On Wednesday, Showtime debuts one of the great football films you'll ever see. A documentary that's about so much more than football.

"Game of Honor" (11 p.m., Showtime) chronicles the football teams at Army and Navy. But the sport isn't the focus of the film. This is about the young men, whose lives are about service and honor and commitment that goes far beyond what happens on the gridiron.

The actual Army-Navy game consumes only about 10 minutes of the nearly two-hour documentary, which grabs you from the opening sequence and doesn't let go.

We see kids just out of high school entering the two military academies. We see the senior class preparing to enter active service.

We see a young man and a coach proud of their Samoan heritage. Players whose lives were directly affected by the terrorist attacks on 9/11. A former player who returns to give a pep talk after he lost his legs to an IED. The family of a soldier deployed to Afghanistan.

If you don't have to wipe a tear for your eye when you see that soldier come home unexpectedly, you never will.

It's not without humor. You can't help but smile when you see the tradition of class rings play out among the senior class.

The access is startling. We go inside the locker rooms. We see the Navy team captain suspended for leaving the field before the singing of the Air Force alma mater after a controversial loss to the Falcons.

"I truly believe there's a bigger mission than winning football games," says Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo. "We're at a different school."

Different from every other school but Army, in a way. College football is about tradition, but there's nothing that compares to the tradition of Army-Navy.

"Game of Honor" goes right for the heart of that tradition, and gets right in the heart of the viewer. It's great.