A Reversal of Fortunes

For anyone who know me they know how big of a Navy football fan I am.  I had season tickets for 6 years and saw some of the best football the program has ever played.  The one cloud however that hung over the program was the 43 year losing streak to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.  And to be honest it wasnt even close, in the 43 losses to the Irish 36 of them were by double-digit.  In other words Navy-Notre Dame couldn't be really considered a rivalry.  Then a strange thing happened in 2007, it took 3 overtimes and it might have been the worst Notre Dame team ever, but Navy finally won.  The great thing about the win is that nobody cared how bad the Irish were, a win is a win especially when you waited for 43 years.  No longer would the players, coaches and alumni have to answer the "is this the year?" question about Notre Dame.  Now even the most hardcore of Navy fans wouldn't have thought that the last couple games would have turned out the way they did.  First last year Notre Dame was ranked number 19 in the country and if they ran the table they could have played in a BCS game.  Navy never trailed and forced numerous turnovers to upset the Irish 23-21.  That of course brings us to yesterday Navy's first drive was 6 plays 99 yards and again Navy never looked back in a 35-17 rout of the Irish.  Look Navy will never have the fan base that Notre Dame has.  They will never win as many National Championships as the Irish.  You wont see a lot if any NFL caliber athletes play at the Naval Academy.  But for at least the last couple of years Navy and its fans can say they were a better team than Notre Dame.  In another historical note this Navy senior class became only the third class to beat Notre Dame 3 times.  No matter how you look at it Navy was and has been the better team the last 4 years.  It might not last too much longer but how sweet it is.