The Army-Navy Game will be played in Philadelphia this season, in Baltimore in 2016 and back in Philly again in 2017. After 2017, it remains uncertain just where college football’s best rivalry game will be played. The bidding process is about to get underway as the Naval academy and U.S. Military Academy are ready to receive bids for future games. According to one report, cities will have a chance to bid on a seven-year contract to host the Army-Navy Game from 2018 through 2025.
While the game is historically played in Philadelphia, a convenient location in the middle of the two east coast service academies, the game has been played in Baltimore and Landover, Maryland and in New Jersey on occasion every so many years. The last time it traveled outside of the eastern time zone was in 1983, when the game was played in the historic Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Every other game before that as far back as 1944 was played in Philadelphia.
The odds remain good the Army-Navy Game will remain on the east coast on a regular basis, but the possibility of playing in a city like Chicago or San Diego is not off the table.
“It makes it difficult when you have to haul the brigade,” Chet Gladchuk, Director of Athletics at the Naval Academy, said in a report by The Capital Gazette. “It’d be great to have the game in a few more (cities).”
“People are interested in it, very much so. We want to make sure it’s in different stadiums around the country,” said Boo Corrigan, Army’s director of athletics in the same report.
There should be interest in the game around the country, as the Army-Navy Game brings a certain blend of patriotism, pageantry and tradition that few college football game scan offer, and the atmosphere is beyond what the majority of bowl games can dream of offering. It is a game that should be on every college football fan’s bucket list, no matter where it is played (but it should absolutely stay in Philadelphia).