Navy Football: The Essence of College Athletics

Today's blog post was written by Zachary Grant. Zach is a senior accounting major at Notre Dame, and a student in the Social Foundations of Coaching course taught by Play Like a Champion Founding Director Clark Power and Program Director Kristin Sheehan.  

College football has many programs people consider “great.” Millions of fans across the country exuberantly cheer for their team to win on Saturdays. However, in my opinion, one team has won a lot of Saturdays this year, but has won for life every year. This team is truly “great.” They are the Navy Midshipmen. Navy is comprised of young men who are the future leaders of our country. They are devoting their lives to service. Football, for them, is a secondary activity for fun. The lives these men lead will not be determined on Saturdays in the fall. They are unique in that their team is full of members of the Naval Academy who happen to play football, while many other teams seem to be comprised of football players attending school. However, while their primary focus isn’t football, they happen to be very good at it.

Keenan Reynolds is the face of Navy Football, and a perfect example of what Navy represents. He is a record-setting quarterback of the potent Midshipmen triple option attack. But more importantly, he is a tremendous leader off the field – like so many from Navy. He is assigned to information warfare after college. Rather than trying to head to the NFL, he has devoted himself to a life of service. Football is just a diversion from the rigorous, structured, days in the Naval Academy. While he is a standout on the field, he is more of a stand-out off of it. He is what the term “student-athlete” means, because he truly places academics above athletics.

Head coach Ken Niumatalolo also shows the unique and genuine nature of Navy Football. On so many weekends, ESPN and other networks’ cameras show football coaches yelling at and berating their student-athletes. Ken Niumatalolo is not one of those coaches. He never publicly yells at his players, yet has the respect of every single one. In its essence, sports should be about fun. And it is never fun when you are being constantly yelled at as a player. Niumatalolo does not put his student-athletes through that, and it pays off. Of course, the Navy players are driven to win by nature of their competitiveness and drive. But the fact that the Navy program itself does not put more emphasis on that than academics, leadership, and service is the reason they are the standard for what is good about college athletics.

The Navy football team is a collection of students who understand what it takes to be a champion in more ways than one. They strive to be champions in the sense that their actions can set examples for generations to come. They are also champions in the sense that they realize that the values they gain by having a great team can last a lifetime. Chris Swain, a surface warfare service assignee and fullback on the football team told Fox about the reason they have had success on the field this season: “We just bond together, we all love each other and we play for [one] another.” Navy is exactly what College Football should be. They are great leaders who are excellent students, playing football for the enjoyment and love of the game and their teammates. We need more teams like Navy.