Army-Navy Embrace the Tradition of Mid-December Matchup

If things had played out a little differently this fall, Saturday’s showdown between No. 22 Army and Navy would mark the second meeting in nine days between the rival service academies.

The Black Knights and Midshipmen appeared headed for a clash in the American Athletic Conference championship game after both teams started strong in league play.

Army upheld their end of the bargain, finishing 8-0 in the AAC to host (and win) the title game in their first year in the conference. However, Navy fell out of championship contention after stumbling twice in league play in November. 

Many college football fans were hoping to get a double dose of the iconic rivalry this season, but I was not one of them.

Having the Black Knights and the Midshipmen face off in the AAC title game on Dec. 6 would have diminished the novelty of Saturday’s traditional matchup at Landover, Md. 

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Army-Navy is a spectacle that showcases some of the country’s most selfless young men who are willing to sacrifice their lives for everybody else watching them play. The game deserves to be played inside a sold-out NFL stadium while millions watch on TV from around the world.

That’ll be the case Saturday, when the teams collide in front of 67,000 fans crammed inside the Washington Commanders’ home stadium, not to mention the scores of viewers who will tune into CBS’s national broadcast.

But a matchup in the conference title game would have had far less pageantry.

To start, the game would have competed with the Mountain West championship, which featured Heisman Trophy finalist Ashton Jeanty and then-No. 10 Boise State battling then-No. 20 UNLV for a spot in the College Football Playoff.

On top of that, since Army hosted fans in a limited capacity this season due to stadium renovations, the Black Knights and the Midshipmen would have played in front of no more than 30,000 people. Even if the game was in Annapolis, Md., Navy’s stadium seats only 34,000.

For a game that has traditionally been played on a grand stage as the country gives its undivided attention, watching an impromptu clash at a campus site on a Friday night would have just felt wrong.

You also have to consider how the title game could have affected the following week’s contest. 

Assuming the championship would have been just as physically and emotionally intense as any other Army-Navy game, it’s fair to worry that neither team would have been quite as sharp in the rematch. 

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And there’s no guarantee both teams would have entered the second contest as healthy as they did the first. The Midshipmen experienced hard luck in 2016 when they lost multiple starters – including their quarterback – to season-ending injuries during the AAC title game and then fell to the Black Knights the following week.

To be clear, all of this is not to say I hope Army and Navy never face off in the AAC championship. 

But if that were to happen, why not scrap the title game and raise the stakes of the originally scheduled contest by having that one decide the conference champion?

I know that’s not how it works (the annual meeting doesn’t count toward the conference standings), but think about how much more electric the Army-Navy game would be if a league title was thrown into the mix. 

That could also put a playoff spot at stake, not to mention the Commander-in-Chief’s trophy, which the three service academies compete for every year in a round-robin format. 

Sure, an Army-Navy game with playoff implications would likely cause the selection committee some headaches. A fair solution could involve reserving a playoff spot for the winner during the final bracket reveal that occurs the week before the game. That way, all of the other playoff teams would still have two weeks to prepare for their opponent.

It’s wishful thinking, but fun to imagine nonetheless. 

As for this year, yes, we narrowly missed out on what would have been a historic twist to a revered rivalry. But playing an extra Army-Navy game would compromise the purity of the annual contest.

Saturday’s matchup will be the only game between the Black Knights and the Midshipmen this season, and that’s the way it should always be.