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Army Navy Game

December 10, 2011 by · Comments Off on Army Navy Game 

Army Navy Game, Every year, something miraculous happens in December in America — the Army-Navy football game. It is one of the most fabled and long-standing rivalries in American athletics.

Navy Midshipmen and Army Cadets spend their entire four years of college saying, “Beat Army” or “Beat Navy” dozens of times a day.

In the weeks leading up to the contest both Academies wage mock war against each other – with pranks, commando raids and high jinx. On game day the Armed Forces network broadcasts it around the world. Soldiers will listen in from their posts in the war zones. Sailors will tune in from the high seas.

Not only is the Army-Navy game one of the oldest college football competitions in the nation, in many ways it is one of the best.

It’s not that the football is great, because it’s usually not. The young men who play for Army or Navy weren’t recruited by the top university teams – they’re too small, or too light. They aren’t semi-professional football stars, living, eating and studying apart from their college classmates.

The men who play at West Point or Annapolis major in physics or electrical engineering and spend more time doing homework and marching in drills than at football practice. When they graduate they won’t be drafted by the NFL.

It is the last organized football game most of them will ever play. In a few months time, they will be ensigns standing watch on ships in the Pacific, marine lieutenants flying helicopter reconnaissance missions, and army lieutenants in remote, forward operating bases in Afghanistan.

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