Name a Better Sporting Event Than Army-Navy. Forget it. You Can't.
I'll begin with a quick story from yesterday's Army-Navy game at Gillette. Something to add a bit of context to Big Tennessee's most excellent write-up of the game itself:
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A little while before I got to my friend Jake's tailgate, a State Police horse, as they are prone to do, shat in a high traffic lane of the parking lot, where a lot of VIPs were being shuttled to the entrances. Not long after, a wheelchair came by, with a uniformed soldier missing both legs was being pushed by a woman. As she tried to navigate their way around the mess, the wounded warrior pointed at the pile of shit and said, "Navy's here."
The point of the story should be obvious. But just to spell it out, there's no other event in sports - let's make that in American culture - like this game. One of the most often quoted lines in the history of sports comes from Jacques Barzun's God's Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words when he wrote, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." But if you want to truly define what's best about us, you won't find a better example that Army-Navy football, even on it's 124th iteration.
It goes without saying that the Cadets and the Midshipmen are among the very best this country produces. (No disrespect to the ones with purple hair and nose rings who sit in their car recording their emotional breakdowns so they can post them on TikTok. You're doing your part to keep the nation strong as well.) None more so than the ones who somehow manage to condense a full FBS football schedule, academics and military training into the same 24 hours we all get, and still find time to get a decent night's sleep. Add to them the 4400 or so of their classmates from each academy walking around the stadium in full uniform occupying the spaces that are normally filled with fat guys from Weymouth in Gronk jerseys inhaling brats like they're cocktail franks, and it's nothing short of surreal.
It's enough to make an aging fat guy from Weymouth believe we still have a future. And when I realize that every uniformed man or woman you see could snap me in two without breaking a sweat, but instead chose a life of guarding the parapets so the likes of me can spend his days writing lowest common denominator nonsense on the internet, it makes you grateful beyond words.
If ever there was example of a time where an event can't live up to the pregame hype, this is it. And that is no insult to the game itself. (Granted, there are only so many times you can watch a quarterback take a 3-step drop out the gun, then try to find a hole between the tackles. I was hoping for some sort of metaphor like Army trying to win it with a well-coordinated ground attack and Navy going all Top Gun through the air. But what we got from both sides pretty much all game long were QBs falling forward for 3 yards.) Because even the Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl would've been an anticlimax after the ceremonies on the field.
It was all done to perfection. A line of West Pointers turning around to show the letters on the back of their topcoats read "EATSQUID." The Annapolis guys showing theirs read "YMRA SKUS." The absolute precision with which skydivers from both academies stuck their landings, while the PA system blasted out "Baba O'Reilly" for the Geezer Rock fans in attendance:
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The chaplain's pitch perfect prayer. The joint choir doing the National Anthem. The details were perfection, right down the ceremonial coin, in which the Navy side was Old Ironsides and the Army side was a cannon. You even had to appreciate the college referee - who obviously doesn't get to work a lot of high profile games in this part of the country, forgetting where he was for a second and announcing, "Welcome to Foxboro … New England." Which no one had a problem with, since even Tom Brady had no idea where it was.
I'm a Navy fan by birth, son of a man who served on the USS Solomons. But not to the point the rivalry is that big a deal for me. I mean, I'd like them to beat Army, and all. Just not nearly as much as I root for them when they're keeping the Strait of Hormuz open or tracking UFOs. That said, you have to love the Black Knights for not only using their uniforms to honor The Rock of the Marne, but also for putting "ARMY" across the backs of the jerseys and just having the players name in a small highlight on the front. That's a hell of a nice touch from the bunch that saved Europe from tyranny.
The peak of it all was, as it is every time it's done, the flyover. In this case, flyovers:
If you don't get at least a single, manly Spartacus tear in your eye watching Navy jets scream across the sky in one direction and a squadron of Army choppers go in the other, I have nothing to offer you other than my pity. It's a shame you're so dead inside.
At halftime, it was the Navy Band doing America the Beautiful in front of a flag that was about a quarter acre and would cost you about $30,000 in property taxes if you owned it in Brookline. Which was preceded by a tradition I knew nothing about: The Prisoner Exchange. Where students from West Point that are taking classes at Annapolis are released back to Army in exchange for Navy students currently studying at West Point, so they can watch the 2nd half with their own kind. Which ever genius came up with that deserves to be decorated by the Commander in Chief.
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A quick personal note. I was in the press box, which is something I never do. I discovered about 20 years ago I'm better at my job when I'm home on the couch. But for this one, I made an exception. For about one quarter. I get it's supposed to be a workplace and not at all somewhere you go to actually have a game day experience. What I wasn't ready for was feeling like a lobster in the tank at a seafood restaurant. One in which a high percentage of the other lobsters are bitter and cynical and seem to hate their crustacean existence. And seem to be jaded little know-it-alls who are way too smart for their own exoskeletons. I happened to be seated next to a national reporter who talked to the guy next to him like he invented football. To the point when Army scored the first touchdown of the game, his instant response was, "They took way too long to snap the ball! Just get the play off!" Like a Figure Skating judge marking them down on style points. In true Man of the People style, I dipped out soon thereafter, found some people I know and had beers in the stands with them. And finished up one of the great sporting experiences of my life in peak fashion:
The thing that never escaped me the whole time is that for this one night, Gillette Stadium was the focus of untold thousands in every time zone around the globe. Soldiers and sailors alike, being giving a few hours off to watch it on their screens, or listen over Armed Forces Radio, as they have since it was invented. Bets were made. Old rivalries that have been passed down through the generations for 124 years were renewed. The best sport in the world played by the best, proudest, most dedicated people the best nation that has ever existed can produce. It's perfection. And a war in which everybody wins.