USD Football 1993

TOUCHDOWN ILLUSTRATED

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During World War II, college football helped prepare the Navy to win at home and away.

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' ' • I I_ white combat films on myriad cable pro- I ' -' •-

grams replaying those years when America's battle fleets were helping to win the war. But while it helped lead the victory charge across the Pacific, the Navy also chalked up one more triumph that has gone almost unnoticed: it helped preserve college foot- ball during World War II by establishing a series of "V," or officer training, programs at hundreds of universities at a time when some 300 schools were on the brink of abandon- ing the sport for the duration of the war. In a larger scope, these programs also saved the nation's college system by underwriting them and preserving col- lege populations when the draft was scooping up every available able-bodied, college-age youth. The first "V" program began on January 31, 1942 when the Navy leased the faci lities of four universi- ties-North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa and St. Mary's in California, and established pre-flight training pro- grams, known as V-5. Those four Pre-Flight schools (Del Monte, near San Francisco, later was added as a "post-graduate" facility) became major powers in college football during the war and paved the way for the V-5 con- cept to be offered to other schools where students wished to volunteer for careers as naval aviators. This original Pre-Flight program was founded by future Admiral Tom Hamilton, who had been an All-America running back and head coach at Navy, at the direction of Captain Arthur Radford, later chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then director of Naval aviation training. He told Hamilton, a naval aviator himself, to organize a pro- gram that used competitive ath letics and training to increase the abilities of combat pilots, because he believed that athletic competition quickened the physical reactions

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