Sky’s the Limit Now for Air Force, 45-7

You can talk about No. 1 and you can play for it, but it’ll never match the intensity of talking about and playing for the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, a giant glob of ore containing enough silver to shame the Hunt brothers, or whichever academy doesn’t happen to have it.

This is the real thing, transcending college football.

Saturday, in freezing winds that swept off the eastern Colorado prairie, undefeated Air Force reclaimed the trophy, beating Army, 45-7. How big a win was it? Well it was a big enough victory that the Academy’s governing powers granted its cadets amnesty. This is no small thing, but more on that later.

It was also big enough that Air Force (10-0), whose players average some 180 pounds, can now be mentioned with the big boys. If it were to get by Brigham Young next week, well, it would clinch more than just the Western Athletic Conference championship.

But, really, what does that matter?

“If we hadn’t won a game all year,” explained Air Force quarterback Bart Weiss, “the season would still be there for the Army game. That’s how it is.”

These interservice rivalries have lives of their own, and the rest of college football may be hard-pressed to understand them. Do you think Ken Carpenter, toweling off after the game, was talking about Brigham Young or whether Air Force should be ranked higher than fourth? He was not.

Carpenter, who caught a 64-yard scoring pass in the second quarter that thereafter kept the surprised Army secondary deep in the Rockies and gave the option game some more room, thought the whole affair was wonderful because now he could lay into his dad, Gen. William Carpenter, the famous “Lonesome End” for an old West Point team.

“He’ll hear about it,” said Carpenter, who caught 3 passes for 94 yards to help destroy dad’s alma mater. Carpenter, you should know, chose Air Force over Army because he wanted to fly. Fly he did Saturday.

But it turned out to be an interesting game for civilians, as well; you didn’t need basic training or four-leaf clusters to enjoy it. To begin with, it matched two strong wishbone offenses--Army’s national scoring leader and Air Force’s No. 3 total offensive unit.

And then, too, Army, now 7-2, also is angling for a bowl bid. There were representatives from 13 bowls at the game, some of them shivering in the stands because demand on the press box was so great.

Despite Army’s curious impotence, the game was as advertised, with Weiss faking pitches and running for 126 yards and faking pitches and passing for 105 more. It was exciting football.

The Air Force wishbone setup, like Army’s, is, admittedly, an offensive concession. Because Air Force is unable to land truly big athletes (they must be able to fit into a jet fighter in theory) it has created an offense that does not depend on pass blocking or most any other kind.

It may be a signal of weakness, the wishbone, but, as the song goes, nobody does it better. Air Force rolled up 501 yards and didn’t have to punt until the third quarter.

But many of the 52,101 at Falcon Stadium couldn’t have cared less about the quality of football. The rivalry was all that mattered. Try to picture, after each Air Force score, legions of cadets storming onto the end zone to do their push-ups, one per point on the board. This meant that the Cadets did a total of 184 push-ups in soggy grass before the cold, dark afternoon had come to an end. But, as they say, to the victors go the soils.

Meanwhile, try to picture the two Army cadets and the two Army mules in that same end zone. Those were the most mournful mules since “Death Valley Days.” But not so mournful, of course, as the bloc of Army cadets who stood for the entire game, staring into the gray skies.

Certainly the week before the game had been as interesting as the game itself. “Exchange” students, which is the only sign of a sense of humor in the military, suffered terribly this past week. An Air Force cadet doing time at West Point was painted blue and tarred-and-feathered. Retaliation for the fellow Air Force cadets there was to paint certain parts of a stone horse Falcon Blue.

Back at Colorado Springs, hapless Army cadets were seized and pelted with food. This is called “nuking” and is done with an enthusiasm such as would certainly shock the folks at all those important arms talks.

Then, too, there was the plane carrying the Army cheerleaders. It was somehow diverted to a different airport and the cheerleaders missed a pep rally. Suspicion for that rests heavily on the Air Force which, apparently, can do such things.

After the game, Air Force Coach Fisher DeBerry went into his stream-of-consciousness rap, using words like daggone and Jiminy Cricket. He lauded his defense, the supposed weak link, especially on its ability “to switch gears in the middle of the stream,” meaning, one gathers, that they were able to defend against a running team after facing so many passing teams. This is better than the week before when he lauded them by saying the “the defense ceases to amaze me.”

“And if they hadn’t fumbled the daggone ball,” he continued, referring to Army’s unorthodox 16-yard advancement to the Air Force 7, “I don’t know if they’d of scored at all.”

Air Force defensive back Scott Thomas, who intercepted Tory Crawford in the first quarter to set up Air Force’s first touchdown, was relieved when it was all over, but not for the usual reasons.

Thomas, not unlike other Cadets, has been “written up” for as many as 40 confinements, for “nickel-and-dime things like parking your car in the wrong place. That means 80 hours of staying in your room and looking stupid.”

Amnesty, which is not necessarily guaranteed by a victory over a service academy, wiped that all away.

Meanwhile, a source from Army said the Air Force would get the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy back, all right. “We’re sending it COD,” he said.

The trophy, incidentally, weighs enough that it takes two men to carry it.