Army Navy Game

An article in yesterday's Sun gave an incorrect date for the 1992 Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia. The game will be Dec. 5.The Sun regrets the error.The 1993 Army-Navy football game has been moved from Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., the two service academies announced yesterday.The 1993 game will be played Dec. 4 and mark the second time it has been played at the Meadowlands. In 1989 at Giants Stadium, Navy defeated Army, 19-17, on a 32-yard field goal by Frank Schenk with 11 seconds left.

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)

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- When Naval Academy athletic director Jack Lengyel innocently forgot to introduce football coach George Chaump yesterday at a press luncheon for the Dec. 4 Army-Navy game at Giants Stadium, Chaump said jokingly, "I hope this isn't an omen."Chaump was only half-kidding. His future in Annapolis could hinge on beating Army, the last game on his four-year contract. His record going into the game is 11-32."I put pressure on myself to win every game," Chaump said, "but you especially want to win in a year your contract expires.

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.

I HOPE Baltimore gets the Army-Navy game back again because, in my 24 years in the Queen City of the Patapsco Drainage Basin, few events reached the heights this one did for grandeur, good feeling and civic pride - and I'm including the papal visit in 1995, the World Series in 1983 and the Elvis concert in 1977. There are days - too many days - when a Baltimorean can get thoroughly depressed by the grind of human issues in our midst: the poverty, the drug addiction, the lead-paint poisoning, the declining population, the sense that nothing good can stay in this town under the weight of our heavy social problems.

In an article in yesterday's Sun, sports columnist Rick Maese recounted the age-old Army-Navy game tradition of West Point cadets slipping into Annapolis to capture a couple of the Naval Academy's mascot goats. Today's Army-Navy clash at M&T Bank Stadium will be the fifth time the two military academies have played the game locally. The first time was 1893, when they met in Annapolis, with Navy winning, 6-4. Thirty-one years later, when they took to the field at the old Municipal Stadium on 33rd Street in Baltimore; this time, Army trounced Navy, 12-0.

With Baltimoreans about to enjoy the rare experience of watching high-stakes college football at M&T Bank Stadium, the Ravens and city officials already say they want the Army-Navy game back in future years. Baltimore is likely to face stiff competition, however, from the game's traditional home in Philadelphia and other cities along the East Coast. Navy vs. Army Saturday, noon, M&T Bank Stadium, chs. 13, 9, 1090 AM

M&T Bank Stadium is expected to host at least one Army-Navy football game - and perhaps more - as the schools seek sites for future games, according to officials familiar with the process. The committee of representatives from the Naval Academy and West Point could announce sites for games after 2009 by week's end, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because selections have not been finalized. Baltimore had previously learned it was among four finalists, competing with Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field - which will host this year's game - as well as FedEx Field in Landover and the new Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The committee is examining bids for games from 2010 to 2014.

Picture it: It's the first Army-Navy game back in 1890, the Mid are at the line of scrimmage with the ball and the signal-caller is saying things like, "Reef the topsail! Stand by to clear anchor! Down the wind!" The Cadets were still trying to figure out what was going on when Navy was long gone to a 24-0 victory.The Black Knights of the Hudson take an oath of revenge and on enemy turf, no less. Army gets to work learning about this game of football and prepares for the invasion of Annapolis by scheduling five warm-up games, most of which it wins.

The door has opened for a possible return of the Army-Navy classic to Baltimore in 2002. Respective athletic directors Jack Lengyel of Navy and Rick Greenspan of Army have announced that the game will not be played in Philadelphia and will be moved because of a scheduling conflict. The 2002 game was to have been the final game played under the existing long-term contract with Philadelphia. However, the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau scheduled a major medical convention for the same weekend as the Army-Navy game.

Duty, service and honor are big words. They are also ones that are often abused these days by Washington politicians who thank each other for their "service" even as they sink deeper into partisan gridlock. "Game of Honor," a documentary about West Point and Annapolis and the Army-Navy football game played Dec. 10 in Landover, reminds viewers of the higher meanings of those words. The two-hour film premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday on Showtime. Producers Pete Radovich and Steve Karasik say they didn't set out with any such lofty goal in mind for their Showtime-CBS Sports co-production, which was shot during the past eight months in the barracks and on the playing fields at the U.S. military and naval academies.

Whether it's playing pickup basketball games at the White House, watching college basketball on an aircraft carrier or seeing his brother-in-law's Oregon State Beavers take on Towson University, it's clear President Obama loves sports. It was even more impressive the way he jumped out of his seat and helped honor the Towson football team at halftime of the game. The pictures were great. It probably drove the Secret Service guys crazy. More than a few earpieces were squawking when he did that.

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.

Devin Jones (Old Mill) matched his season high with 21 points, helping Salisbury (4-5) end a two-game losing streak with an 86-71 men's basketball victory over Maryland Bible in the consolation game of the CNU Classic at Christopher Newport. Greg Palmer added 19 points and 10 rebounds, and Mike Maczko (John Carroll) had 10 points and 10 rebounds. College football: CBS Sports' coverage of the Army-Navy game on Saturday earned an overnight household rating/share of 4.2/10, up 75 percent from last year's 2.4/6.

Whenever he gets the chance, Army coach Rich Ellerson watches the football teams from Navy and Georgia Tech on television. He does so partly because of his long-standing friendships with those teams' coaches, Ken Niumatalolo and Paul Johnson. But Ellerson is also curious; his team, like Niumatalolo's and Johnson's, employs the triple-option offense. "We try to see what kind of answers people are coming up with [to defend it] along the way," said Ellerson, who's in his first season as Army's head coach.

G o ahead and tell me why you don't think the Army-Navy football game is a big deal anymore. No BCS glamour teams? No Heisman Trophy candidates? Nobody who'll be decked out in a pricey designer suit and jabbering into a cell phone when the TV cameras show him as a top pick in the next NFL draft? Not enough big-time atmosphere, not enough glitz - that's your problem with the Army-Navy game? If so, you're missing the whole point of the best pure rivalry in college sports, which takes place for the 110th time Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

Long before the Army-Navy football players take to the field in PSINet Stadium on Dec. 2, cash registers will start to ring up what promises to be a $10 million to $12 million weekend for Baltimore. The sold-out game will draw 70,000 ticket-holders to Baltimore during a traditionally slow time of year. Downtown hotels began selling out months ago, and national media coverage promises the kind of publicity that few cities would want to pay for. But, what is really at stake for Baltimore is the chance to land the game on a regular basis - a deal that could have an impact of hundreds of millions of dollars on the local economy.

M&T Bank Stadium will play host in 2014 and 2016 to the Army-Navy football game, a rivalry long associated with Philadelphia that is expected to generate as much as $22 million per game for the Baltimore-area economy. The annual, tradition-rich game will also come for the first time in 2011 to FedEx Field in Landover, home of the Washington Redskins. It was last played in Baltimore in 2007. Baltimore, which has been host four times since the series began in 1890, had particularly sought the 2014 game, which will coincide with the bicentennial celebration of "The Star-Spangled Banner."