Army-Navy, Edition #110

Fortunately for America (and also readers of Skip To My Lank), my homeboy, Lefty, is a proud member of the United States Navy. As a member of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Lefty has gotten to do some amazing things, some of which include great road trips to Navy football games. I asked him if he'd do a recap of his attendance at the Army-Navy game, and luckily he agreed to do so. The following is his report. Lefty, thanks for the material, but more importantly, thanks for being a part of the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen. We all owe you one.

For most of America, the Army-Navy game is an event of slight note – something you hear about every year, that you might watch (depending on how much you like sports), but that doesn’t have much affect on mainstream life. I’m hear to let y’all know that it is an entirely different experience when you go to the Naval Academy (and I assume it’s similar at the Military Academy (no, their official name is not actually West Point, that’s just where it is; and yes, I just used parentheses inside of parentheses)).

For us, it doesn’t start a day, week, or even month before the game. For us (by the way, the “us” at the Naval Academy are referred to as Midshipmen, NOT lowly cadets. “Middies” ain’t that cool either. “Mids” works best. I’m here to entertain and educate), it starts when we first show up to the Academy for Plebe Summer, and we’re taught how to “chop.” Chopping is what plebes (freshmen for the uninitiated) have to do inside Bancroft Hall (the “dorm” where all 4,500 of us live – work with me on the parenthetical references, there’s a lot of jargon). It consists of running down the middle of the hallway wherever you may be inside Bancroft, greeting everyone that’s not a plebe with “Good (morning/afternoon/evening) (sir/ma’am)” and squaring corners. Squaring a corner hopefully sounds like what it actually is: whenever you make a turn, you turn at a 90 degree angle. When you do, you have to yell out either “Go Navy, sir” or “BEAT ARMY, sir.” From day #1, we all want to beat Army.

The week before the game is known as “Beat Army week,” or just “Army week.” The stated purpose of Army week is to raise the spirit of the Brigade (that means all of us Mids) in the week leading up to the game, but that is far from what happens. Mostly, it’s just college kids that are stuck on the Yard (the campus/base) 4-6 days per week cutting loose and doing crazy stuff, such as water balloon/condiment/actual fights in the Hall, sometimes even stuff that’s not mentionable with Baseball Mom possibly skimming this. Plus there are the King Hall antics (King Hall is where we all gather to eat 3 times a day. It fits 4500+, so keep in mind that it’s huge.). Wildmans are most popular (someone, usually a plebe, dumps water on an upperclassman’s head, then runs like hell, because if they get caught before they get back to their room, they’re in trouble), with “Beat Armys” a close second (upperclassmen mix whatever they can find at the table in a cup, a plebe stands on their chair and tries to gulp it all down as everyone cheers them on and hopes that they fail in spectacular fashion). Don’t get me wrong, there are good-hearted pranks in there too, like stealing all of a woop’s (see #4 here) uniforms, forcing them to wear whiteworks, the plebe summer uniform (basically what you would make someone wear if you wanted them to look like a complete idiot). In short, it’s a crazy week. Especailly now that the actual game has been pushed back from the first weekend in December to the second, so that we don’t have to compete with the conference championship games, and thus Army week is now the same as the last week of classes. Nothing like trying to bang out that last paper with madness reigning in the Hall.

The pregame festivities usually have some juice, but I was really disappointed this year. One of the annual staples is the entrance of the Leapfrogs (Navy SEALs) and whatever-the-hell-the-Army-calls-their-parachuting-team. The real fun of this is how much each side is invested in their landings. If one of our guys comes in for a sweet landing, we roar our approval. If one of their’s rolls like a tumbleweed, we again roar our approval, in as mocking of a way as possible. The problem this year was that we had 3 jumpers, and they had about 46. Ok, 46 is hyperbole, but you get the idea. It made no sense. Of course, the flyovers are the real spectacle anyway, so it was all good. Or at least it should have been. For reasons beyond me, there was no F/A-18 (what I want to fly, no less) flyover as scheduled. I was more disappointed than Baron Davis when Elton Brand left him at the altar (keep in mind this was before Brand showed how washed-up he is by scoring 6 fewer points and grabbing 3 fewer boards per game than his career averages – and if you don’t know what that’s talking about, just know that I was really disappointed. Like when your grandma buys you an ice cream cone, only you’re a kid so you run around and drop the ice cream on the ground).

Given that this whole thing revolves around a sporting event, you were probably expecting some kind of insider description of the contest from someone that was there. So here it is: it was boring as hell. More so than usual for a team that has not thrown a single pass in two separate games in the past two years (granted it was pouring rain for both games, and coach Ken Niumatalolo is scared to pass when the weather is perfect, but c’mon – we didn’t throw once, in 2 hours of game time!). It was 3-0 Army at halftime. The teams combined for 434 yards of offense, 324 yards below the per game median across the nation. The teams combined for 10/28 passing (a whopping 36% completion percentage), for 138 yards, 1 TD, and 2 interceptions. At least the running was spectacular, right? WRONG. Exactly one person averaged more than 4 yards per carry. That player, Navy’s Marcus Curry, provided both the longest run and pass reception of the game, at 16 and 25 yards, respectively. This game was more conservative and boring than the Fox News Channel. Don’t get me wrong, I was elated that our boys stuck it to Army for the eighth year in a row (we’re at 7 in a row against Air Force, by the way), and we got to taunt the Cadets again. There’s no feeling quite like all of us Mids chanting “WATCH OUR BOWL GAME!” in unison at the cadets, especially when we denied them their first bowl bid since ’96, along with singing Blue & Gold (our alma mater) at the top of our lungs after the game. I’m just saying that the actual game was overwhelmingly forgettable.

Next year is my last at the Naval Academy, and thus my last Army-Navy game as a Mid. Now I can’t promise a close contest, or even any football worth watching (this year’s game could happen again. Could). All I ask is that if you haven’t before, give Army-Navy a shot. If the game is boring, you can easily move on with your life. December 11th, 2010, probably at 2:30 again, on CBS as always. Who knows, maybe you’ll catch me in the crowd.

~~ Lefty

P.S. If you do watch, make sure you catch the flyover. Nothing like the roar of four F/A-18s rolling by. Also, don’t expect much from our marching. We really don’t care. USMA does, but we’ve figured out that marching in line became useless when our forefathers decided to run around and duck behind trees for cover to repel the Redcoats.