With just over five minutes to go in the fourth quarter and a three-point differential, it seemed to be over between the two iconic college football foes in the Army Black Knights and the Navy Midshipmen.
Three weeks after pulling off an upset against Group 5 beast UCF and four weeks after putting a second-half scare into Notre Dame, Navy was all but set to win and bring the phrase “Beat Army” back to another 365 days of relevance.
What we didn’t know and wouldn’t find out until the clock finally hit zero was that the college football gods had other plans in mind, secretly devising one of the closest finishes in the long rivalry’s history.
No game between the two programs had ever made it to overtime, but with a Quinn Maretzki 37-yard field goal, we would see just that. The first instance of overtime in 123 games, and historical could no longer describe it. Phenomenal would do just fine as the Black Knights came away with the victory.
Regardless of who you rooted for, every college football fan I ran into following had once again caught Army-Navy fever. It was and still is an American’s game. Sure, we have to stomach our fair share of bad football plays. No one is pretending they’re national championship contenders, or that either team could complete more than a handful of passes, but it’s the spirit of it all. The American spirit.
Two years from now, that spirit is set to be tarnished by arguably the worst football stadium in the National Football League. Opened in 1997, the aging lines are all but evident on the walls of Fed-Ex Field in Landover, MD, just outside our nation’s capital. If any football fan hates this stadium, well the feeling is mutual. The stadium hates all fans equally, including its home fanbase in the Washington Commanders.
Alongside being mugged by team ownership upon entry, fans can enjoy a number of unique features no other team allows. This includes real face-to-concrete experiences with the players, as railings have been known to randomly send fans flying toward top quarterbacks like Jalen Hurts. That’s right. It did hurt.
Another “incredible” feature will help the fanbase feel even more immersed in the level of play taking place on the field. If the team plays badly, the stadium will randomly choose a seat section to dump gallons and gallons of sewage on. If the team plays better…yeah, there’s still a chance for sewage.
This is supposedly where the greatest college football rivalry belongs: in the dump of the NFL? The college football fanbase of 2022 may have just witnessed the greatest game in the matchup’s history, and as a reward, executives will send American troops and academy students into a warzone of a football stadium. It will be bad enough watching from home, but it will be nothing compared with the hell that awaits the attendees.
This disgusts me as a fan of football, but more importantly, as a fan of our nation. Is this how we honor our military branches? Is this how we honor our academies? So far the answer is yes. There has been no major movement for the location to change and no high desire to do so. This stadium actually hosted the contest before in 2011, and the worn field and dated seats were even evident then.
Executives can mask it all they want, but if this game is played in Landover, it will go down as one of the worst experiences in Army-Navy history. The American spirit does not preside in Fed-Ex Field, and it never will.
Elisha Meyer is a reporter for the Port Orchard Independent.
