Navy wins again

Rico says his father attended the Naval Academy, so you know who Rico roots for, but Dave Caldwell has the story in The New York Times:

The game was over, and the Army football team glumly walked up the sideline and turned to face seven sections filled with gray-coated members of the Corps of Cadets. Only a few players sang the United States Military Academy’s alma mater, and their classmates were not exactly in the mood to sing, either.
Army fell for the eleventh straight year to Navy, but the 17-13 loss was especially bitter. The Black Knights, outscored by 237 points in their previous ten games against Navy, really did have a chance to seize victory from the Midshipmen late in the fourth quarter by driving inside the Navy fifteen.
“They were tired, and we knew it,” said Raymond Maples, the junior running back from Philadelphia who rushed for 156 yards on 27 carries for Army. “Our offense prepares for moments like that, but life doesn’t always go your way.”
Trent Steelman, Army’s senior quarterback, missed a handoff exchange with fullback Larry Dixon with 64 seconds left. The ball dropped to the soggy turf and was recovered by Navy nose tackle Barry Dabney.
Keenan Reynolds, the freshman quarterback who led Navy (8-4) on a spectacular eighty-yard touchdown drive that enabled the Midshipmen to take the lead with just under five minute left, took three snaps and knelt to seal the victory. Navy’s margin of victory was its narrowest over Army since it won, 30-28, in 2000.
“I’m going to put that on me,” Steelman said of the fumble. “There’s no way I’d ever put that on Larry.”
Reynolds, from Antioch, Tennessee, completed ten of seventeen passes for 130 yards and rushed for 43 more, but he was named the game’s most valuable player because he all but single-handedly drove the Midshipmen for the go-ahead touchdown.
Army (2-10) had a chance to pad a 13-10 lead with 6:57 left, but senior kicker Eric Osteen hooked a 36-yard field-goal attempt to the left.
Reynolds entered the Navy huddle after Osteen’s miss and told his teammates that this drive would be the game-winner. Reynolds said of his teammates: “They looked at me and said, ‘Let’s go.’” Reynolds completed a third-down pass to the sophomore slotback Geoffrey Whiteside, then slipped past two Army defenders near the sideline to turn what appeared to be a certain loss into an eleven-yard gain two plays later.
Then Reynolds called a pass play to Brandon Turner, a 6-foot-4 wide receiver who had not caught a pass to that point and was not thrilled about it. Gee Gee Greene, a senior Navy slotback, made a case to the Navy coaches to get Turner the ball.
“I thought: Hey, if he’s saying it, it doesn’t sound as selfish as when I do,” Turner said.
On the play after his scramble, Reynolds threw a 49-yard pass to Turner that carried Navy to the Army eight-yard-line. Turner said later that all he had to do on the play was reach out his hands to pluck Reynolds’ perfectly thrown pass.
Reynolds scored on an eight-yard keeper on the next play to give Navy the lead. But Army, the Number One rushing offense in the Football Bowl Subdivision, had worn down the Midshipmen defense, amassing 320 yards to that point.
The Black Knights hammered out two first downs on the ground before Steelman completed two passes that covered 25 yards and put Army inside the Navy thirty-yard-line. Steelman picked up another first down on an option keeper. The capacity crowd of 69,607 roared. But then Steelman and Dixon failed to mesh on the handoff exchange, and Navy recovered the ball and ran out the clock. After the game, Navy Coach Ken Niumatalolo found Steelman on the field and whispered in his ear.
Niumatalolo said he told Steelman to “just hang in there”. He said of Steelman: “We should all be proud as Americans that the guy is going to go protect our country. They don’t get any tougher than Trent Steelman. Four years starting at West Point, a military service academy. I know everyone in our locker room has nothing but respect for that young man.”
Navy jubilantly sang its alma mater on the other side of the lower bowl at Lincoln Financial Field with sections packed with blue-coated midshipmen, but the Navy football players were hardly gloating. “To beat those guys is a privilege, an honor,” outside linebacker Keegan Wetzel said. “Nobody out there is going to give an inch.”

Rico says you wonder how many of these fine young men will be dead in the next few years...