Fight Song Friday: Navy Week

It's Navy Week at Notre Dame. Not quite the same as a traditional "Navy Week," but in many ways not too far off. While I don't know that the Naval Academy intends for its football game visits to Notre Dame to act as community outreach missions, the peripheral effects are recognizable. There are always swarms of uniformed naval ambassadors blanketing the campus, which I can attest is never an unwelcome sight in South Bend. There is a feeling of family and mutual respect that doesn't usually accompany a true sports rivalry. There is admiration for the effort and sacrifice the Midshipmen give not only on the football field but also in serving and defending our homeland. There is appreciation for an annual contest that has been scheduled without interruption since 1927. There is understanding that regardless of which team wins and which team loses, the integrity of the relationship between Notre Dame and the Naval Academy will endure.

Whenever I try to explain the significance of this traditional game, I fail to convey the extraordinary quality of the annual rivalry. Rather than bumble through a lackluster attempt, I encourage anyone who is unfamiliar with the matchup to read a brief synopsis here. To put the rivalry into real-life perspective, I like to use the post-game visitors' lockerroom as a metaphor. As a student manager in college, I was often charged with helping clean up the visitors' lockerroom after football games. You can imagine that for the "big" rivalry games (USC, Michigan, Michigan State, for example), regardless of the game's outcome, the visitors' lockerroom was never in very good shape when we entered for cleaning duty. Dirty towels strewn all over the floor, bloody bandages littered near the trash cans but never in them, used athletic tape wads stuffed into lockers, empty Gatorade bottles in the showers...you get the idea.

Contrast those dreadful images with the condition in which the Navy team always left the lockerroom: spotless. Not a towel or a piece of trash anywhere but in the hampers and trash cans. No puddles on the carpet from used towels lying around. No bodily fluids to dispose of. It never failed that the Navy game was our shortest clean-up of the season. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that the Navy game was then (and has remained) my favorite game of each season. There is something to admire about a team that not only conducts itself with dignity and pride (regardless of on-the-field results), but also considers how its actions might affect even the lowly student managers. They always exited the stadium with purpose, often throwing a wink or a smile our direction as we headed in to "clean up" what was already immaculate.

I look forward to tomorrow's game and the overwhelming experience of being part of something bigger than the game itself: a lasting friendship. Go Irish.