These young men who play for America's military service academies are the ones our sons should be looking up to...not the over-indulged athletes who tweet their "top 5" schools during recruiting, flip commitments like pancakes and make a 3-ring circus of signing day. Read this book. ( )

As a West Point graduate (1966), I was intrigued by Soldiers First authored by Joe Drape. I was aware of how the football season turned out so I was more interested in learning about the individual cadets whose names I recognized and their motivation for attending West Point. There were a few traditions mentioned that I was not aware of and others like the Honor Code that have been severely modified in order to come more in line with existing social mores. It is disappointing to see the depths that a once proud program has sunk. In a world where most citizens are only concerned about "how does it benefit me" it is uplifting to see that the "Long Grey Line" is in excellent hands with today's cadets. The book is a quick read and would provide those unfamiliar with the Academy an insight into the rigors of training and education that produces an Army officer. This book also provides enough insight into cadet life to serve as a primer for those that might be considering matriculating at West Point. At a recent Army/ Navy game a naval academy football player quoted" It is the only game where those playing are willing to sacrifice all for those watching the game." ( )

Soldiers First, by Joe Drape, is great for football fans, with lots of details about specific games. I would have preferred more description about the training that these soldiers go through, on and off the field. ( )

The book, Soldiers First: Duty, Honor, Country, and Football at West Point, by Joe Drape, New York Times reporter, is a story about Army Black Knights football at the United States Military Academy. After watching Army play a superior Notre Dame without letup, Drape’s curiosity about where football fit in at the Academy – whether the players “were Soldiers or football players first” -- led him to write this book. Drape escorts the reader on a tour of the daily regimen of several members of the United States Corps of Cadets who also play football. The book’s four main parts cover each of a cadet’s four academic years at the Academy: freshman Plebe, sophomore Yearling, junior Cow, and senior Firstie, beginning with ‘R-Day’, Reception Day, when Cadet-candidates take their oaths of allegiance to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, to Graduation Day four years later when they will have been awarded their academic degrees and been commissioned as second lieutenants in the United States Army.

Drape begins by recounting how his five-year-young son inspired him to visit West Point after they watched on TV ‘the good guys’, as his son called the Army team, play Notre Dame at the new Yankee Stadium in November 2010. Drape, an early 1980s graduate of Southern Methodist University (the same SMU whose Mustangs football program received the NCAA’s ‘death penalty’ of no football for two years for NCAA rules infractions), grew up an avowed Fighting Irish fan and had been many times to Notre Dame’s Indiana campus. Amidst a recent history of penalized collegiate athletics programs especially in football and basketball, Drape exhibits the tradition of Army football and West Point’s motto, ‘duty, honor, country’, the core values held by each member of the ‘long gray line’.

Soldiers First interlaces stories about Coach Rich Ellerson, current and former players, teachers, tactical officers, famous graduates, recaps of games with Fordham, Northwestern, Miami (Ohio), and Vanderbilt among others, and other aspects of West Point’s deep tradition. Coach Ellerson, unlike his predecessors, is an Army Brat. His father graduated from the Academy, Class of 1935, and two brothers are West Pointers. Ellerson grew up with the Army values and knew from beginning that Army would win games “[not] in spite of West Point but because of West Point.” (p. 16) The challenge always is to keep players rested and healthy knowing they are “Soldiers first” and subject to the same rigorous academic and military standards as other Cadets. Coach Ellerson epitomizes the spirit of Army football with the apt, if mixed, metaphor of Cadet players that are “fearless gladiators, erudite gentlemen, Zen masters, and calloused, lunch-bucket toting steelworkers.” (p. 193) What every Army veteran, Academy graduate, and Black Knights player yearns for, of course, is the beat Navy. With Coach Ellerson now in his fourth year it looks very good that this December 8th following the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia that the Black Knights will “sing second”.

West Point and Army football have been the subjects of many books. Joe Drape’s Soldiers First should be included among them because it is a story imbued with the paradoxes of mental and physical stress, individual and team challenges, and traditions that have grown out of the cultures of both Athens and Sparta that is the basis of duty, honor, country and the American Soldier. ( )

The author tells the story of the young men who attend West Point Military Academy’s football program and describe how athletics and the Academy play a role in developing leaders for both military and civilian life.

You really need to be a football fan to enjoy this book, because much of it is filled with play-by-play descriptions of some of West Point’s 2011 season games. Although I like watching football, I would have preferred more emphasis on the life of the players off the field and their rigorous training as cadets. I have a new-found respect for these young people. Their example and the Three Rules of Thumb should be a part of all college athletics. ( )