Inspirational soundbite - Thats Why we Play the Game

Subject: John Feinstein On National Public Radio

Navy Ends Losing Streak Against Notre Dame


Morning Edition, November 5, 2007 .
Every once in a while something happens in sports that reminds us all why we care about games even in times when it would seem games really don't matter very much.

A moment like that took place on Saturday on one of college football's most
hallowed fields. Only this time, the home team was the victim. The heroes
were the visitors. Those were the kids from Navy < young men who will never
play in the NFL but may very well fight in Iraq very soon> who somehow
found a way to beat Notre Dame 46-44 in three overtimes in as remarkable a
football game as anyone is likely to ever see.

Navy and Notre Dame play football against one another every fall. Quite
literally, this is the most one-sided rivalry in football history. Prior to
Saturday Navy hadn't beaten Notre Dame for 43 years. The last time Navy won,
John F. Kennedy was president; Vietnam was just a place in southeast Asia
and Roger Staubach was Navy's quaterback.

There are good reasons why Notre Dame dominates Navy. It has more football
tradition than anyone from George Gipp and Knute Rockne (win one for the
Gipper) to the fight song and touchdown Jesus. It has its own TV network <
NBC pays millions of dollars a year to televise all Notre DAME home games <
and more money than it knows what to do with. There isn't a football player
born who doesn't at least think about playing at Notre Dame. The Irish don't
Recruit players, They select them.

Not so Navy < especially now when coach Paul Johnson has to answer questions
in recruits homes about how likely it is that someone's son might have to go
to war if he plays football at Navy. Navy is four years of a hard life: it
is academically stringent; militarily difficult and there are no corners cut
for football players. If you graduate, your reward is five years in the Navy
or the Marine Corps.

Most of Navy's players are smart, tough kids too small or too slow to be
recruited by Notre Dame or other big time schools. They are kids like Zerbin
Singleton, who scored the first touchdown on Saturday. He's an aerospace
engineering major who wants to be an astronaut. As a kid he watched a bounty
hunter shoot and arrest his mother; was injured by a drunk-driver in a car
accident and was told by coaches at Georgia Tech that, at 5-foot 8-inches,
174 pounds he was just too small to play college football. He transferred to
Navy and Saturday he helped beat Notre Dame.

Navy's team is full of kids like Singleton: Reggie Campbell, the 5-foot-six
inch, offensive captain who scored the winning points Saturday; Brad Wimsatt
who hopes to follow his two brothers into the Marines as a pilot; Kaiponoa
Kahayaku-Enhada, the quarterback who spent the entire afternoon urging the
Notre Dame crowd to get louder because he so loved being part of a game like
this one.

There simply is no way Navy can beat Notre Dame. There are too many
obstacles < size, speed, strength, money, referees > to overcome. On
Saturday, an extraordinary group of young men proved that if you believe
enough and care enough and absolutely refuse to ever give up you can
overcome just about anything.

If that's not inspiring I don't know what is. That's why sports is worth
caring about. Because at it's best it can inspire us all.