Pete Smith would make a "Football Thrills of...." each year as part of his Pete Smith Specials. 1944 was in the midst of WW II and most of the college football teams across the nation had been decimated because most of their athletes were in some branch of the Armed Services, which is why the teams from Army (West Point) and Navy (U.S.Naval Academy) were the best in the country during the war years...and not since. And some were in Special Services and were playing for various armed services stations and camps across the country, such as Fort Sill, Great Lakes Naval Training (coached by Notre Dame's Frank Leahy), Fort Ord and others and were beating up on the freshman-and-4F-dominated college teams of the era with week-after-week regularity. Service teams and Army and Navy disappeared as football powers after the war but they were the kingpins in 1944.

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