Navy Football

For a few hours each day -- and especially on Saturdays -- Wyatt Middleton's beautiful mind is at rest. Or, perhaps to put it more accurately, at peace. This does not occur when he's sleeping, or daydreaming. It does not happen in front of a television, or with a book in his hand. Instead, this tranquility of the brain takes place on a football field. There, the world is simplified into straight lines and sharp angles. There is no quantitative analysis, robotics engineering or applied physics.

Notre Dame and Navy will play in Dublin, Ireland, in 2012. Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk says Aviva Stadium will be the site for the 86th meeting between the Fighting Irish and Midshipmen. The $410 million stadium opened in May and has a seating capacity of 50,000. "Obviously as an Irish-Catholic from Boston, Mass., I'm going to have a lot of requests for tickets — not airline tickets," Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said after Tuesday's practice in South Bend, Ind. "No, I just think it's a great venue and I'm excited about it. That's one of the unique things about being an independent, that you can have a game like that on the schedule.

RICKY THE RECORD-BREAKER: A year after scoring 27 touchdowns and setting the single-season NCAA record for rushing touchdowns by a quarterback -- breaking the mark held by former Florida star Tim Tebow and Air Force's Chance Harridge -- senior Ricky Dobbs needs 25 more to break the career mark set by Nebraska's Eric Crouch. Both Tebow and Crouch won the Heisman Trophy. Dobbs will likely finish as Navy's all-time leader in touchdowns, rushing touchdowns, points and yards per pass attempt.

Running into the end zone to complete a two-point conversion isn't exactly how Greg Zingler thought he would score his first points at Navy. When he left Severna Park, Zingler figured that he would one day be running and throwing for touchdowns as the Midshipmen's quarterback. But Zingler spent his first three seasons as the scout team quarterback and is listed as the third-string quarterback this fall behind junior Ricky Dobbs and sophomore Mike Stukel. He is the holder for place-kicker Joe Buckley.

Navy senior Bobby Doyle knows that every time he and his fellow slotbacks take the practice field, their performances are being analyzed and graded. The competition at the position this fall is tight. "If you have a bad day and you don't push through it, potentially you could lose your spot," said Doyle, Navy's most experienced slotback. "That's one thing that [slotbacks coach Joe DuPaix] tells us: We compete day to day, week to week." Unlike the previous three seasons - when the Midshipmen relied heavily on Reggie Campbell and Shun White, a pair of speedsters - Navy does not have one clear-cut standout at slotback.

The Naval Academy yesterday denied graduating fullback Eric Kettani permission to participate in next week's NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis. According to Navy spokesman Joe Carpenter, Kettani, 21, must serve a minimum five-year service obligation as a surface warfare officer before he can pursue a pro football career. The decision was made by Vice Adm. Jeff Fowler, Navy's superintendent. "A number of factors were considered," Carpenter said. "He was denied participation because it wouldn't be consistent with current Navy efforts to support active-duty readiness during wartime.

Maurice E. "Mo" Clark did not see himself as a pioneer. And apparently, neither did anyone who chronicled the history of football at the U.S. Naval Academy. Darryl Hill, a standout running back and receiver who went on to integrate Atlantic Coast Conference football for Maryland, had always been told by coaches and administrators that he was the academy's first black football player. It was reported that way in dozens of articles and historical accounts. But as it turns out, Hill, who debuted in 1961, was merely the first black Midshipman to play a down.

The foundation of Navy's football dominance over Army can be found hundreds of miles north of Annapolis, at the Naval Academy Prep School in Newport, R.I. It is there that a long-haired quarterback from Hawaii named Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada cut his locks and honed his skills in running the same triple-option offense he had in high school. It is there that a college soccer goalkeeper from New Jersey named Sander Gossard learned how to play football and turned three years in the Navy into a four-year career as an offensive lineman.

Since its most recent winning season 12 years ago, the Army football program has had four head coaches. It has gone from being an independent to a member of Conference USA and back to being an independent. This season, it switched offenses, going to a variation of the triple option used by Navy. Little, if anything, has worked. Though the team is certainly not the doormat it was from 2000 through 2003, when the Black Knights won a total of five games and finished the 2003 season winless, Army (3-8)

It's not that things always went perfectly for Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada during his first three seasons playing football at Navy. During spring practice when Kaheaku-Enhada was a sophomore, then-Navy coach Paul Johnson gave him a week to prove he could play quarterback in the same triple-option offense he had run in high school in Hawaii. In two seasons as a starter, Kaheaku-Enhada played two of his worst games against Army. But nothing prepared Kaheaku-Enhada for what he encountered this season after tearing his hamstring during an August scrimmage and struggling to get back onto the field consistently since.