Goatnapping Gladiators of West Point

The United States Military Academy is perched between the Hudson River and rockbound mountains of the Catskills -- safe inside the iron and stone fortified gates of West Point. In this educational and military fortress, there are swords and guns, ceremonies and parades, statues and cannons, and a certain pomp and puffery that goes on like clockwork every day. There, earnest cadets balance the inanities and thrills of college life with gun-cleaning quandaries about tactics while doing never-ending pushups. It is also there that occasional Strangelove-worthy generals lead their charges and an often-befuddled faculty through a ra-ra existence of meetings, classes, speeches, risqué liaisons, political power plays, conspiracies, and, of course, its main ingredient – football. Through it all, everyone knows their station in life because it’s quite literally pinned on their shoulders.

The Academy is a national treasure -- an amazing cultural and national institution. Therefore, it deserves satire worthy of that stature. This story follows eight weeks of a typically sensational football season at West Point, and at the center of the book’s tumult is the clueless Superintendent the cadets call “Shrek”. General Shrek uses his military power and connections to corrupt his followers and brutally attack his foes, all in pursuit of his career-long dream to rise to become the heroic god of football while infinitely adding stars to his uniform collar. The only things standing in his way are military Colonels with silly PhDs, brilliant and independently free weak-kneed civilian faculty, semi-malleable cadets, and a damn boss in the Pentagon who just doesn’t get it. In their desperate effort to garner football victories, the unhinged generals at the Academy lead their misbegotten institution into a tangle of misplaced masculinity, misogyny, spying and counter-spying, modern gladiator training, with the ultimate goal of being strict, tough, military proud, and football-overdosed for reasons few but the war gods of Valhalla can possibly fathom.

Along the way, you meet cadets – some who excel and others who are still in development. You meet the Four Mule-Riders and goatnapping special operators. You meet Cal Wilson, a coddled bigheaded football star who is too one-dimensional to succeed at the Academy. You meet Jessica Kamp, who uses her bravery and inner strength to overcome trauma and discrimination to succeed. And there is Tom Mando, who is just smart and naïve enough to cause the Academy’s leaders to treat him as a menace. The unbridled footballers celebrate their power by violating rules, recruiting prima donnas, firing coaches, and enjoying bribes and corruptions. It’s like Harry Potter -- without magic. Or maybe it’s more like the Galactic Empire where everyone thinks they are Jedi, even the Siths.

A human place behind the marvelous granite that obscures it, the virtues and foibles of West Point and its leaders provide no less inspiration than the upper-crust British education system did for Evelyn Waugh in his searing account of it in Decline and Fall. And the trials and tribulations of West Point, sacred and complicated products of the country whose jewel it is, serve as a vivid metaphor for the same contradictions and conditions rippling across America itself.

I’m hoping people will read the book, and that those new to West Point might get a sense of the people, especially cadets, who really do live, work, and learn there and make the Army tick well enough to protect our mighty republic, in its imperfections. And I’m hoping those who are or have been a part of West Point will laugh with the book, think about it, argue with it on occasion, and ultimately use the contorted and peculiar lens of its satire to think about the institution -- its past, present, and future. Please enjoy and by all means laugh out loud while riding along with the Goatnapping Gladiators of West Point.