"There is no school anywhere remotely like the Virginia Military Institute. It is a special place, with battlements mustard-colored in the setting sun on a bluff above the Maury River, within sight of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Its athletic teams perform prodigies of valor out of all proportion to the student body of 1,300. A military maxim says that morale is to physical as three to one, and opponents of VMI have an uneasy sense, when they take the field, that whatever the betting odds may be in a game, the 3-to-1 ratio for morale always attends the Flying Squadron. The cadets are apt to play to their utmost potential."