Martial Combat: Army/Navy Returns
Brady Santoro (12-3)
Photo courtesy of Brady Santoro (12-3)
When I was asked by an old friend I have not seen in a long time to go to an unfamiliar event that I had never been to before, and to which I had almost no connection, I should have followed my instincts and been wary of going. Instead, I traipsed down the Broad Street Line to Pattison and found myself entering a Lincoln Financial Field filled with our nation’s finest playing their utter worst.
I was not particularly in the mood to tramp all the way up to the nosebleeds. Voluntarily taking the El on a freezing weekend is emotionally equivalent to doing burpees in someone else's vomit, and I was admittedly rattled and not ready for a packed stadium. Thank Goodness my friend found me, or I might have ended up frozen to a railing somewhere trying to find my house in the skyline like a four-year-old. The stadium was filled to capacity, and everywhere were midshipmen and cadets, looking as if planning to invade. I have never felt so safe in my life, despite a crippling inability to remove my hands from my pockets due to the cold.
The game started on time after several songs that I did not know the words to, the National Anthem, and the Army and Navy trying to out-marvel each other, though the Navy easily won with a tandem parachute jump despite the Army’s illegally large American flag getting the most applause. Like the Benedict Arnold I am, I decided then that I would outwardly root for the Army and inwardly root for the Navy, despite my great-grandfather being a colonel in the Army and the Army winter soldier uniforms, though suspiciously confederate, looking exponentially better than the cruise ship captain dress of the Navy. I then spent the entire game explaining football to my friend, who laughed anxiously whenever anyone on the field did anything and did not understand the post-touchdown plays for next-to-no points. He also failed to realize how awful the two teams were at playing football. My friend, a former Masterman student who abandoned us for the contented deer and fat squirrels of Chester Country, had come at the instigation of his mother, who bought tickets for the whole family. His sibling then disappeared, and I received the extra ticket. His father and younger sister, who stayed for the parachutes, left after five minutes, and my friend and I were left surrounded by midshipmen and army mothers who took turns harassing each other if (not when) each team scored.
By halftime, the score was 3-7 Army, and there were probably more people invested in the line for the men’s bathroom than in the second half of the game. Team Navy peaked early, and it was a slow descent for both teams, each so ineffably terrible that I was genuinely surprised by each first down (and there were not many of interest). The teams were so bad that the woman behind us exclaimed “my ten-year-old is better than this”, which was doubtful, as this ten-year-old spent the entire game changing who he was shrilly rooting for depending on who was winning. The women in front of us, opposingly aligned, however, knew true loyalty: they spent the entire game trying to smother each other with their oppositely-colored scarves, while I had opted for a more neutral Eagles hat with an obnoxiously-large pompom that kept smacking me whenever I turned my head, which was not frequently, as the game started at the 50-yd line and did not progress much further.
The highlight of the game, besides Team Army screwing up repeatedly, was a shirtless overweight middle-aged man chugging a can of beer to the polite applause of the entire stadium during the “Flex Cam”, which was mostly an attempt to break up the tedium of watching both teams fail to get past the 40-yd line. This instead resulted in the students of both academies trying, in unusual ways, to show off their muscles to the camera. Most notably, someone was carried aloft over five midshipmen’s heads just to lift their coat for the camera and display their nondescriptely-chiseled stomach. At least it was more effort than either team was putting in. The Midshipmen, having tied with the Black Nights, failed the world’s easiest punt to send both teams to overtime over the groans of the marching band, with a score, after 60 minutes, of 10-10. Luckily for the Army, it was the first overtime in the 123-year history of the game and unluckily for everyone else who did not have the benefit of a government-issue overcoat and was freezing. The Army immediately scored, sending the Cadets out onto the field pre-emptively doing victory pushups. Naturally, the Midshipmen then tied the game again, going into double overtime, despite nearly missing their kick, and bringing on another round of pushups. The Navy then scored again, but had their touchdown revoked because the crush of humans turned out to have landed just shy of the endzone, and Army, slowly seizing their opportunity, scored. The Cadets rushed the field, ending the game at 20-17, reportedly the most common score achieved in football, fitting for a game unremarkable save for its abysmal competitors and the fact that I ate an entire bucket of Crabfries and did not require medical attention.
After wandering through several parking lots in order to find my friend’s father, who had returned from the boondocks to fetch us, I returned home in the comfort of a car with heated seats. Thanks again, Renkai, and thank you all for your service, though certainly not to the game of football.