Jim Campbell died out of the blue a couple of years ago, or as his former classmate Tom McKean prefers to put it, "out of the Navy blue."

Yes, Jim played football for Navy before he flew those 200 fighter missions over Vietnam. Jim played football for Navy before a lot of things, really.

So when Pitt plays at Navy the weekend after next, the 45th anniversary of Navy's 1963 team will be celebrated at homecoming without the kid they called Soupy, and that will shake from the memories not only an outpouring of enduring love for the multitalented end out of Homestead High School, but of all of the lasting import of the Pitt-Navy game played Oct. 26, 1963 as well.

Eight days before the game, Navy quarterback Roger Staubach appeared on the cover of Time. His helmet had no facemask. His antics as a passer and an open-field runner that fall virtually had compelled the invention of what would come to be known as instant replay. In the cover story, a Navy coach described the phenomenon of Staubach standing over center this way:

"At this point, nobody knows what he's going to do except Staubach and God."

Similarly, Staubach and God are the only two entities likely to understand why the media seems to revisit relevant history only in anniversaries divisible by five, but be assured the emotional temperature of that autumn is with the players who lived it every day of their lives.

"Kennedy was assassinated, the Army-Navy game was postponed; it was a very dramatic season," McKean was remembering the other day.

Navy finished second in the rankings, Pitt fourth, the previous time the Panthers would land in the final top 10 until they won the national championship 13 years later. But all of college football's myriad political forces pivoted that last weekend in October.

That morning in Annapolis, Pitt was unbeaten and ranked third behind Texas and Wisconsin, and was still a five-point underdog. Navy was ranked 10th, having lost to SMU on a Friday night in the Cotton Bowl, 32-28. Time's story said Staubach wept over it.

"We always thought we got hosed that night," said Tom Lynch, a retired admiral and captain of that Navy team who went on to become superintendent of the Naval Academy. "Roger had a tremendous game, but they threw a desperation pass down around the 5-yard line near the end of the game, and the officials called a penalty on our safety, Skip Orr. On the film, he never got within 3 yards of the guy."

As a result of SMU's comeback victory, Pitt had more the profile of a potential national champion than did Navy when they met.

"Soupy was our right end, and the left end was Sugar, Dave Sjuggerud," Lynch remembered, "and we sent both ends down 10 yards and both would button-hook. Roger would look right first, to Soupy. If we was covered, he'd go left, to Sugar. We ran that five straight times, went right down the field using nothing but that one play."

Navy's defense picked off four Pitt passes, which didn't hurt either, and the Midshipmen won, 24-12. They wouldn't lose again until they returned to the Cotton Bowl, where Staubach threw more completions (21) for more yards (228) in more attempts (31) than the Cotton Bowl game had ever seen, and still lost, 28-6, to the Longhorns of legendary linebacker Tommy Nobis.

With bowl bids going out in late November, with the Pitt-Penn State game pushed back to Dec. 7 due to the assassination, bowl committees of that era apparently didn't trust Pitt to win at Miami Nov. 30 and to beat the Nittany Lions. Pitt won in Florida, 31-20, then nipped the Nittany Lions, 22-21, but was offered only an invitation to the Sun Bowl. The Panthers declined.

Staubach went on to be, of course, an officer and a gentleman and a Hall of Fame quarterback with the Dallas Cowboys, but Navy never appeared in a final AP poll again for 41 years. Pitt, after going 9-1 in 1963, took five years to win nine more games.

As for Homestead's Campbell, he became the first member of the Class of '64 to die of natural causes, taken by cancer in 2006. Four others died serving their country.

"Soupy was the finest natural athlete I've ever seen," Lynch said. "All American in lacrosse, honorable mention in football, played basketball; I always joke that if you were pitching pennies or playing Tiddlywinks and you were the state champion or whatever, Soupy could walk up to you, ask, 'What's that?' and whip you at it."

Earlier this year, Campbell's teammates, at the urging of Lynch, another member of that '63 team, commissioned a painting of Campbell by acclaimed artist Johno Prascak of Pittsburgh. Another rendering of Campbell by Prascak, whose celebrated subjects have included Art Rooney and President George H.W. Bush, hangs at Steel Valley High School.