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Your guide to the 2023 Army-Navy game at Gillette Stadium
Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk said last week that Gillette was selected from a field of 15 sites that bid for the game.
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One of college football’s oldest and most enduring rivalries is coming to Gillette Stadium on Saturday, as the 124th edition of the Army-Navy game kicks off in Foxborough for the first time.
It’s just the third time Army and Navy have faced off outside of the mid-Atlantic region, as the rivalry hits the road to play in five cities over the next five years, starting with the home of the Patriots. Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk said last week that Gillette was selected from a field of 15 sites that bid for the game.
Excitement is high — and so are ticket prices — ahead of the unusual spectacle in Foxborough. Here’s what you need to know.
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The basics
When: Saturday, Dec. 9, 3 p.m.
Where: Gillette Stadium, Foxborough
How to watch: CBS, Paramount+, CBSSports.com
History of the rivalry
The US Military Academy and the US Naval Academy first met on the gridiron in 1890, when Benjamin Harrison was president and Civil War veterans were creeping into their early 50s. It was three years before Navy Midshipman Joseph Mason Reeves — later a four-star admiral — wore what is widely regarded as the first football helmet, against Army in 1893.
There were several interruptions to the rivalry between 1893 and 1930. World War I nixed the 1917 and 1918 games. The teams didn’t play in 1909 when Army canceled the remainder of its season after a player died in a game against Harvard.
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Perhaps most notably — and maybe apocryphally, as sources vary — no games were played from 1894 through 1898 after an Army brigadier general and a Navy rear admiral supposedly got into an argument so heated they nearly dueled.
Army-Navy has managed to go off without a hitch every year since 1930, including throughout World War II. As the military academies were often national powers, particularly in the mid 1900s, games often had implications at the very top of college football. Army won four straight from 1944-47, entering the first three of those games as the No. 1 team in the country, going undefeated and claiming all three national titles.
Their dominance faded, as did Army’s ownership of the matchup through its first 60 editions or so. Things were fairly even for several decades until 2002, when the Midshipmen rattled off 14 consecutive wins — by far the longest streak in the matchup’s history — before the Cadets won five of the last seven.
Traditions of the game
The game has often been attended by sitting presidents, starting with Theodore Roosevelt, who is sometimes credited with helping the game return from its hiatus at the end of the 19th century, in 1901.
Harry Truman, a World War I veteran, attended seven of the eight games played during his presidency, and John F. Kennedy, a Navy lieutenant during World War II, was present for both games played between his inauguration in 1961 and his assassination, two weeks before the 1963 edition.
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George W. Bush and Donald Trump each went three times as president, and Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama attended the game on one occasion each.
President Joe Biden attended while serving as vice president, but has not appeared as Commander in Chief and there are no reports of any plans for him to attend this year’s game.
Among the pregame traditions is the “prisoner exchange” that often occurs on the field. For decades, the academies have swapped cadets and midshipmen for semester-long exchange programs meant to foster relations between the branches. When the big game rolls around, those temporarily attending the opposing academy will cross the field to rejoin their classmates for the afternoon.
Even the game’s end is steeped in tradition. The losing team hears its alma mater first, as the winning team joins them and faces the losing fans. Then the losing side joins the winners and their fans for their alma mater. Thus the phrase “sing second” has become synonymous with winning the biggest game on the calendar for both academies.
Why Gillette Stadium?
The rivalry is almost never played on campus at West Point or Annapolis. Save for a handful of occasions, Army-Navy has been held at a neutral site since 1899, most often in Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love has hosted the game on 90 of its 123 occasions: first at the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field, then at the since-demolished John F. Kennedy Stadium from 1936-79, and most recently at Lincoln Financial Field (home of the Philadelphia Eagles) since 2003.
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Philadelphia and New York are the two major cities between the academies, with New York City and the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J., combining to host the game 16 times. It has moved mostly around the mid-Atlantic, only twice leaving the region: The teams squared off in Chicago in 1926 as part of the rededication of Municipal Grant Stadium as Soldier Field, and there was one trip to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., in 1983.
Saturday marks the third time the rivalry has truly hit the road. West Point and the Naval Academy announced a “five-year cycle” in 2022, starting with Foxborough in 2023 and bouncing around the usual mid-Atlantic cities — Washington, Baltimore, East Rutherford, and Philadelphia — after that.
“Our destinations over the next five years provide the Academies with an opportunity to share the economic impact, history, and tradition of Army-Navy with a number of communities in diverse geographic areas,” Gladchuk said in a statement.
The game coincides with historical milestones. The 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party is a week after the game, and 2023 marks the 225th anniversary of the first voyage of the USS Constitution, perhaps the Navy’s most famous warship, which is permanently docked in Boston Harbor.
There are multiple events for fans to attend, starting with the Fan Fest at Gillette Stadium Thursday and Friday. The Fan Fest will feature opportunities to see US Army tanks and US Navy assets, and there will be giveaways. Thursday will include a viewing party for the Patriots-Steelers game in Pittsburgh.
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Friday will see the annual Patriot Games come to Boston — a friendly competition between midshipmen and cadets including tug-of-war, a pull-up competition, a relay race, and more.
Previewing the game
Last year’s Army-Navy game was unlike all others, going into double overtime for the first time and the Black Knights coming out on top, 20-17.
The teams enter Saturday with identical 5-6 records, but Army is on the upswing, riding a three-game winning streak to salvage the season after losing five in a row. The Black Knights hit low points with a 62-0 blowout by No. 19 LSU and a hugely disappointing loss while heavily favored at home against UMass in October. They recovered in style with a stunning win over No. 17 Air Force — the cream of the military academy crop this season — as nearly 20-point underdogs on the road. The Cadets took down Coastal Carolina in their West Point finale to bring plenty of momentum to Foxborough.
The Midshipmen have faced a somewhat easier schedule and split their AAC schedule at 4-4, but are coming off a 59-14 drubbing at the hands of SMU Nov. 25.
Both teams are built around the ground game. Army has averaged 208.3 rushing yards per game (10th in FBS) and Navy has averaged 200.5 (14th), with both in the top five nationally for rushing attempts per game. The Black Knights average the third-fewest passing yards (107.3) in the country, just ahead of the Midshipmen (99.0) and Air Force (88.3). That leaves both teams well outside the top 100 in scoring, with Army averaging 20.8 points (111th in FBS) and Navy 18.3 points (123rd).
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So if you’re expecting a high-octane shootout, don’t: It’ll likely be a grind-it-out affair, one in the spirit of the military academies and what they represent, and one steeped in more tradition than nearly any other game in college football.
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