Notre Dame Football: Reasons to hate playing Navy in 2023

Before you start flipping out and parroting nonsense about Notre Dame Football and the Navy Midshipmen with shouts of KNOW YOUR HISTORY... this is a series, and since Navy is the season-opener — they get the first shots.

College football is full of good old-fashioned hate even when you think none exists.

Let’s get after it...

Navy is on the schedule

I’m just going to pull off the band-aid right away and whip out the biggest reason first... Notre Dame continues to play Navy annually — and will continue to play them annually. There isn’t a single thing about this game that helps make the Irish a college football playoff contender, and even less, a contender for a national championship. No one outside of the Notre Dame bubble cares about this game, and a win does nothing. For example... in 2019, Notre Dame was ranked #15 and beat #23 Navy 52-20 — and dropped to #16 in the polls. The game means nothing.

Participation Trophy

College football has all sorts of quirky awesomeness, and a some of that is because of the rivalry/traveling trophies that are involved in many games all over the country. Each one of those trophies has a story to tell, and in many cases — we’re talking about modern day felonies. As for Notre Dame and Navy, they also have a “traveling trophy,” and it’s called the Rip Miller Trophy. This piece of hardware, however, never changes hands despite the results on the field. Both schools have a half of the trophy and they bring it together for events during game week.

The room is spinning.

Disrespect from mutual respect

This reason has more to do with Notre Dame and its fans than with Navy. I can’t stand the way fans and media members patronize the crap out of Navy and its players. During game week prep and during the broadcast, there’s far too much fluff. The Navy football players are FOOTBALL players. It’s ridiculous that the broadcasters and other media personalities feel like they need to patronize everyone with the onslaught of Tom Hammondish remarks — you know exactly what I’m talking about. The Navy football players deserve everything that comes along with being a CFB player, and that includes the shit-talking, criticism, and whatever else comes along with being an opponent.

Next Up

We will find some reasons to hate playing the Tennessee State Tigers.