This year’s Army-Navy game was the 119th installment of one of the greatest rivalries in sports, between two of America’s teams. So what better way to look at this rivalry than to use a couple maps of America?
The Empires Map history of Army-Navy
Each week, the Empires Map keeps track of college football’s season as teams battle for territory. With only one FBS game this time, let’s do something different.
In this game, players truly are from everywhere, but there are some interesting differences.
This map looks at the hometown of every player on official Army and Navy rosters and finds the closest player to every county. The county is then given to the team with the closest player. If the difference between the closest Army player and the closest Navy player is within 10 miles, the county is considered contested and neither team gets ownership.
This map also gives a decent outlook on each teams’ recruiting strategies. Both academies recruit nationally and for very similar players, but we can see a few differences.
- Both Army and Navy tend to recruit out of large cities, which results in those areas either being contested or being surrounded by contested territories.
- Army has a strong presence on the Southeastern coast, the Great Plains, and Texas. Army’s dominance on the map in and around the Rockies is merely a result of having players slightly closer in Oklahoma, Utah, and Minnesota. No player from either team is from Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, the Dakotas, or Idaho.
- Navy tends to focus strongly on the West Coast, near its campus in Maryland, and in the American Athletic Conference footprint, which makes sense.
Which counties have the strongest Army and Navy presences?
- Army’s strongest presence is in Gaston County, North Carolina. This results from Army heavily recruiting out of the Charlotte area, thanks to defensive coordinator Jay Bateman, who’s reportedly back to the area to coach for UNC.
- Navy’s strongest presence is in Mississippi County, Arkansas. Navy has many players around Memphis, the home of an AAC rival.
- The most heavily contested county is Forsyth in Georgia. One explanation for that: the Atlanta area is a hotbed for all kinds of high school athletes, but particularly friendly to players who can run the triple option. It’s been a relatively popular offense in that state for a while.
And here’s a historical timeline of Army-Navy, set on a map.
Starting at the location of the first Army-Navy game, the winner gets the 53 closest unclaimed territories, meaning an even portion of counties on the line in each game:
- Navy won the first game and took control of West Point, Army’s home. (On this map, Army would later claim Annapolis; in real life, Army indeed won in Annapolis in the second meeting between these teams.)
- The teams then went back and forth, splitting the series evenly for the first 24 games of the series.
- Army then won or tied nine years in a row, winning the territories running through Indiana, east Tennessee, and South Carolina.
- The teams series stayed relatively even, with both teams winning in streaks for the next 40 games.
- From 1973 to 1983, Navy went 8-1-1, taking control of the series for the first time since 1921.
- Army then controlled the series, winning nine of the next 12 to retake the series lead 47 wins to 43 after the 1996 game.
- The next five games were split 3-2 to Navy.
- Navy then took firm control of the series, winning 14 in a row to take an 11-game lead following the 2015 season. This also resulted in them winning most of the western United States. Those counties are big!
- Army then won the three most recent games, resulting in them taking over Alaska and Hawaii. Since Alaska has a ton of land, Army’s presence on this map is bigger than it looks.
See More:
