Question - why don't the Marines have a football team? The Army does. The Air Force does. The Navy does. None of them are perenneal powerhouses any longer (some of them never were). Is it possibly because the supposed super-elites of the armed forces, the best young men and women this country has to offer, can't abide seeing a score line that reads as follows:
Holy Cross 56 - Marines 12
Let's compare:
The Army football team went 4-7 this year.
The Air Force football team went 4-7 this year.
The Navy football team went 7-4 this year, beating such notables as Kent State (no doubt still smarting from its loss to the National Guard football team many years back) and that football powerhouse Duke. They did, it must be noted, run the table with the other armed forces football teams. On the other hand, they lost to Stanford.
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4 comments:
Does the Marine Corps have an academy? I have never asked this question before, of myself or anyone else.
Some research reveals the following:
The USMMC (United States Merchant Marines Corps) has an academy:
http://www.usmma.edu/
They do have a football program ("The Midshipmen" - what, the Frontshipmen weren't good enough?), which went 3-8 this year including a devastating 41-0 loss to Rensselear.
The USMC (United States Marine Corps) runs this University:
http://www.mcu.usmc.mil/
This appears to be more of a military / tactical school than an academy per se, and so I assume their sliding scale of Things Important doesn't include varsity athletics.
I do not know of the affiliation betweem these two organizations - perhaps someone out there in the world will stumble on this and educate us. I'm already nervous about my ip address getting added to the list of clients on the US Armed Forces web servers, so I've done all I'm going to do!
The Marines are part of the Navy, as the Air Force was once part of the Army. I don't know whether Marine officers come out of Annapolis, but they might. Perhaps there are Marine football players. If there are, they probably play for Navy. I don't think the Merchant Marines have anything to do with the "Marines" Marines--they are similar to the Coast Guard, I think.
What I'd really like to see is a soccer team sponsored by the French Foreign Legion. All the players could wear those little flap hats that Ivan Lendl used to sport so nattily back in the day.
Sam's correct; the Marines are a branch of the Navy, and some members of each graduating class from the USNA in Annapolis are commissioned as officers in the Marine Corps -- so, technically, even though they don't become "Marines" until they graduate, if they play football while they are still middies ("midshipmen" is the term for the students at Annapolis) then I guess you could call them Marine football players. And perhaps that explains why Navy had the best record of any of the armed forces academy's football teams? Plus, I'd love to know what the USNA types would think of the USMMA folks playing football under the team name "Midshipmen" -- since Sam is also right about the USMMA being not affiliated with the Navy or the USNA. (The USMMA is effectively a professional school for folks who want to work on merchant shipping -- their sailors only become semi-soldierly if merchant ships have to deliver goods through a zone of conflict and/or to supply military troops in action.)
Now, Ben and Meeegan, aren't you sorry you ever got this started ;) erin (Meeegan's sister)
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