Navy Trounces Notre Dame

What else is there to be said about Navy’s victory over the Fighting “Irish”?

Sometimes too many words can spoil a moment. So, without further ado:

From my position in Section 146 of the New Meadowlands, I witnessed one of the greatest football games of my life. That I lived to see us not only beat, but DOMINATE Notre Dame for four quarters, and leave no one with any doubt as to who was the better team when the alma mater was played, was the closest I‘ve ever come to witnessing athletic nirvana. I was a little late getting to the stadium, so I missed our goal-line stance and first touchdown. But from the ND field goal in the first quarter, to the interception by Navy with 1:59 left in the first half, to the exodus of green sweatshirts at the end of the third quarter, I was there, watching with joy.

For the most part, the ND fans I encountered were respectful and gracious. Of course, there wasn’t much reason for trash-talking on their part midway through the first quarter. The ride back to Manhattan was also pleasant, inasmuch as our train was packed with midshipmen and their families, enjoying the newly sounded liberty call: the Commandant of Midshipmen gave an uncharged weekend off to the Brigade in celebration of the team’s accomplishment. (Try explaining that concept to a junior at South Bend.)

However, once I got home and began reading some of the various ND support sites and the amount of trash talking they had done before the game, I started to get irritated. Or maybe contemptuous is a better description. Chief among the complaints were those discussing the Navy Defense. The South Bend Tribune’s article was typical … Navy blockers stay low, using their opponent’s natural size advantage against them. The Tribune, ND supporters, and even some members of ND’s coaching staff have voiced complaints about it, accusing us of chop-blocking, a personal foul under the rules of American Football.

It's true that there is a fine line between a legal block low and a personal foul, but consider: Back in the dawn of time, when the gods of sports first conceived of Yankee football, they created these smaller men with black-and-white jerseys and little yellow handkerchiefs to ensure that the game is played cleanly. As a result, these men, called "officials," watch carefully for infractions of the rules, particularly when one team has a reputation for a certain infraction, justified or not.

And do you want to know how many times the officials saw us make an illegal block in this game?

Not. Once.

Missing one or two calls might be understandable, if irritating. But ND has been whining about our blocking ever since we beat them in 2007; you'd think that, given their feelings on the subject, the refs would be watching for it, right? And yet not one flag???

How do ND fans explain this??? "Well, the refs must have just swallowed a bunch of whistles."

As if Navy’s blocking scheme and referee blindness caused your quarterback to throw two interceptions.

Or kept you from scoring on fourth-and-goal from the one yard line.

You outweigh us on the line of scrimmage by forty pounds, if not more, and you can’t score from the ONE F*CKING YARD LINE, but you want to whine about blocking that DID NOT ELICIT A SINGLE FLAG THE WHOLE GAME???

Part of me can understand the Domer Denial: It’s one thing to lose, and another thing to be dominated. Most Irish fans didn’t dispute, prior to Saturday, that Navy has a good team. But Notre Dame didn’t just lose on Saturday; they got stomped. The game was simply not a competitive one; we beat the Irish on Saturday the way the Irish used to beat us.

I know; I was there. Many, many times.

And if Notre Dame can’t produce a competitive effort against Navy, can they really expect to be competitive against Texas? or Ohio State, or, god help us, Boise State??? (I know, it feels weird just typing it...)

Reality can be a very painful thing to experience, and the Irish faithful are sampling that pain today. The hopes and dreams with which they greeted the Twilight of Weis and the Dawn of Kelly were clearly overly optimistic.

Notre Dame will field a national championship team again one day, but that day is still a lot farther off than most of Her Loyal Sons want to accept.

This is, of course, the kind of reality that Navy has known for a long time. We just don’t whine about it as much.