The second Saturday of December during every college football season is reserved for the Army Black Knights and Navy Midshipmen to face off in one of the sport’s most enduring rivalries. Your grandpa probably watched the Army-Navy Game; your dad probably did, too. Lord knows, both teams have been playing the same kind of football ever since. 

But now there’s a twist, with the kind of oddity a sports fan could only find in college football: With the Black Knights joining the American Athletic Conference in 2024, a conference of which the Mids have been a member since 2015, the teams could be playing twice every year, starting this year.

While the Army-Navy Game has been fairly inconsequential to any kind of Division I championship (for much of the time most of us have been alive, anyway), the sentiment is different in 2024. As of this writing, both teams are undefeated for the first time since the end of World War II. Both teams are also ranked in the Top 25 in both the Associated Press and USA Today Coaches Polls, with Army at No. 23 and Navy at No. 24, a feat unseen since before the Vietnam War.

Now that both teams can boast at least six wins, they’re also bowl eligible. What’s most interesting about Army’s first season in the conference is that both Army and Navy are in the running for the 2024 American Athletic Conference Football Championship, which is currently scheduled for Friday, Dec. 6, at 8 p.m. Eastern, before the “official” Army-Navy Game.

How can two teams play in the championship before finishing their regular season? I don’t know, either. Like most things that don’t make sense in the military, I’m going to guess that the answer is “tradition.” It doesn’t matter, really. If you’re at West Point, the goal is to “Beat Navy.” If you’re at Annapolis, the goal is to “Beat Army” (even though Navy’s big goal right now is “Beat Tulane”).

The AAC may not be stacked with football powerhouses (apologies to Charlotte, North Texas, East Carolina and the rest), but conference contender Tulane is also undefeated in conference play. Navy has to sail past the Green Wave, a team whose offense put up 27 points against No. 16 Kansas State, on Nov. 16. What a loss in that game means involves a lot of math, but if Navy loses to Tulane, their conference championship hopes are dashed.

Army and Navy both arrived in the Top 25 by simply maintaining possession and running the football down their opponents’ throats, the kind of play both academy teams are known for. The Black Knights have thrown no interceptions in 56 total passes and lost one fumble. The Midshipmen sit at the top of college football with no lost fumbles (yet) and just two interceptions in 81 passing attempts. For context, No. 4 Ohio State has been relatively plagued by turnovers, with three interceptions in 190 passes and has turned the ball over three times in 10 fumbles.

With the Air Force Academy Falcons struggling at the bottom of the Mountain West Conference at a record of 1-6 (Navy already beat the Falcons in a 34-7 blowout; Army meets Air Force on Nov. 2), the two schools will still likely be playing for the coveted Commander-In-Chief’s Trophy and a trip to the White House to receive it. The Army-Navy Game pregame show is still likely to feature more military power than the invasion of Grenada.

If Army and Navy do meet in the AAC Championship game, it would mean the teams will be playing for the conference championship before their regular season meetup. They will end up squaring off at the 2024 Army-Navy Game at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, on Dec. 14 with one team already crowned conference champion. We’ll soon find out which is more important: the trophy or the championship.

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