By Randy Horick

Scientists, or at least science-fiction writers, have long theorized that under certain conditions it is possible to travel back in time. I can now confirm this hypothesis, at least within the realm of college football.

You can go back in time, too, if you attend a football game at West Point, as my dad and I did a couple of weekends ago. What the Iowa cornpatch-turned-into-a-diamond symbolizes for baseball—a field of dreams—West Point is for football. It preserves the essence of what the sport was once about. It belongs to a different time and spirit.

Seeing the Army team play at the U.S. Military Academy is a pilgrimage that every devotee of college football should make at least once in a lifetime, for it is widely held to be the most favored spot in America to spend an autumn Saturday afternoon. For a variety of reasons, the place lives up to its soaring reputation, and more. The locale alone justifies the trip. West Point commands a promontory on the bluffs across the wide Hudson River. Michie Stadium occupies one of the Academy’s highest spots. From its upper reaches, you can look out over the field, over the white Gothic buildings, over the Hudson, and across to a spread of mountains and October leaves for as far as you can see.

The sense of history is palpable here. At Trophy Point, you can stand where George Washington once looked upriver and concluded that West Point was the key to defending the colonies during the Revolutionary War. You can appreciate why the British paid Benedict Arnold dearly to betray the secret of its defenses. You can walk on the same field where Dwight Eisenhower played football, and stroll the parade ground where Robert E. Lee reviewed the cadets when he was commandant of the Academy. Every Saturday before a home football game, you can watch 2,000 cadets march in precise order on the same vast lawn, wearing the same dress gray style of uniforms and hats cadets wore nearly 200 years ago. There is no other pregame parade like it.

Once the game begins, the cadets stand for the duration. Some carry the banners of their units. Artillery booms whenever Army scores. One pregame ritual is a particular crowd-pleaser: Four paratroopers jump from helicopters and guide their parachutes to a spot on the center of the field. The last one to land delivers the game ball to the officials.

But other schools have time-honored rituals and great traditions and beautiful settings. What impressed me most is the anachronistic quality of football at West Point. You can attend a game and lose yourself in time for a while, as if you were visiting colonial Williamsburg or a Civil War reenactment. Football here is a pleasant throwback. It hasn’t changed here, not fundamentally, in decades.

At West Point, athletics is merely part of the curriculum and the lifestyle. Every cadet is required to take part in some sport. The quarterback isn’t some celebrity figure far removed from ordinary students; he’s the guy down the hall, or even your roommate.

No player is recruited to come here strictly on account of his football skills. They are far from the fastest or the strongest or the biggest in Division I college football. (The few linemen on the team who weigh 300 pounds—the standard for competitive programs today—will have to diet before graduation, since the maximum weight for an Army officer is 280.)

Unlike other Division I players, Army’s men aren’t competing for Heisman or Lombardi trophies, nor are they honing their skills in hopes of an NFL career. You watch them and realize they’re competing for their school, their classmates, and their friends.

Of course, Army pays a price for these antiquated priorities. Long gone are the national championships won just after World War II. Never again, probably, will the best players in the nation wear Army’s black and gold, as Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard once did. With rare exceptions, Army games have no bowl implications, nor any relevance to the national polls. The Black Knights’ last-minute victory over Tulane on the day we attended was their first (and only) of the season.

But I discovered that the games are also much more than just a ritualized reenactment of a dying tradition. Instead, they seem to be a celebration of the way the game used to be, before the TV networks and their mountainous piles of money corrupted college football, before universities allowed their programs to become subsidiary entertainment businesses almost entirely divorced from student life, and before athletic departments practically became laws unto themselves.

I had almost forgotten what it was like when there was no taunting of a knocked-down opponent or self-promotional posturing for the crowd. I can’t remember the last time I saw one player block another to the ground, as one Army receiver did, then help him up when the play ended.

Somehow, the integrity and discipline of West Point football made it even more exhilarating for me when Army completed a touchdown pass in the waning seconds for a 21-17 victory. There were certainly more dramatic highlights and more athletic plays around the country that day, in games that genuinely mattered in the world of big-time college football. But it was satisfying to see that the game could still be as exciting, and mean so much to those who were there, in a place where football is not a business and the term “student-athlete” is not a joke. To misquote Lincoln Steffens, I have seen the past, and it works.

How it looks from the La-Z-Boy

Titans 13, Ravens 10

Let’s state it again for the record: We know that one of these days, if not one of these years, the Titans are going to lose at Adelphia Coliseum. One of these days, they are going to lose a divisional game. Odds are that they’ll lose again during the next seven weeks. It’s just that, the longer they somehow keep defying those odds, the more likely it is that they’ll keep winning.

Early in their eight-game winning streak, we might have attributed one or two of their nail-biting Ws to good fortune as much as good football. After a while, however, such a streak begins to assume a life of its own. Right now, the Titans are savoring one of the most valuable commodities a team can have: They believe they will always win a close one at the end, and their play reflects that confidence. They don’t panic when an opponent shuts down their offense, or Eddie George departs after just one carry, or injuries force them to insert new receivers who don’t know the whole playbook. They don’t mind if their games are uglier than the mange. Instead, they seem to have adopted the dictum of the old Oakland Raiders: “Just win, baby.”

So, even though a loss once again looms as a distinct possibility this week, it says here the Titans will eke out another aesthetically challenged victory. Sure, they’re due for a letdown now that they have a three-game lead in their division. Sure, the Ravens have a slobberknocking defense and are developing a mean rivalry with Tennessee. Sure, the Titans never seem to have more than two healthy receivers. It won’t matter. For Titans fans, it will be another ugly game that turns out beautifully.

Kentucky 30, Vanderbilt 22

Florida 27, South Carolina 17

Auburn 23, Georgia 17

Mississippi State 20, Alabama 10

Ole Miss 21, LSU 20

Auburn 23, Georgia 17

Mississippi State 20, Alabama 10

Ole Miss 21, LSU 20