Review: Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside by Jack Cavanaugh

Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside is the story of the 1944-1946 Army college football team, specifically focused on the two backs who made it great – Glenn Davis and Felix Blanchard. As you can imagine by looking at the years involved, these were key years in American (and especially American military) history. This book aims to tell a football-focused story while also placing it into the proper historical context.

That goal of focusing on the sport while also providing a historical perspective is key to writing a GREAT sports book, with examples being King of the World and The Game. Another example, and my first experience with a great sports book, was Tunney, written by…Jack Cavanaugh, the same author as this book. Could Cavanaugh go two for two?

There are many things to like in this book. While several of the football players run together, the personalities and importance of both Davis and Blanchard are very well established. Red Blaik, the head coach (who is also currently the namesake for Army’s field), is very well fleshed out as eternally pessimistic and critical. Plus, “ancient” football formations are explained, most importantly how the single-wing (which many schools were playing at the time) differed from the T formation (which took part in Army’s offensive success).

The book also presents why such great players were playing at Army in the first place and why that is not likely to ever happen again. In WWII high school graduates could only escape the draft if they joined a military academy, where, while committing them to military service after graduation (if they graduated at all, which not all of them did), gave them four years to wait out the war and hope for a resolution. Thus, football players from colleges around the country fell over themselves to gain an appointment to West Point or Annapolis, making them two of the strongest teams in the country.

As the story moves forward into practices, games, graduations, etc., the historical context is also thrown in, starting with the Allies reaching the outer edges of Europe all the way through the post-victory homeless veterans and mass strikes. While illuminating, and as noted above a necessary ingredient in the formula for a great sports book, here comes out as disjointed. In Tunney, Cavanaugh was able to show how WWI, Jack Dempsey matches, and civil rights all flowed over, under, and through Gene Tunney; in Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, the historical notes seem separated from the football story. Part of that may be because the story takes place in college (where, even in a military academy, the real world could seem a world away) and part could be because due to the age of the protagonists Cavanaugh was not able to do much first-person research; nevertheless, nothing in the history story (in as crucial a time as it was) seemed to have that much impact on the main football story.

So this is not another GREAT sports book, but I would say pretty good. I don’t know if it’s for the general public, but if you’re a big college football fan and/or a West Point fan, check it out. Six out of ten hot dogs.