A long-standing tradition at the Army–Navy football game is to conduct a formal "prisoner exchange" as part of the pre-game activities. The phrases are often used at the close of (informal) letters by graduates of both academies. The phrases "Beat Navy!" and "Beat Army!" are ingrained in the respective institutions and have become a symbol of competitiveness, not just in the Army–Navy Game, but in the service of the country. The rivalry between Annapolis and West Point, while friendly, is intense. Woodrow Wilson (1913), Calvin Coolidge (1924), Gerald Ford (1974), Bill Clinton (1996), and Barack Obama (2011) each attended once. Trump also attended a game as president-elect in 2016. Bush and Donald Trump each showed up three times Bush in 2001, 2004, and 2008, and Trump in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Truman attended all but one edition during his eight years in office (1945–1952), missing the 1951 game due to vacation. The first was Theodore Roosevelt, who attended the game in 19. Since 1901, there have been ten sitting presidents of the United States to attend the Army–Navy Game. The Army–Air Force and Navy–Air Force games are usually played at the academies' regular home fields, although on occasion they have been held at a neutral field. The rivalries Army and Navy have with Air Force are much less intense than the Army–Navy rivalry, primarily due to the relative youth of the USAFA, established in 1954, and the physical distance between the USAFA and the other two schools.
#Naval games 2018 series
The game is the last of three contests in the annual Commander-in-Chief's Trophy series, awarded to each season's winner of the triangular series among Army, Navy, and Air Force since 1972. For example, quarterback Roger Staubach (Navy, 1965) went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Dallas Cowboys that included starting at quarterback in two Super Bowl victories including being named the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl VI and Alejandro Villanueva (Army, 2010) is currently an offensive tackle with the Baltimore Ravens.Ģ002 Army–Navy Game at Giants Stadium (Navy is in dark and Army is in white.)
#Naval games 2018 professional
Some participants in the Army–Navy Game have gone on to professional football careers. It has aired nationally on radio since 1930, and has been nationally televised on a broadcast network every year since 1945. Nonetheless, the game is considered a college football institution. However, since 1963, only the 1996, 2010, 20 games have seen both teams enter with winning records. Historically played on the Saturday after Thanksgiving (a date on which most other major college football teams end their regular seasons), the game is now played on the second Saturday in December and is traditionally the last regular-season game played in NCAA Division I football.įor much of the first two thirds of the 20th century, both Army and Navy were often national powers, and the game occasionally had national championship implications. The game has been held at several locations throughout its history, including New York City and Baltimore, but has most frequently been played in Philadelphia, roughly equidistant from the two academies. Through the 2021 meeting, Navy leads the series 62–53–7.Ī game ball from the 1974 Army–Navy Game, with the game's final score (Navy 19, Army 0) adhered on with a labelĪrmy and Navy first met on the field on November 29, 1890, and have met annually since 1930. The game has been held in multiple locations, but outside the 1926 game in Chicago and 1983 game in Pasadena, California, it has been played in the Northeast megalopolis, most frequently in Philadelphia, followed by the New York area and the Baltimore–Washington area. Since 2009, the game has been held on the second Saturday of December and following FBS conference championship weekend.
Instant replay made its American debut in the 1963 Army–Navy game. CBS has televised the game since 1996 and has the rights to the broadcast through 2028. The game has been nationally televised each year since 1945 on either ABC, CBS, or NBC. It has been frequently attended by sitting U.S. The Army–Navy game is one of the most traditional and enduring rivalries in college football. The game marks the end of the college football regular season and the third and final game of the season's Commander-in-Chief's Trophy series, which also includes the Air Force Falcons of the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) near Colorado Springs, Colorado. As such, the game has come to embody the spirit of the interservice rivalry of the United States Armed Forces. The Black Knights, or Cadets, and Midshipmen each represent their service's oldest officer commissioning sources. The Army–Navy Game is an American college football rivalry game between the Army Black Knights of the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York, and the Navy Midshipmen of the United States Naval Academy (USNA) at Annapolis, Maryland.