"Books about World War II and the athletes who served in it are too few.
Too many never lived to write of it. For three years I served in the Navy Air Corps and it ruffled my conscience when I read of friends who lost their lives in battle while I sat unharmed. Wilbur Jones' book should give you a well-scripted view of what it was like and of the guys who left the athletic field and pitched in for all of us. Just pause for a moment and try to imagine: Tiger Woods being called up and sent into the trenches. That's the way it was."--(Furman Bisher, World War II Navy veteran; sportswriter and editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

"Football! Navy! War!" fills an important niche in the sports and military history of World War II. Jones takes the reader back to pre-television football, when the game had to compete with baseball and boxing for the public's attention, and shows how the military both preserved the wartime college game and then contributed to the growth of its phenomenal postwar popularity. Not just a list of teams and statistics, this book also tells the "then and now" differences in the playing of football through extensive research and interviews with many of the remaining 1940s' era military players and coaches."--(Jack A. Green, Naval History & Heritage Command)

"If you love college football, raise a glass to the noted historian Wilbur D. Jones, Jr., "Football! Navy! War!" is a comprehensive telling of a story that can't be told enough; how college football remained a piece of the American mosaic as the country poured heart, soul and spirit into winning World War II. Jones details how the U.S. Navy used the sport to develop leaders and fighting men alike, and how that effort kept the sport alive in the national imagination. Jones tells of the rise of national powers at Naval Bases across the nation as the war effort surged and how, just as quickly, they disappeared. The chapter about halfback Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice captures him as no defense ever did. This is a good thing that Jones has done."--(Ivan Maisel, senior writer, ESPN.com)

"Football! Navy! War!" is an untold story about the relationship of America's great game and its relationship with the armed forces--especially with the U.S. Navy--during this nation's struggle against the Axis powers. As one who served and fought alongside many of the outstanding athletes that Wilbur Jones portrays, I can testify how the smash-mouth tactics of the gridiron were applied in the waters and archipelagoes of the Western Pacific. This book is a must-have for any patriot and fan of the sport!"--(Admiral James L. Holloway III, USN (Ret) and chairman emeritus, Naval Historical Foundation)

"I've been waiting for somebody to do this book and preserve these treasured college football memories, and now Wilbur Jones has done it--and done it splendidly."--(Dan Jenkins, author and sportswriter for Sports Illustrated)