Like most of Notre Dame’s other victories during its four-decade winning streak over Navy, the game they played on Nov. 14, 1998 was over long before it concluded.
Through three quarters, the Fighting Irish led 27-0, leaving this voice of the Midshipmen little reason to sound excited on the radio and every reason to long for a running clock. But those final 15 minutes, featuring only a Notre Dame field goal, dragged on interminably, challenging my partner John Feinstein and me to hold any remaining listeners’ interest.
Fortunate for me, nobody filled time like John.
He could do it with a 60-second parting shot, sitting alongside ESPN’s Dick Schaap early on a Sunday, or in just over three minutes, chatting with NPR’s Bob Edwards on a weekday Morning Edition. During other day parts, usually after headlines, John could deliver a quarter hour of radio gold: bold opinions informed by a savant’s knowledge of the four major sports, plus golf and tennis majors, spoken with utter and unsparing conviction, while never reaching for the easy pickings of low-hanging hot takes.
A sports media star of that time, earning credibility over years of groundbreaking reporting and prolific writing as a bestselling author, John was in a rarefied position to speak his mind. He could say whatever he wanted because he was so successful. And he was so successful, in part, because he said whatever he wanted. It didn’t matter whether he was in sports-talk drive time or garbage time of a lopsided game.
On this Saturday afternoon, in a place then known as Raljon, Md. at a year-old stadium briefly named after its builder and owner of Washington’s football team, Jack Kent Cooke, John was in his second full season as Navy’s color commentator. Among his many roles — columnist for The Washington Post, author (of 40-plus books), commentator on The Golf Channel, A-list radio guest — this one was a labor of John’s love for the service academies that inspired his 1995 book on the Army-Navy rivalry, “A Civil War.”
It was my first full year calling play-by-play for the Mids, after taking over for Steve Buchantz when he was hired for Washington Wizards telecasts midway through the previous season. Admittedly uptight even when I tried to cut loose, I had struggled to date with John’s unpredictability on the air. Believe me when I repeat that John said whatever, whenever he felt the urge, particularly about a sports topic or figure — local or national — that needed calling out.
“Bob, I’m three of the most cynical people you’re ever going to meet,” John liked to joke…while on the air.
Surrounded by tens of thousands of Notre Dame’s so-called subway alumni, John used this opportunity to dispel what he considered the myth of Fighting Irish mystique. I don’t recall specifics of what he said, only that it was enough to turn a leprechaun’s grin into a grimace. What I do remember is his pause for an aside at the expense of the CBS crew in the booth next door.
I could hear my future career flashing before my bespectacled eyes. What will the Naval Academy higher-ups think about all of this? No way will I ever get a job at CBS. I was close to breaking down. Then John broke me up.
“By the way, for all you Notre Dame fans waiting in the parking lot,” big John, figuratively and literally, said in the game’s final seconds, “Feinstein’s the little guy with the glasses.”
Thinking about that moment brings me a smile on an otherwise sad day, hours after being stunned by word of John’s death at age 69. John was described by colleagues as “legendary,” as a “a titan,” as “consequential.” For me, John was a friend by my side for 14 seasons of Navy broadcasts and nine years of Patriot League basketball telecasts.
We shared rides to and from remote campus gyms, often late into night. John always drove — the car, and the conversation. We shared pregame meals. Sometimes at a roadside McDonald’s en route to Lewisburg, Pa. Sometimes at The Palm in Philadelphia on the eve of Army-Navy. John always treated.
And we shared Army-Navy. Fourteen times, most with John’s reminder that “A Civil War” was “like (his) third child.” It became his fourth after his youngest daughter Jane’s birth.
Not only did John write the book on Army-Navy, he spread its gospel. There’s never been a better spokesman for what separates this special rivalry from others than the Duke grad whose typical uniform was a well-worn sweater and worn-out loafers.
For one day every December, from march-ons through alma maters, ‘three of the most cynical people’ I ever met became an unabashed romantic.
Working with John was challenging, even during Army-Navy. Some days he showed up in a mood, set off maybe by traffic, the location of his parking spot or something he heard on the way in, perhaps an outrageous comment by a boneheaded coach or, more likely, conference commissioner. Some days, he simply took delight in keeping the little guy with the glasses on edge – or, if you will, on the brink. And some days, in either case, he delivered an all-time moment in my career, if not his.
In 2005, after being slighted by his alma mater before a Navy-Duke encounter in Durham, N.C. – John was a harsh critic of the school’s president – he was justifiably upset. Obviously bothered by it throughout the game, John, who was partial to the Mids anyway, became especially invested in the outcome.
With just over three minutes left, the Blue Devils scored a touchdown to draw within a two-point conversion of tying the game. They did on the ensuing pass, though it appeared that Duke’s receiver clearly pushed off the Navy defender to make the catch. An obvious offensive pass interference, it went uncalled by officials.
John was incensed. He slammed his fist against a side window of our booth. No psychologist, but also no stranger to outbursts of my own, I’m convinced he was venting pent-up emotion as much as he was reacting to one play. In my headset, against the rattling of metal blinds from his blow, the next sound I heard was an F-bomb.
“F*****g refs!” he blurted out.
Stunned into silence for a beat or two, I looked at Omar Nelson, who by then was the third man in our booth, and simply carried on. John laid his headset down, left us to find Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk and offered his resignation. Chet rightly declined to accept, citing the goodwill John had accrued over the years as one of the Naval Academy’s most vocal public advocates.
As all of that unfolded, the Mids marched down the field and won the game. A week later, John was back with an apology in time for a win over Air Force.
A few years earlier, during a lull on a seemingly uneventful afternoon, I read a live ad to promote a contest that culminated in an all-expense paid trip to the Army-Navy Game.
“How is the winner getting there?” John asked, before turning to our producer Frank Diventi and mouthing something unheard on air. He wanted to know if a certain airline was a sponsor.
Confused, Frank shook his head. John saw it as his cue.
“Well, let’s hope it’s not US Airways,” he chuckled, adding a crack about their flights being routinely off schedule. Not that he would know; John dreaded flying.
Soon enough, we got word: US Airways was a sponsor. A big one, in fact. The afternoon was suddenly eventful.
Yet, days later, John met with the company’s rep – I imagine regaling him with stories from his season on the brink with Bobby Knight and signing a book or two – and saved the sponsorship he had imperiled.
Not that John was one to shill if he ever thought doing so would betray his journalistic oath. Journalism wasn’t just what John did. It was his religion, and a subject I always loved hearing him wax on about.
Bob Woodward. David Maraniss. Scott Price. Frank Deford. Dave Kindred. There were others, no doubt, but these names I distinctly remember him invoking when describing reporters he admired most. Mention of Woodward was made while imitating his mentor’s voice.
John was connected. In the radio, television and print worlds and, as much, in the sports world. John was also a connection. To all those worlds for someone like me, a young broadcaster aspiring to someday graduate from baseball’s minor leagues and basketball’s mid-majors.
I know he tried like hell to make that happen sooner than it did. As much as John challenged me, he championed my cause to anyone who would listen, and some who wouldn’t. When needed, he offered his best counsel and did his best to improve my sometimes shaky confidence.
In the summer of 2001, after hearing my frustration over a blistering critique I had received from a big-league announcer, John initiated contact with a mutual friend, a much more renowned baseball voice who was one of my mentors. He knew I needed a pick-me-up, and made sure I got it.
John was also, as others have said and written, complicated. During the summer of 2011, he again left our booth, this time giving Chet no chance to convince him to stay.
He had long sought to produce an Army-Navy documentary based on “A Civil War” but lacked the funding. When CBS approached the academies to shoot its own doc and they agreed to it, John felt (and wrote) that he “had no choice” but to leave.
Maybe he believed that Navy should have done more to back his effort. Maybe he couldn’t bear to have a press box seat to watch someone else film the movie he dreamed of making. Probably both.
Around the same time, John also quit the Patriot League package and we fell out of touch. As much as I think he should have handled both situations better, I know I could have too. It was complicated.
John would later join Army’s radio team – his love for both academies was equal – and eventually return to Navy’s. We even reconnected, if only to text sparingly. Checking my phone, I am surprised to see that six years have passed since our last conversation and two have gone by since our last exchange of texts.
Throughout the day and night, I’ve received messages from long-ago Navy friends and peers, some of whom wrote that I was the first person they thought of as news of John’s death broke. It means a lot – more each time I recall another memory of our time on air, and on the road.
I also got a call from someone who said the same. It was that mentor, the one John had asked to lift my spirits way back when. I expressed what he and John meant to my career, and that I’ve never forgotten it.
He asked how long it had been since John and I last spoke. Too long, I said, adding my regret and wishing I had made the time to reach back out and tell John what I just told him.
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BOB SOCCI 