I think you can characterize Chapter 7 of When Pride Still Mattered two ways.

The first is as the ultimate expression of Maraniss’ ongoing deconstruction of the myth of the so-called “innocent past,” which he has taken great pains to dispel wherever he can. But it’s hard to think of a more pure example of the innocent past, well, not existing than a huge scandal at what was supposed to be the purest football program in the world. If, as it turns out, there was no era in which Army was substantially different from the rest of the world of college sports, there really isn’t any kind of innocent past. How does that past exist if nobody lives there?

The second is as an explanation of why Lombardi left Army. Even after the scandal, Army seems to have remained a fairly prestigious and valuable job, and it certainly seems to have fit Lombardi’s personality pretty well. For a guy who likes structure and discipline to the point of religiosity, it’s hard to picture a better fit than a place like West Point. Why would he want to leave if he didn’t have to?

Well, thanks to our author, it’s easy to see why. For starters, St. Blaik, as Earl Blaik was apparently derisively called, remained firmly ensconced in the head job, determined to languish in his defeat to Navy, to defend his program, and to rebuild his gutted squad after the school rendered its judgment.

But just as importantly, the response to the scandal revealed that perhaps Lombardi wasn’t actually that great of a fit at Army. He couldn’t understand a couple of important things about the scandal: why was it such a big deal that West Point cadets were helping each other out, even if it was technically against the rules? And why was West Point so determined to get the cadets to snitch on each other?

It reveals a fundamental difference between Lombardi and Blaik. The Colonel was a West Point true believer, through and through. His belief, even deification, of the Army was a defining feature, and he didn’t want anything to besmirch its honor. Its a kind of tunnel vision that Lombardi didn’t seem to have, and it’s hard not to think that Blaik may have become a little bit institutionalized. I don’t know if Lombardi was necessarily a worldly-wise man, but his response to the scandal (a lack of surprise that players were cheating) is a much more common-sense approach. Yeah, of course, the students are cheating. Yeah, of course, they’re banding together against their teachers and superiors. This is what students do. They push the boundaries. They team up against authority. That, in some ways, is what makes a team strong. A common enemy makes brothers of us all.

You can see that understanding pay off for Lombardi later. He was willing to always be the bad guy for the Packers. It was his way or the highway, and you could either fall in line with everybody else (while privately railing against the Old Man) or you could hit the bricks. Everybody understood the choices, and he wouldn’t penalize you for trying to skirt the rules as long as you were doing it with teammates and weren’t hurting your performance. Does anybody seriously believe Lombardi didn’t know Paul Hornung, Max McGee, and their cronies were breaking curfew regularly?

But that approach could never fly at West Point, so Lombardi had to leave. And leave he did. 

Interesting notes

• I can’t help but think of the 2014 NFC Championship game when I read Maraniss writing about Blaik’s response to the loss to Navy. That loss seemed to linger over the franchise for years, and Army’s loss had a similar effect.

• I wonder what kind of result we’d have seen if not for Douglas MacArthur’s influence over the Army football program. Would Blaik have stayed? Would things have resolved differently in any way?