Shipshape

This is where the Curmudgeon takes the stage, ordinarily. He's been the opening act for the Blob for a long time, occasionally making brief appearances and then slinking back to his codger cave, there to sip his PBR ("If I wanted craft in my beer, I'd have taken a six-pack to summer camp") and mutter darkly about what the kale infestation is doing to good old Amur'can cuisine.

And so let me say right now that I fully expected the Curmudgeon to come muttering forth in response to this.

The Curmudgeon, see, hates the trend toward trendy generally, but specifically as it pertains to college football uniforms. He believes (rightly in most cases) that iconic football programs are iconic partly because they have a signature look. And so he grumbles, "What's that white crap Purdue's wearing?" and "If Indiana was supposed to wear chrome on its heads, it'd be a 1959 Caddy." And don't even get him started on Oregon's hey-look-what-we-threw-on-this-week array of mismatched duds, which has completely done away with the notion that the Ducks even have a signature look anymore.

The tradition these days, apparently, is not to have any tradition. And college football, by the Curmudgeon's lights, is its tradition.

So when he found out Navy was wearing seven different helmets in the Army game -- one for each position group -- his response was, "Good God, even the academies?" But then he got a look at them.

Quite simply, they're the coolest thing ever.

The basic design -- ocean-blue background with a gold stripe -- is the same across the board. But hand-painted on them are submarines, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, a different ship for each position group. And they're awesome.

Throw in the "Damn the torpedoes" lettering running down the legs of the uniform pants, and .. well, the Curmudgeon isn't grumbling anymore.

Hell. He feels like saluting.