Sport: Scoreboard, Dec. 10, 1956

¶ The "Big Game," the almost always spirited Army-Navy scrap for the service championship, was a big bust. Army fumbled away chances to run up a score; Navy scuttled its own attack while its sloppy defense did little more than watch the soldiers stop themselves. The game ended, as it should have, in a 7-7 tie, and then, as it should have, the Naval Academy refused an invitation to the Cotton Bowl.

¶ Big Don Newcombe, hapless goat of the Dodger defeat in the World Series, won the first Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in baseball to go with his plaque as National League's Most Valuable Player of 1956.

¶ Suffering through their worst season ever, Notre Dame's Irish took an unkind cut from an unexpected quarter. Said ex-Coach Frank Leahy (whose teams were sometimes capable of feigning injuries as they were often capable of fighting for victory): "I watched the Iowa game . . . there was no fight, no will to win. What has happened to the old Notre Dame spirit?" The criticism heated up the temper of Notre Dame's young (28) Coach Terry Brennan, a protege of Leahy, and when he heard idle gossip that Leahy might be heading for a job as a Notre Dame football consultant, he snapped: "Not as long as I'm coach." Next day the Irish lost a close game to U.S.C. 28-20. "They played like a real Notre Dame team," said Leahy. "I'm proud of them."