimously voted conference Player of the Year.

Once past the line of scrimmage, Davis was virtually unstoppable because of his speed and his body control. Though he usually was at his best on an end sweep, Davis, though never heavier than 160 lbs. in high school, also bolted through holes in the line and avoided linebackers by swerving left or right without losing any speed. When frustrated opponents were able to tackle Davis, Price said, some of them often tried to keep him down with their knees in his back. "But he never gave them a second look," Price said. "He'd just get up and grin, and never complained about anyone playing dirty against him."

Donald St. Claire, a former teammate who played in the backfield with Davis, recalled blocking for Davis — or at least trying to block for the speedy Bonita High star. "Quite often, I'd just start to block a lineman for him, and he was already past me and in the clear," said St. Claire, a medical doctor in La Verne, in 2013. "Glenn was just unbelievably fast." Another former football teammate, Charles Creighton, said the same year that Davis was also an outstanding baseball player. "He was a very good hitter, very good in the outfield, and a terrific base-stealer," said Creighton, who played right field alongside Davis in center field. "If anything was hit to right-center, or even in my territory, Glenn could almost always get to it." So much so that in a much later Army game against the Montreal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers' Triple A farm team, at West Point in April 1945, Davis stole second, third, and home to the astonishment of the Royals and to the delight of Army fans long accustomed to Davis' speed and heroics on the base paths, the football field, the basketball court, and as a sprinter and broad jumper on the track team.

Years later, Davis said he became aware of his ability as a football player and his speed while attending junior high school in Claremont, California, where he was born the day after Christmas in 1924, just minutes after his twin, but not identical, brother had preceded him. "We had a team that played other junior highs in a league, and I'd say that was when I felt I could compete pretty well," Davis recalled. "I was blessed with speed, and I was just faster than everyone else."

In the early 1930s the Davis family moved to nearby La Verne, a citrus-growing town of 3,000 residents about 35 miles east of Los Angeles. They lived on a 14-acre spread that included scores of orange and citrus trees and afforded Glenn and Ralph plenty of room to play and throw footballs and baseballs. "Glenn's father was a banker and a very pleasant man," Charles Creighton said. "Like Glenn, while he was nice, he wasn't particularly outgoing. As kids, we always wanted Glenn on our football and baseball teams because he was so good. Ralph, who was always bigger than Glenn, was also a good athlete and more outgoing than Glenn, but nowhere near as good as his brother."

At Bonita High coaches of the football, basketball, baseball, and track teams also wanted Glenn Davis on their teams in a big way. What struck all of them at first glance was Davis' blazing speed, which, coupled with his all-around athleticism, intelligence, and determination made him a pleasure to coach. By Davis' junior year at Bonita Union High, even some major California newspapers like the Los Angeles Times began to pay considerable attention to the sensational Bonita High halfback and quarterback who could also run the 100-yard dash in less than 10 seconds and rarely ever lost a race at that distance or in the 220-yard dash while also starring in the broad jump and pole vault. He consistently hit well over .300 as a speedy outfielder in baseball, and he excelled as a guard on the school's basketball team.

Always gracious and self-effacing, Davis once said, "In high school I only weighed about 160 lbs. So it wasn't my size, it was my speed. And God gave me that. I didn't have to work for it."

When Davis was in high school, then, as now, would-be cadets were required to get congressional appointments, usually from congressmen in their congressional districts. A well-known Democratic congressman named Jerry Voorhis, perhaps best known for having lost his seat to Richard Nixon in 1946 after serving five terms, nominated Davis, while his brother received his nomination from another Southern California member of Congress. That seemed more kosher than the 1945 West Point appointment of tackle Goble Bryant, an all-conference lineman at Texas A&M that came from congressman Emanuel Cellar in whose Brooklyn district Bryant, a Texan, most definitely did not live. As Bryant was to say some years later, "There was no subterfuge in how the Army coaches got their appointments. They went to Washington, knocked on the doors, and said, 'If you don't have anybody for an appointment to West Point, we've got one whose got the mental and physical capability not only to fill the appointment but to play football, too.'"

With their appointments assured, Glenn and Ralph Davis, loaded down with sandwiches and reference books, were seen off by their parents at the train station in San Bernardino for a four-day train trip to West Point in early May, more than a month before their scheduled graduations from Bonita Union High. Aware of the strict entrance examination, Ralph and Ima Davis had made it clear to their twin sons that it was extremely important that they study the books on the long trip East and continue to do so from the time they settled in at West Point and took the validating examination, as it's called. For two 18-year-olds who had never been out of California, it was the trip of a lifetime and a golden opportunity to see much of the country, and to study, as their train wound through the Rockies, the wheat fields of Kansas, on to Chicago, and finally to West Point. They would be met at the train station by Coach Red Blaik and driven to the Blaik's home near the famous West Point Plain, where they would stay until July 1 when they moved into rooms on the Academy grounds. While staying with Blaik, his wife, Merle, and their two teenage sons, Bob and Bill, the Davis brothers would meet with tutors, study at night and on weekends, and eventually take the entrance examination, which they passed and, perforce, became cadets. (Bob, who became a starting quarterback for Army in 1949 and 1950, came to idolize Glenn Davis while he was playing football at Highland Falls High School near West Point.)

While staying with the Blaik family, Glenn and Ralph had ample time to roam around the Academy grounds, to view its stately gray Gothic buildings, and to savor the spectacular view from a bluff on the edge of the famous Plain where the Hudson River bends. There, facing the river, they could see a statue of the Polish General Thaddeus Kosciuszko who was commissioned by President George Washington in 1778 to build a garrison at West Point from where American colonial forces could repulse any passing British ships. (The garrison was not converted into a military academy until 1802 when Thomas Jefferson was president.) Nearby at Trophy Point, they could see a collection of assorted captured weaponry, including artillery cannons, dating from the Revolutionary War, along with a section of the great massive chain that Kosciuszko had stretched across the Hudson, making it impossible for British ships to pass through. Nearby, too, was the 45'-high Battle Monument where several cannons carry the names of the more than 2,000 officers and soldiers who died during the Civil War, and not far away was a statue of George Washington on horseback. For teenagers from the West Coast it was heady stuff that Glenn Davis said years later had moved him and his brother and that they had never forgotten.

Far less memorable for the Davis brothers were the so-called "Beast Barracks," a form of basic training and hazing for incoming cadets that starts on July 1, the day cadets are scheduled to report to the Academy. For six weeks, the plebes — the term for first-year cadets — were subjected to a variety of hardships and indignities that include harsh questioning about West Point traditions and sights, an assortment of excessive physical challenges, extensive marching while loaded down with gear, and even being awakened at all hours of the night. It may not have been the main factor, which very likely was the academic grind and rigidly structured daily routine, but until the 1920s, about 40 percent of the plebes left West Point after the first year, a percentage that dropped to around the current figure of around 20 percent after MacArthur, who was the Academy's youngest ever superintendent from 1919 until 1922, decreed that Beast Barracks be toned down and the curriculum liberalized to include psychology and other social studies courses. Though both of the Davis brothers endured Beast Barracks without complaint unlike some of the older players who had been recruited from other schools, Glenn privately derided some of the West Point customs, and in light of his eventual stature at the Academy along with his likeability he avoided even further harassment directed at other plebes. In fact, most of the football players were accorded "recognition," a West Point term that in effect meant special treatment, at least from upperclassmen if not from their instructors, as is often the case at many big-time football universities. Nevertheless, even in the 1940s it was not uncommon for an upperclassman to peremptorily order a plebe to do 100 or more sit-ups or push-ups on the spot.

Davis may have won over some of the "yearlings" (second-year cadets), "cows" (the equivalent of a college junior), and "firsties" (cadets in their fourth and final year) by his performance in the rigorous physical test required of all plebes that included a 300-yard run, standing broad and vertical jumps, a rope climb, chin-ups, sit-ups, parallel bar dips, and a softball throw. In 1942, Dale Hall, an outstanding running back at West Point and an All-American basketball player, had broken the record when he scored 865 out of a possible 1,000 points. A year later, Davis demonstrated his remarkable athletic versatility when he smashed Hall's mark by scoring 962½ points. None of his football teammates during that first year, or thereafter, ever came close to topping Davis' record mark.

After Army had won only 1-of-9 football games in 1940, Blaik turned the team's fortunes around, as he had at Dartmouth, when his first Cadets team went 5–3–1 in 1941. In 1942, the Cadets went 6–3, though they were again shut out by Notre Dame and losing to Navy for the fourth time in a row. By then, the freshman rule that restricted first-year college players, including those at West Point and at Annapolis, to playing on freshman teams, had been suspended, and at Army plebes such as quarterbacks Doug Kenna, who had played one season at Mississippi, and Tom Lombardo, halfback Dale Hall, and linemen Ed "Rafe" Rafalko, Joe Stanowicz, and Bob St. Onge found their way into the starting lineup.

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Excerpted from Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside by Jack Cavanaugh. Copyright © 2014 Jack Cavanaugh. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
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