What’s been a busy month so far for military mixed martial arts news was supposed to peak Saturday night with the UFC debut of a former Army sniper. Why that didn’t happen, plus some notes you may have missed from the military MMA scene over the last few days: Todhunter ‘feeling better’ after missing UFC 188 The 40-pound weight cut faced by Andrew “The Sniper” Todhunter to make 170 pounds for first UFC fight took such focus that preparing for his opponent, Russian Albert Tumenov, was a secondary — if that — concern. The former soldier told Army Times he was “in the 180s” on Wednesday afternoon, but by…
The Army-Navy game has made some rare offseason headlines in the last few weeks — not for any on-field reasons, but as an inconvenient outlier for college football’s new playoff system. For Army West Point and Navy fans whose college football season begins and ends on the same Saturday in December, here’s a quick primer: The rankings that determine which teams will play in the College Football Playoff, and the four other top-tier bowl games played on or before New Year’s, come out the weekend before the Army-Navy game. Last year, this simply meant the rankings ignored the game, but that…
As a teenager, Tony Gianunzio dreamed of pitching at Wrigley Field, propelling the Chicago Cubs to a World Series title and breaking a long championship drought … at the time, more than 30 whole years. World affairs had other ideas: A few months after drawing some attention during a Cubs tryout camp in 1942, Gianunzio would be in the Coast Guard, eventually headed into service in the Pacific as a gunner’s mate aboard the patrol frigate Machias. “The summer of ’42 had promised me the best of days,” Gianunzio would write in his memoir. “Youth had seemed a forever gift, and now all…
Service members around the globe will be able to watch events from the Bellator mixed martial arts promotion on American Forces Network in June, beginning with a “heavyweight superfight” that may interest longtime MMA fans … even if it’s a few years past its use-by date. Bellator announced the deal on Memorial Day, offering few details on time slots or AFN channels but promising that the network will carry Bellator 138, a June 19 card in St. Louis that will feature Ken Shamrock vs. Kimbo Slice in a heavyweight main event. Shamrock, 51, fought on the first Ultimate Fighting Championships card…
On Saturday, Mitch Harris became the first Naval Academy graduate since 1921 to play in a Major League Baseball game, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame and the academy itself. Many of the stories noting Harris’ achievement, or his initial call-up to the St. Louis Cardinals from the minors, gave a passing mention to his lone USNA predecessor: Nemo Gaines, who pitched in four games for the Washington Senators. Like Harris, Gaines pitched in relief. Unlike Harris, his time in the majors didn’t come after his time in active service: Gaines secured what amounted to extended leave to pitch in the…
Two military men — one a senior at the Naval Academy, one an Army combat vet — hope to land a spot on a professional football roster this season. Then, if all goes well, you might never hear their names again. Joe Cardona of Navy and Nate Boyer of Texas both seek to join the fraternity of NFL long snappers — men who fire a football between their legs at north of 40 miles per hour and rarely receive any notoriety unless something has gone very, very wrong. Cardona is ranked atop the NFL.com special-teams prospect list. Boyer’s play at Texas and his inspirational story (Green Beret-turned-Longhorn who never played…
Eddie LeBaron, a long-serving NFL quarterback known as “The Littlest General” thanks to his 5-foot-7 frame and stellar military record as a Marine officer during the Korean War, died Wednesday in Stockton, California. He was 85. LeBaron earned his commission in 1950 after graduating from the University of the Pacific, where his two-way play (QB on offense, safety on defense) netted him All-America honors as a senior. The LeBaron-led 1949 team went 11-0 and averaged 52 points per game, according to his online bio hosted by the College Football Hall of Fame, where he was enshrined in 1980. LeBaron signed with the…
Every college athletic program wants its team in the finals of the big CBS-backed March tournament. You know the one: 64 teams enter, one leaves victorious as the school with the best-looking football helmet. The Navy Midshipmen downed powerhouse gridiron programs from Wisconsin, Arizona State, West Virginia, Florida State and Texas to reach the championship of the first ever Helmet Madness, run by CBSSports.com. But Navy couldn’t hold an early lead in an online vote against LSU, eventually falling with just 40 percent of the tally. The bracket included one helmet design from 64 top-tier college programs; Navy was the…
To older football fans, Chuck Bednarik was “Concrete Charlie,” the last of the two-way pros who played on two championship teams with the Philadelphia Eagles and hit Frank Gifford so hard in 1960 that the New York Giants’ superstar didn’t play again until 1962. To a younger generation, he was the gruff throwback who once said Deion Sanders, a two-way star in a different era, “couldn’t tackle my wife.” He was a grandfatherly figure who was once approached by a video game maker for permission to use his likeness, which he granted only after the agency “actually had to explain that he would not…
Duke head coach and U.S. Military Academy graduate Mike Krzyzewski makes no secret that his time as a cadet and as a 20-something head coach of the Army basketball team molded him into a college basketball icon who has amassed more than 1,000 career wins. He even brought Team USA to West Point last year in the hopes that some of the academy’s lore would rub off. But the early days of Coach K regularly take a back seat to his impressive accomplishments a few hundred miles south, where his Blue Devils will again enter the NCAA tournament later this week with…
