Army Navy

For most of the past eight seasons, the Army-Navy game seemed to carry more significance for the Black Knights than for the Midshipmen. Except for last year's game in Philadelphia, when both teams had winning records and post-season plans, this traditional end-of-season matchup was Army's bowl game. When Navy (4-7) plays Army (3-8) at FedEx Field in Landover Saturday, it will mark the first time since 2002 the Midshipmen will be playing their last game of the season. It also means Navy's 33 seniors will be playing their last college game and for nearly all of them, the last football games of their careers, as it has been for all but a few Black Knights in recent seasons.

During Kelly Coppedge's final conversation with her grandfather last Sunday, she says he was still thinking about Navy's football team. "He asked, 'When's Navy playing and who are they playing?" Kelly Coppedge recalled Thursday. J.O. "Bo" Coppedge, a former Navy football player and wrestler who ran Navy's athletic department from 1968 until his retirement in 1988, died Wednesday night - less than three days before the Midshipmen were scheduled to play Arizona State in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco.

Quarterbacks Trent Steelman and Keenan Reynolds will come into Saturday's Army-Navy game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia from nearly opposite directions. The 113th meeting between the service academies will be Steelman's last game in a collegiate career in which he set Army records for rushing touchdowns (44) and consecutive starts (32), but led the Black Knights to only one winning season (7-6 in 2010). It will mark the seventh career start for Reynolds. The first Navy quarterback to start a game as a freshman in more than two decades, Reynolds has accounted for 17 touchdowns (eight passing)

Navy's game against Notre Dame on Nov. 1 2014 will be played at FedEx Field in Landover, the school announced today. The Midshipmen and Fighting Irish last met at Fed Ex Field in 1998. Navy's last game at the Washington Redskins' stadium was the 2011 Army-Navy game - a 27-21 victory for the Mids. “FedEx Field did a fine job of hosting the Army-Navy game and we are looking forward to another sold out event in 2014,” Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk said in a news release.

Rarely, if ever, will a game between a team with a modest 7-4 record and its 2-9 opponent be as meaningful as the one scheduled to play here at Lincoln Financial Field on Dec. 8. Then again, this year's meeting between Navy and Army has more at stake than usual. It marks the first time since 2005 that the Commander in Chief's Trophy — given to the winner of the round robin played out among the nation's service academies — will be handed to the team that emerges victorious from this iconic rivalry.

This year's Army-Navy game will be the focus if a two-hour docu-drama co-produced by Showtime and CBS Sports. Showtime's cameras are spending six months in full-access, backstage coverage of the two academies and their teams in advance of the the game, according to the cable channel. The docu-drama will premiere Dec. 21 on Showtime, 10 nights after the game, which airs on CBS. A preview on the making of the docu-drama will air Nov. 23 on Showtime. Viewers can get their first look at the material on Oct. 17 when CBS.com launches a 10-part web series.

STRIP AWAY stories of $50 million contracts and drug violations from the sports sections of America's newspapers and one might think they had turned back the clock a few generations to the Golden Age of Sports: The despised Yankees win a World Series. A heavyweight boxing bout generates genuine excitement. A legion of fans trails a hot, young golf sensation (named Tiger, not Arnie). And this afternoon, Army and Navy play a football game that will recall the days when the service academies churned out heroes for the gridiron as well as the battlefield.

Whenever the Army and Navy football teams go on the road, they are normally accorded a warm and polite reception from opposing fans because of what they represent. Perhaps the only exception is at Colorado Springs, Colo., where the Air Force Academy backers mirror the haughtiness of the team that likes to toss around reminders about who monopolizes the Commander in Chief's Trophy among the three service institutions. This season - in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - the cordiality has been especially graphic, the flag-waving never more pronounced.

PSINet Stadium next year will become the 14th venue to host the annual Army-Navy classic, announced formally yesterday by officials who estimate the game will bring more than $15 million into the city.The 101st renewal marks the first time the game has been played in Baltimore since 1944 when, according to Sen. Barbara Mikulski "it was linked to a war bond drive and 70,000 people came. The only bad thing that happened is that Army won."Navy athletic director Jack Lengyel placed the revenue to be gleaned "as somewhere around $15 million and up when you consider four or five days in hotels, restaurants, transportation.

For the first time in 56 years, the drama, color, pageantry and sheer competitive passion of the annual Army-Navy game will be staged in Baltimore today. The 101st renewal of this storied battle is set for noon at PSINet Stadium, with conditions entirely different from the last local showdown when, in 1944, the service academies were the top two ranked collegiate teams in the country. Having fallen on much leaner times, Army and Navy will bring a combined 1-19 record into this meeting, with the Midshipmen (0-10)

NAVY (7-4) vs. ARMY (2-9) When: Saturday, 3 p.m. Site: Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia TV: CBS Radio: 1090 AM, 1430 AM Series: Navy leads 56-49-7 Last meeting: Navy won, 27-21, on Dec. 10, 2011 at FedEx Field in Landover Line: Navy favored by 7 Navy offense vs. Army defense: The Midshipmen have not been sharp early in their past few games, but offensive coordinator Ivin Jasper has...

Quarterbacks Trent Steelman and Keenan Reynolds will come into Saturday's Army-Navy game at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia from nearly opposite directions. The 113th meeting between the service academies will be Steelman's last game in a collegiate career in which he set Army records for rushing touchdowns (44) and consecutive starts (32), but led the Black Knights to only one winning season (7-6 in 2010). It will mark the seventh career start for Reynolds. The first Navy quarterback to start a game as a freshman in more than two decades, Reynolds has accounted for 17 touchdowns (eight passing)

Phil McConkey wasn't surprised to hear that Navy's mascot had been goatnapped last week, for the umpteenth time, prior to Saturday's Army-Navy football game. That the animal was left tethered to a post, outside of the Pentagon, didn't surprise him either. "The goat is a smelly old thing that defecates all the time, and Army probably couldn't deal with it (after the heist)," said McConkey, a star receiver for Navy in the 1970s. "They also stole our goat when I played there, 34 years ago, and I said the same thing then: "Good riddance, let Army have it. " After 112 years of hijinks and hoopla, Army and Navy can still find ways to torment each other in advance of their storied rivalry.

Ken Niumatalolo noticed the Army guys looking askance as he wound his way through the Pentagon to attend a ceremony for his brother, an Army lieutenant colonel. "I think they recognized me," said the Navy football coach, chuckling. "And I don't think they were too happy to see me. " The Army-Navy football rivalry - set to be contested for the 113 t h time Saturday in Philadelphia - is felt from the halls of power in Washington to the waters and battlefields of the Middle East.

Nine months before Bobby Ross came out of retirement to coach football at Army in December 2003, the United States began its military involvement in Iraq. As he dug into his new job at West Point, Ross was thinking more about how to rebuild a team that had lost all its games the previous season than the escalating casualties of war. Soon enough, Ross learned the success of Army football and whether the United States was actively engaged in war were often intertwined. Though it had not happened during the two World Wars -- the Cadets won their three national championships at the end of and immediately after World War II -- Army's football struggles in the early 1970s were often tied to the unpopularity of and protests against the Vietnam War. When Ross began to recruit in the winter and spring of 2004, the conversations he had with parents of prospective players often turned toward what was happening in Iraq.

Rarely, if ever, will a game between a team with a modest 7-4 record and its 2-9 opponent be as meaningful as the one scheduled to play here at Lincoln Financial Field on Dec. 8. Then again, this year's meeting between Navy and Army has more at stake than usual. It marks the first time since 2005 that the Commander in Chief's Trophy — given to the winner of the round robin played out among the nation's service academies — will be handed to the team that emerges victorious from this iconic rivalry.

The 101st Army-Navy football game delivered everything you might expect from two teams that came into yesterday's tradition-bound matchup with a combined 1-19 record. There were seven turnovers, a couple of blocked kicks and more odd twists and turns than a Florida election. But Navy's 30-28 victory at jam-packed PSINet Stadium still lived up to the storied history that has made this annual meeting of the nation's two oldest service academies one of college football's greatest rivalries.

With some new revelation breaking almost daily in the tawdry scandals that have soiled the great sports programs at Penn State and Syracuse, it might be easy to overlook this uplifting little piece of college football news. Senior fullback Alexander Teich will not be selected in the first round of the next NFL draft and he will not become an instant millionaire for trying to carry a ball past a chalk line, but he did get the offer he was looking for upon graduation from the Naval Academy.

Navy football coach Ken Niumatalolo said Wedneday that he received a text message from the family of freshman quarterback Ralph Montalvo, saying that the player who was critically injured in a car accident near his home in South Florida last week has been upgraded to “serious but stable” condition. Montalvo remains in a medically-induced coma at the Kendall Regional Medical Center in Miami, according to Niumatalolo. Reading from the text message, Niumatalolo said that Montalvo's setback on Monday was due to a sinus infection, but added that the swelling on Montalvo's brain has gone down in the past day. Montalvo was a passenger in a car that was involved in a single-vehicle accident Thanksgiving night.

A reserve freshman quarterback on the Navy football team is in a Miami, Fla., hospital in critical condition after he was injured in a single-vehicle accident Thanksgiving night. According to a report Sunday in the Annapolis Capital , Ralph Montalvo was put in a medically-induced coma after being transported to the Kendall Regional Medical Center. Navy athletic spokesman Scott Strasemeier said Sunday night that he received a text message from Montalvo's family saying that "he showed more improvement today" but that he remains in the medically-induced coma.