Tuesday, December 10, 2024
I’ve been a lifelong lover of sports, particularly baseball and college football. The rivalries. The tension. The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. Watching warriors in the arena.
Having said that, I’m generally not one of those guys who equate the gridiron, the playing field, the rink, the tennis court or the boxing ring with the challenges of everyday life or those facing the nation. But there are exceptions. One in particular.
I truly wish that the almost century-long football rivalry between the U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen and Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish could serve as a model for the world of politics and government.
Beginning in 1927, Navy and Notre Dame have played each other 98 times on the gridiron, missing only the 2020 season because of the coronavirus pandemic. While Notre Dame has pretty much dominated the series, winning 82 of the games, this rivalry transcends so much of what passes for college sports and “student-athletes” today.
While every Notre Dame-Navy game is intense and hard-fought, there is no trash talk or demeaning the other team or its players. At the end of the game, no matter who wins or loses, the players on both teams stand respectfully together for the playing of their respective alma maters.
A further differential between this and other rivalries is that these players are truly students, who must meet academic standards. Notre Dame always ranks at or near the top of colleges across the country in the percentage of athletes who graduate and receive degrees. Navy has similar standards, and its graduates are also obligated to serve five years of active military duty after graduation. Understandably, this has made it increasingly difficult to recruit top high school players who have dreams of going on to make millions of dollars in the National Football League rather than being shot at in combat. Certainly since the Vietnam War, Navy hasn’t been the football powerhouse it was during the 1940s and ’50s.
While Notre Dame has managed during most of these years to compete at a high level, it has never considered dropping Navy from its schedule, thanks to a commitment it made after World War II, which Notre Dame survived only because of Navy. As a private Midwest school with no large benefactors at the time and so many students being drafted into the war effort, Notre Dame was faced with imminent financial collapse. The Naval Academy saved the day by setting up a major training base on the Notre Dame campus, providing the university with fiscal solvency and ensuring its survival as an academic institution — and a football colossus. The Fighting Irish won the national championship in three of the four years following the end of the war.
Realizing and appreciating how obligated it was to Navy for its very survival, Notre Dame made a solemn commitment to keep Navy on its football schedule for as long as Navy wanted. So the rivalry and the series have continued all these years. But it goes beyond a financial obligation. There is a mutual respect between the schools that’s reflected at every level, including Notre Dame’s emulation of Navy with its first-rate naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program.
No matter how often I’ve seen it, I am always moved by the pregame ceremonies, with each school acknowledging the other’s traditions, and the postgame alma mater camaraderie among the players, no matter how hard the battle or how bitter the defeat.
Think how gratifying it would be if our national leaders could follow the lead of Notre Dame and Navy. Fight hard but respect the other side. Look for common ground in the national interest without fear of being labeled a Republican In Name Only or a traitor by your own party.
No, politics is not college football. But our political leaders could learn something by emulating the best of college football, exemplified by the Fighting Irish and the Midshipmen.
And yeah, Notre Dame did beat Navy in this year’s game, 51-14, on Oct. 26. But even in the win-at-all-costs world of college football, the score was almost secondary in this unique traditional rivalry. Go Irish! Go Navy
Peter King is a former congressman, and a former chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Comments? pking@ liherald.com.
