The lead-up and playing of the annual Army-Navy football game will serve as the basis for a reality show/docudrama called A Game of Honor to be broadcast on Showtime on Dec. 21. Peter Radovich, a show co-producer, said the schools were initially hesitant about allowing cameras to follow their teams in Annapolis and West Point, respectively, throughout the summer, fall and all the way through the Dec. 10 game on CBS. But both service academies ultimately saw it as a possible recruiting tool.

“It was smart on their part, because they have nothing to hide. There are no warts there,” Radovich told USA Today.

Filming began in June, and included seeing U.S. Naval Academy freshman Maika Polamalu, cousin of Pittsburgh Steeler Troy Polamalu, getting his buzz cut.

“Without question, this could be an annual thing. … What’s good about this – compared to other annual reality shows out there – is there’s a lot more to this than sports,” Radovich says.

John Feinstein, the longtime Washington Post reporter who contributed color commentary to Navy games for 14 years, recently quit his position in protest of this CBS/Showtime project, explaining that he’d unsuccessfully petitioned CBS to do a documentary about the Army-Navy game in the past.