Army-Navy Game

College Football Rivalries

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The Army-Navy Game is a college football game between the football teams of the United States Military Academy and the United States Naval Academy. The game is played each year during the last week of the college football regular season. It had been the final game of the regular season until conference championships games were added. It has been one of the most traditional rivalries in all of college football. The first game was played on November 29, 1890.

[edit] History

Although it has been played at several locations throughout the years, including the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, it has been played mostly in Philadelphia. It is traditionally the final game of the season for each team.

Aside from interservice bragging rights, the game has been a part of National Championship implications, when both teams were perennial powers in college football. Army's 20-0 victory in the 1914 game gave them the first of three national titles.

However, as college football matured into more of a training ground for the NFL, the Academies' academic and military requirements have hurt the football programs' talent-level. In fact, only once in the last 40 years have both teams entered the game with winning records (1996).

Commander in Chief's Trophy

Although neither team is regularly nationally competitive anymore, the game remains nationally televised as a prestigious college football and national tradition. Often times it marks the last time any of the seniors will play competitively again, as very few make the leap to the NFL. Also, it can also be particularly emotional during wartime, as many may not return upon deployment. In 2004, a member of the 2003 class, Navy's J.P. Blecksmith, was remembered after being killed in Iraq. The players traditionally hang their fallen comrade's jersey and pads on a chair along the sidelines.

Following the game, the alma maters for each academy are sung. The winning team stands alongside the losing team and faces the losing academy students; then the losing team accompanies the winning team, facing their students. This is done in a show of mutual respect and solidarity.

Cadets live by the phrase "Beat Navy" and likewise for the Midshipmen, who even have the phrase "Beat Army" stamped on the weight plates in the Navy weight room. Across the seats on the soccer field bleachers in West Point is the phrase "Go Army, Beat Navy."

Occasionally, the Commander in Chief's Trophy, awarded to each season's winner of the triangular series between Army, Navy, and Air Force, will be at stake in this game. For most of the 1970s, Navy had held the trophy. After a period of flux for most of the 1980s, Air Force dominated the competition until the early 2000s. Navy has won it each of the last three years.

Navy leads the series 50-49-7, having won the 2005 meeting.

[edit] All-Time Results