Midshipmen

The football team belongs to the institution that defines Annapolis: the United States Naval Academy, whose colours, navy blue and gold, the team wears.

That name rests substantially on two players. Joe Bellino won the Heisman Trophy in 1960 as a unanimous All-American, and Navy retired his number 27. Navy's own national championship claim goes back further still, to 1926, when Bill Ingram's team finished 9–0–1 and shared the title with Stanford and Alabama.

Joining the American Athletic Conference in 2015 gave the Midshipmen a division to win, and they took the AAC West three times before the decade was out. Ken Niumatalolo's tenure, running from 2007 to 2022, produced eleven bowl trips built on the triple-option offense his predecessor Paul Johnson had installed; Navy has closed out fourteen bowl games as winners, from the 1955 Sugar Bowl to the 2024 Armed Forces Bowl.