Army-Navy: Inside the many traditions of America's Game - ESPN

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — When Navy quarterback Blake Horvath returned to his dorm room during Army-Navy week last season, he found pictures of Army quarterback Bryson Daily taped all over his door. Elsewhere, banners had mysteriously appeared in the dining hall, reading, «GO ARMY, BEAT NAVY.»

The likely suspects? West Point cadets spending a semester in Annapolis, Maryland, as exchange students. It's a program that will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year — one of several enduring traditions between the two academies.

«I can neither confirm nor deny if that was us that evening,» Army senior cadet Jayram Suryanarayan said, «but I can say we were up to some shenanigans — so it could have been.»

The shenanigans were unfolding simultaneously in West Point, where the Navy exchange students' clothes and uniforms had disappeared and been replaced by costumes — including a smelly fish outfit and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle — to wear the entire week.

«They bought a Marine Corps raincoat, cut it as fabric, and then sewed — and then this is what impressed me because it took time and skill — they sewed together a miniskirt for me to wear and they got a Marine Corps sweatshirt and they cropped it,» Navy senior Michael Middleton said. «They stole all of my uniforms, all of my civilian clothes. It wasn't just to school — I had to work out in it. It was really quite a scene. It was really fun.»

(Last year's antics were relatively tame compared to «Operation Black Knight Falling» in 2022, when five Navy midshipmen led three flight crews in formation over the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and dropped thousands of BEAT ARMY ping-pong balls and leaflets on campus.)

After spending a semester at their rival school,