(10-16-2020 02:23 PM)Chappy Wrote:  

(10-15-2020 10:39 PM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  

(10-15-2020 09:48 PM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  

(10-15-2020 09:33 PM)B easy Wrote:  

(10-15-2020 09:07 PM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  B Easy laid down the basics of the rivalry and the history. I'll mine the Navy SID's Game Notes for more insight later, but I thought I would walk through my personal history of the Navy-ECU rivalry games. I've seen all the NMCMS games, but none of the Dowdy-Ficklen games.

I entered the Naval Academy from the Treasure Coast of Florida, and I believe two years later a high school friend went to East Carolina. So I made a couple road trips down to Greenville for football weekends. Must have been the 1989 season. Navy football was pretty mediocre, so the tailgate scene at ECU was AWESOME for a midshipman...young, and dumb, and ...

Fast forward to Navy and ECU establishing a four game home and home -- first one '06 at Navy. From 2004-2007, I was stationed in DC and living outside Annapolis. Navy was four years into the Paul Johnson era - after the initial growing pains season, we had been to three straight bowls, and I was a true believer again. I was posting on message boards, including, I think the scout.com ECU site - I was already slhNavy91 then. However, my girls were 8 and 7 and 5 and 4, so I wasn't buying season tickets and even making it through a full game the one or two times we'd try was questionable. But this was a great game to attend. ECU was clearly the bigger, faster, stronger team that day, so it was touch and go even with the Paul Johnson offense working well. You had a beast linebacker who I recall knocked down not one but two option pitches in the backfield.

In 2010, I was stationed in Napoli - as I recall, I streamed the Navy Radio broadcast - so I love B Easy's video (I think that video was compiled by NavyBirddog - fewer motivational videos now and more cutting film to analyze the ins and outs of the Triple Option for dummies like me).

In 2011, I returned for my 20-year reunion...the ECU game. I was "that guy" leaving the drinking and socializing to actually watch the game. That incredible completion streak by Dominique Davis was impressive even without knowing the stats in the stadium - "does that guy ever miss?!?" Our block of seats was in the North End Zone, so 150 yards away from the dramatic end of the game in the opposite end zone. First, we had an apparent touchdown catch ruled incomplete due to the "through the completion of the catch to the ground" rule. Still kind of pissed because it seemed like a catch and a football move and became a runner, but I can see the reading to the letter of the law. And then the doink off the goal post. Disappointing for the 20-year reunion, but emblematic of what would be the only losing season between 2003-2017.

2012 game, I had moved from Italy to the UK. Again, I must have been streaming the Navy Radio Network broadcast. Still couldn't reliably get ESPN stream overseas. While I was set up to get American Forces Network in the village, we really only get Navy football for ND, AF, Army, and bowl game. Much like 2010, great to listen to, maybe even moreso as recovery from what I saw in person a year earlier.

In the summer of 2015, after five years overseas, I moved back to another DC job, and again lived just outside Annapolis. We were renovating a house, we moved in with my mother-in-law, but damnit, I had Navy season tickets. When Navy joined the Big East in January of 2012, there was a lot of hand wringing about whether we would be able to compete. Granted, the American of 2015 was different from the Big East of 2011, but there was still angst from some about how we would do. Meanwhile East Carolina had been the only "G5" team to be ranked in the inaugural CFP rankings in 2014. Navy had rolled Colgate in front of a sparse crowd Labor Day weekend, but this ECU game was historic - first conference game after 134 years of independent Navy football. How would Navy fare in this new environment? 415 yards rushing. We knew Keenan was awesome, but I don't think even then we thought he would be a top-5 Heisman vote getter or end up as the all time NCAA D1 touchdown scorer. ECU would beat VT the following week, so it's not like this was the nadir of ECU. So it was big to win that game.

In 2016, the game was delayed after October hurricane flooding (was it a hurricane, or a non-tropical-named storm?). I wasn't going in October, and I didn't go in November. Those girls who made home games tough ten years earlier made away games impossible. But in November, despite a loss to Air Force earlier, I had the good taste of a Notre Dame win still. In the year after Keenan, the heir in whom Navy fans were confident had gone down in game one, and the guy we expected to be the FG/PAT holder had led us through the AAC West. I watched in my living room as Navy clinched a spot in the second-ever AAC CCG. I'm sorry it eclipsed Zay Jones' record setting, and I admit I was more celebratory the next week when we clinched hosting the CCG with an even bigger rout over SMU when we brought 75 and played 74 (punter Alex Barta wanted to be put in as a receiver but Coach Niumat denied him).

And then last year I was again in the stands. (Other than COVID, I've only MISSED one Navy game at NMCMS since I got back in 2015...left one other before Blue and Gold for family, and one I only arrived in the fourth quarter, having awoken in Bergen Norway that morning.) A lot of outsiders expected the low of 2018 to be a new normal, but this game with Malcolm Perry commanding the offense set the tone for another 7-1 AAC season.

Can you find that play anywhere on the internet?

I've never looked - still painful, ha ha.
We were definitely CSTV / CBSSN ... so harder...

I went looking and found myself watching I think all 45 plays of Davis going 42/45. Ugh. Some of them we had three guys in for the sack and he somehow escaped for another completion. Ugh.
Whatever happened to?

He was a backup for the Falcons for a couple of years. I think he might be playing in Canada now.

Quote:Most Consecutive Passes Completed

Game
26—Dominique Davis, East Carolina vs. Navy, Oct. 22, 2011
Season
36—Dominique Davis, East Carolina, 2011 (completed last 10 attempts vs.
Memphis, Oct. 15 and first 26 vs. Navy, Oct. 22)