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There’ll be plenty of rushing and relatively few passes from both sides in the 124th Army-Navy football game at Gilette Stadium in Foxborough, MA, on Saturday, Dec. 9.
The USNA marathoners shoved off from Bancroft Hall on their campus in Annapolis, MD on Tuesday, beginning a traditional dash that dates back to the 1980s.
A slight flurry of snowflakes fell just after lunchtime Thursday as they headed up Ramapo Valley Road through Mahwah, in North Jersey, toward the New York State border.
The 463-mile journey was a big change for the marathoning Midshipmen. They’d been running to Philadelphia for the match in an annual tradition that began nearly four decades ago.
It’s only the third time, in fact, that "America's Game" won’t take place in the country’s mid-Atlantic region (It was moved to Chicago in 1926 and to Pasadena, CA in 1983).
The West Point marathoners – who used to tote their own pigskin 143 miles south through New Jersey to Philly –- are covering 212 northbound miles to Foxborough.
Navy’s marathoners have split their journey through seven states into eight-to-12-mile legs. Runners are taking one to four legs over the entire distance, which comes out to roughly 48 miles each.
New Jersey State Police and emergency responders from several towns along the route have cheered them on over the past day and change. Their New York counterparts welcomed the marathoners as they crossed the state line in Ramapo around 1 p.m. Thursday.
The football likely won’t spend much time in the air following Saturday's 3 p.m. opening kickoff.
Army has been the 10th-leading rushing team in the top half of Division 1 college football in the U.S., averaging 208.3 yards on the ground. Navy ranks 14th in rushing at 200.5 yards per game, compared with just under 100 passing yards.
Although both teams are 5-6, Army has a shot at the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy thanks to a win last month over Air Force, which beat Navy in October. A Navy win forces a three-way tie among the academies.
For those interested:
- Navy leads the all-time series 62-54-7.
- The most lopsided game was Navy’s 51-0 win in 1973.
- They’ve split the past 10 games, with Army winning five of the last seven.
The Black Knights – who stopped calling themselves the Cadets in 1999 – won in double overtime last year, the first time in the rivalry’s rich history that there’d been bonus football.
Not surprisingly, the final score was 20-17.
With so many handoffs shortening their games, Army is averaging 20.8 points per tilt and Navy 18.3 this season.
Since 2005, in fact, the under has gone a staggering 45-9-1 (nearly 82%) in games played between the service academies, including the two combatants' games with Air Force this season.
It's hovered around 28.5 points this week -- a lead pipe lock in most bettors' minds.
The real money's apparently being placed on getting into the building.
In the rivalry’s history, 90 games have been played in Philadelphia, compared with 15 in New York, 10 in Maryland and six in New Jersey.
Four of the New Jersey games were played at Giants Stadium, one at MetLife and one at Osbourne Stadium in Princeton in 1905. The New York games were played at the Polo Grounds (9), the old Yankee Stadium (2) and at West Point (4).
Staging the game at Gilette honors the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party and the first battles of the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord.
“I can tell you that the ticket demand for this game is greater than any AFC Championship Game that we’ve hosted here, greater than Taylor Swift, greater than anything else we’ve ever seen,” Patriots President Jonathan Kraft at Army-Navy media day on Wednesday.
Next year the game moves to the nation’s capital. Then it goes to Baltimore in 2025 and back to MetLife in 2026 before returning to Philadelphia the following year.
Nitan Skukla took the photos for this story.
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