AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. -- Hype from the media, fans, players and coaches can make a college football game seem like a life-or-death situation. Not at the service academies.
When Navy faces Air Force on Thursday night, the players know the game is little more than a distraction from their first priority: training to defend the country. With friends and family members serving overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, including some who might never come home, it's hard not to have some perspective.
``Ultimately, when you sign on the dotted line to join the military, whether you're playing football or not, it is in the back of your mind that one day you might have to go over there,'' Air Force senior receiver J.P. Waller said. ``They're in the military and I'm in the military, so we're all in the same boat.''
At least most of the year.
Students at both academies are held to high academic standards and athletics are well down the list in a regimented schedule that includes early wake-up calls, marching to meals, meetings and military training.
Both rosters are filled with players who know people or have relatives in dangerous parts of the world. Navy has been hit in the past six weeks alone by the deaths of former players Scott Zellem, killed in a training accident in the Pacific, and Ron Winchester, who died in a roadside bombing in Iraq.
But for two weeks out of the year, loyalties are put on hold _ at least on the football field.
Facing the other two service academies gives cadets a distraction from the realities of war, not to mention the Commander-in-Chief Trophy and a year's worth of bragging rights that comes with it.
At Air Force, there are ``Beat Army'' and ``Sink Navy'' signs at opposite ends of the Falcons' field.
``If you're an outsider you don't understand the intensity, you don't understand the importance,'' Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry said. ``We're all on the same team, we're all one day going to represent this great nation in our military responsibilities, but the bottom line is when you are competing against each other, it is for bragging rights.''
And the players and coaches take it very seriously, particularly with plenty of the top brass from the Pentagon in town to take in the game. Then there's trash talking.
It started last Sunday, when Air Force players found pictures of Navy fullback Kyle Eckel with the words ``Eckel for Heisman'' on their lockers. It escalated from there. One Air Force player told a local paper he hated Navy, and Midshipmen coach Paul Johnson jumped in with a few shots of his own.
``Air Force probably thinks they're better than Miami,'' Johnson said.
It probably wouldn't have gotten to this point had Air Force held on to the Commander-in-Chief Trophy last season.
The Falcons had dominated the series, winning the trophy 16 times _ more than double Navy and Army combined (six each) _ since the series started in 1972. Air Force entered last year's game against Navy having won the series 13 of the past 14 years, including the last six, but that run came to an end with Navy's 28-25 victory in Landover, Md.
So instead of heading to the White House to accept the trophy from the president, the Falcons have had to look at an empty trophy case and a photo of the Midshipmen polishing the trophy.
``It's sort of like losing your pet dog,'' DeBerry said. ``You have something for so long, you sometimes take him for granted. You kick him around the house when things don't go well and he always comes back, he loves you, and then all of a sudden he's not there. It's a disappointment to you.''
Of course, it's not going to be easy to get it back.
Navy is off to its first 4-0 start since opening the 1979 season with six straight wins, and the Midshipmen have the nation's seventh-best rushing offense at 280 yards per game. Air Force is one of the best rushing teams again this year _ 278 yards, right behind Navy _ but the Falcons are 2-2 after losses to Cal and Utah, both ranked teams.
And now that the Midshipman have the trophy, they don't want to let it go.
``We've had that taste back in our mouths,'' Navy quarterback Aaron Polanco said. ``It means so much to all of the midshipmen and the entire fleet. It just means so much to everyone involved.''
GO NAVY!
I just think it's so cute when the smaller, younger, services play together.
Go Navy! It's just as well that the MARINES don't don't have a team or neither of them would get it back!
Oooorah!
Go NAVY, Beat Air Force.
And then get ready to work together to crush the Islamic nutjobs who are just aching for a real ass kicking.
glub
Bump...
Go ARMY!
"Navy is off to its first 4-0 start"
I hope Rice whips them this year.