Command performance

This is not the Breakfast Food Auto Parts Processed Meat Product Bowl they'll be playing today, out there in Philadelphia. The championship of multi-national conglomerate football will not be on the line. Clemson University Inc. and OhioStateBuckeyesCorp will not be involved, and their employees will not be vying for that next step up the corporate ladder.

A corner office on an NFL roster! That's the ticket -- and, oh, yeah, the glory or whatever of dear old Something-Something U.

No one today is playing for any of that. And they damn sure know who it is for whom they're playing.

They know because this is Army-Navy, and what they're playing for is not some trophy named after the cereal aisle at your local Megalomart. They're playing for everything college football was always supposed to be but often no longer is, playing for pride and honor and whatever was lost when corporate America discovered they could make piles of money by sticking its logos on college kids and not have to pay 'em for it.

Captain Crunch never played in this game, see, but General Dwight Eisenhower did. General Omar Bradley, too. Admiral William "Bull" Halsey. And Captain Slade Cutter, who as a submarine commander in World War II sent 19 Japanese ships to the bottom.

A lot of future generals and admirals and (in Eisenhower's case) presidents will be playing this afternoon in Lincoln Financial Field, and if NFL jobs won't be on the line something far more meaningful will be. If premier athletes won't be playing today, premier people will be. That they've been doing it since 1890 only adds to the depth and texture of its tapestry.

Once upon a time, of course, Army-Navy was a clash of legitimate football titans, back in the day when Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis and Roger Staubach and Joe Bellino were doing their thing. That it no longer is hardly diminishes its significance. The very weight of its history -- and the weight of what its participants portend for the future of the nation -- ensure as much.

Navy comes into today with a 9-2 record, a bowl date and a No. 23 ranking. Army comes in 5-7, and this is its bowl game. None of that is relevant, of course. Neither is the fact Army has won the last three meetings, twice as an underdog, after losing 14 in a row to Navy between 2002 and 2015.

What matters is the Army Corps of Cadets, marching into the stadium in that long gray line. What matter is the Navy Brigade of Midshipmen, marching into the stadium beneath that sea of white caps. What matters is the vast gulf between a certain November day in 1890 and this December day in 2019 -- and how, when foot first meets ball, that gulf will vanish like smoke.