Army-Navy game an all-American tradition ‘bigger than football’

It’s the biggest college football game of the year, featuring a 2-9 team, a hopelessly lopsided rivalry in which one team has won 13 years in a row and a field full of players who will in all likelihood never play in the NFL.

Despite that, the Army-Navy game has managed to not only survive but to thrive. That may be because the young men suiting up for the 116th matchup Saturday afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia have more pressing things on their minds than their NFL draft status — and everyone knows it.

“It’s bigger than football or college athletics,” said Joe Ruzicka, a sports columnist who attended the U.S. Naval Academy. “It’s about service to your country. I guess the biggest thing is it’s more than just a football game because these guys are folks that are going to go out and serve their country after they’re done.”

Larry Needle, executive director of PHL Sports, a division of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the game “probably more than any other event is a celebration of the military and all the positive values that the academies represent.”

“Anyone who’s been to an Army-Navy game understands that football is only one piece of the puzzle, one portion of the day,” he said.

ESPN will broadcast College GameDay from Philadelphia. Friday events leading up to the contest include the seven-bout Army-Navy Boxing Classic, the Army-Navy pep rally, and the Patriot Games, a series of skill and strength contests between cadets and midshipmen.

“We do tell everyone that this should be really not only for sports fans but for, I’d say, patriots everywhere,” said Mr. Needle. “This should be a bucket-list kind of event, just because there are so many special moments throughout the day. If this doesn’t make you feel good about America, then nothing will.”

On the football side, Army boosters will be waiting to see whether their team can break that record 13-year losing streak — a tall order, given that Navy is 9-2 and will play in the Military Bowl at its home field in Annapolis against Pittsburgh at the end of the month.

Subplots

Navy leads the series at 59-49, with seven ties. But even if the game is a blowout, the spectacle brings a slew of subplots for the fandom to ponder:

The Heisman snub: Left off the Heisman committee’s list of three finalists for the top player in college football was Navy quarterback Keenan Reynolds, a four-year starter regarded by many analysts as the best player in the country.

In the ensuing outcry, John Feinstein, one of the nation’s most influential sportswriters, blasted the Heisman Trophy race as “a joke” in his Wednesday column and blamed politics for Reynolds’ omission.

“Why? Because he doesn’t play at a power conference school; because he only played on ESPN once this season (Navy’s home games are televised by CBS Sports Network), and because none of the so-called NFL draft experts have him on their radar because he will be SERVING OUR COUNTRY when he graduates,” Mr. Feinstein said on the CBS Sports Radio blog.

The snub follows an uproar over ESPN’s removal of Reynolds from its online fan poll, even though he was leading the vote by a wide margin. After a spate of criticism, ESPN placed his name back on the ballot on the Nissan Heisman House page.

Reynolds won the vote over Alabama’s Derrick Henry, which means Nissan would agree to cast its one Heisman Trophy ballot for him. It wasn’t enough: Reynolds failed to make the cut for the final three, prompting another round of criticism.

Security: Fears about the risk of an attack on high-profile stadium events have skyrocketed since terrorist rampages in California and Paris and the cancellation of a soccer match in Germany.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said Tuesday that there were no immediate threats.

“We do have a security plan for the Army-Navy game that’s coming up, working with our federal partners, working with military,” he told CBSPhilly. “I can’t divulge everything there, but you’ll see a nice presence of uniforms. There will also be a lot of people there that you will not immediately recognize as being police, obviously.”

Army counterattack: Can Army out-Navy Navy? Army coach Jeff Monken worked as an assistant with Navy, and analysts say the result is that the programs are looking increasingly similar.

“I think Monken is trying to instill that same sense of purpose and attitude that he’s kind of seen at Navy and bring that over to Army,” said Mr. Ruzicka, who writes for the website Task & Purpose.

“One of the things that Monken did when he first got to Army was he looked around and he didn’t see any signs that said ’Beat Navy,’” Mr. Ruzicka said. “He said, ’We’ve got to have some signs.’ Because if you go to the Navy campus, everything says ’Beat Army,’ including the weights that you put on the weight bar.”

That attitude may account in part for Navy’s 13-game winning streak, but another factor is the war on terrorism. Would-be football recruits are less enthusiastic about attending West Point than Annapolis when there is a real chance of being deployed overseas.

“When you’re trying to recruit a kid when the nation’s at war, would you rather be humping your 70-pound pack through the desert and potentially being shot at, or would you rather be a fighter pilot getting shot off an aircraft carrier and turning around and being the Top Gun guy?” Mr. Ruzicka said.

Always sunny in Philadelphia: Temperatures are expected to hit the 60s on Saturday, which can only help Philadelphia’s campaign maintain its status as the preeminent host of the Army-Navy game.

“This is our 86th time hosting the game of the 116 years it will have been played,” said Mr. Needle. “So certainly, at the end of the day we consider ourselves the true home of the game, and it’s something that we’re incredibly proud of.”

Under the eight-year schedule, Baltimore will host the game next year and Philadelphia will return as host in 2017. The service academies will soon release their schedule of host cities starting in 2018.

One reason for Philadelphia’s dominance? The city is almost exactly in between the two academies, meaning neither team has a geographic edge in terms of fans. Some Army fans have complained that Navy gains an unfair advantage when the game has gone to Baltimore or Landover, Maryland, though it has been played five times in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which is about 50 miles from West Point.

“We think that history and tradition and bond between Army-Navy and Philadelphia is incredibly special and unique, and so we’ll do everything we can to convince the academies as such and see where the chips fall,” Mr. Needle said.

Despite Navy’s recent success, analysts are quick to remind oddsmakers that you can throw out the record books when the whistle blows.

“There’s been talk that, once you get to where you’ve got continuation of dominance, the rivalry itself kind of dies. But I don’t think that’s true because I think both teams look at it as an opportunity to beat your archrival every time you line up,” Mr. Ruzicka said. “And anything can happen in a rivalry game.”