As we, potential voters, are asked to reconsider the continued value of our NATO alliance, and the nation’s larger role as the proverbial “world’s policeman,” I found it impossible not to turn that same critical gaze to our schedule and that annual annoyance we mask in hyperbolic odes to patriotism and respect: Navy. It is time to cut them loose, loyal readers, and free ourselves from the cut-blocking albatross they have become.
Whatever debt we “owed” the Navy Department for locating an officer school on our campus during World War Two has surely been repaid. Now that the grandsons and the great-grandsons of the greatest generation are taking to the gridiron, can we not call things even? Or must we sacrifice the knees and ankles of the next Sheldon Day or Kona Schwenke on the great altar of our mutual mythology?
We shouldn’t. Not for the garbage that the game itself has become. Call it a rivalry? For all the hand-wringing we do about possibly losing, Navy has won three times since 1964. THREE TIMES. There are children, the sons and daughters of sons and daughters, who are now in kindergarten and learning the ways of a world in which Navy has never won. And those children have grandparents who have only known three losses to Navy. Are we seriously going to credit the Naval Academy with the damage done us by Charlie Weis?
We shouldn’t. The schools themselves have moved on. If the University of Notre Dame needed Navy to keep her doors open in 1944, today, her coffers are full. And the Navy of today is far less important, and, if we are being honest, far less impressive, than it was when she took on the might of Tojo’s Japan and Hitler’s Germany practically on her own.
Today, with just ten aircraft carriers, give or take, the Navy is unable to deal with a resurgent Russia and a China that is seemingly turning every breakwater into an anchorage and runway capable of hosting a squadron of fighter planes. Gone is the proud Navy of Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, Jr. or even of Lieutenant Peter “Maverick” Mitchell. Today, they’re the Keystone Cops of the High Seas. Thank God we have the Coast Guard as a last line of defense.
Midshipmen today are no more or less prone to sexual or academic indiscretions than their Irish counterparts, so I don’t know that we can hold Annapolis out any more as some sort of shining light to the world. The reality is that the vast majority of their athletes will do minimal service and leave the colors. None will play in the NFL. Since we’re funding their education and salaries with our tax dollars, can’t we begin to question what, exactly, we’re remembering so fondly?
It’s time to let Navy sink.
Hating Hurricanes Since 1990.
Bayou Irish is a Jersey boy and Double Domer who fell under New Orleans' spell in 1995. He's been through Katrina and fourteen years in the Coast Guard, so we cut him some slack, mostly in the form of HLS-subsidized sazeracs. But, when he's not face down on the bar and communing with the ghosts of Faulkner and Capote at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone, he's our man in SEC-land, doing his best to convince everyone around him that Graduation Success Rate is a better indicator of success than the number of MNC's won in the last five years.
- Finding Flaws in a Diamond: Clemson’s Rushing Offense - December 17, 2018
- Why Nobody Will Cotton to Notre Dame - December 3, 2018
- Irish Finish Regular Season Perfect 12-0 - November 26, 2018
You know, even though I enjoy the Navy Notre Dame game because of the tradition of having gone to it regularly with my Dad, I was willing to accept your assessment that it may be time to quit making it an annual game. THEN, you had the audacity to call the greatest Navy in the world “The Keystone Cops of the High Seas”. How dare you sir! Though the Coast Guard is a fine branch of our Armed Forces, they do NOT have anywhere near the capabilities of our Navy, and they are not supposed to. All of the things that are appropriate to call you are not fit to print on a public forum. Leave it with, you may or may not know football, but when it comes to the Sea Services, until you take the training wheels off your vessels, keep your ignorant opinion to yourself.
If you had stayed with football, and a discussion of the damage cutblocks do, this might have been a successful post. But then you opened your mouth about the quality and integrity of the US Navy, and showed just how stupid you are. I can’t put into words on this forum, just how idiotic I think your post is, and how idiotic and ignorant you are. I’ve followed many of your posts, have agreed with many, disagreed with some, but you have never climbed down into the sewer like you have done here.
The quality of the Navy has not suffered, although the quantity has, and that has more to do with the masters in DC, than with the Naval Academy or Navy personnel. You should write a followup post and apologize to the midshipmen, active duty Navy personnel, and all veterans.
Bill, I wholeheartedly agree — I feel we both should climb down in the sewer and take this author to task for his erroneous views. And while we are there, in the depths of the sewer, we unexpectedly encounter a large rat wearing a tiny top hat and smoking jacket, who spends his day whispering “April Fools”.
I am and have been a firm beleiver for quite sometime that its time to put this series to bed, I am a veteran and know for a fact that just because you wear a uniform you are not the shinning light that folks wish to put you in. Why subject your players to cut-blocks and its sole reason is to harm and disable. We have more than repayed our WW2 debt lets move on.