Navy coach: "This is just a football game"

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air directed my attention this Sunday morning to the post-game interview of the victorious Navy football coach after the Army-Navy game.  He writes:

In college football, few if any rivalries go back farther than Army-Navy. For decades, the two service academies played at the top of the NCAA’s football division, and their battles have been legendary. As with any rivals, victory is sweeter and the impulse to take it out of proportion that much greater, especially today, where college sports seems to have lost their traditional mission of building character and rounding out student athletes in favor of big business, particularly in football and basketball, where they act like a minor league to the NFL and NBA.



That makes this interview with Navy’s coach Ken Niumatalolo that much more special. It picks up at about the one-minute mark, where Niumatalolo chokes up as he praises both teams — and reminds viewers what kind of battles these young men of Army and Navy will be fighting for our country in the future:

There were a lot of things this coach could have focused on after his team beat Army for the eighth time in a row.  His quarterback Ricky Dobbs, set an NCAA single-season record during the game when he ran for a touchdown, giving him 24 on the season, eclipsing the 23 of Air Force's Chance Harridge (2002) and Florida's Tim Tebow (2007). Instead Coach Niumatalolo took the opportunity to salute all the men and women at West Point and Annapolis.  He is a class act and a patriot.