Who Wore It Best: A Brief History of the Army-Navy Game Special Uniforms

There are three things to look forward to with every Army-Navy Game: a pregame display of military power, a game full of rushing plays and special uniforms representing the history of the U.S. armed forces.

Nearly every year since 2008, the Army Black Knights and Navy Midshipmen have arrived at their annual rivalry game wearing a new, different uniform than the classics they wear during the regular season. The uniforms always keep with the spirit of the game and the teams' respective services -- but one team always seems to outdo the other.

Navy may lead the series, 62-55-7, but let's take a look back at all the uniforms Army and Navy have brought to "America's Game" over the years and see who's bringing the better look.

2008 - Philadelphia

For the first time, Nike created special uniforms for both teams ahead of the 2008 Army-Navy Game. The Midshipmen sported their usual gold helmets but wore white jerseys with blue shoulders bordered in gold, representing the epaulets of Navy service uniforms past. Navy pants also included the gold and red stripe of the Marine Corps officers' evening dress uniform pants.

The Black Knights were underdressed in comparison, wearing ACU pattern camouflage on their pants and helmets, with "West Point" written down the legs and "Duty Honor Country" in place of their back nametape.

Game Winner: Navy 34, Army 0

Uniform Winner: Navy. ACU was never a good look.

2009 - Philadelphia

Army came to the game without a special uniform this time, opting to wear its regular-season look. Navy kept its regular-season helmet and reused the uniform pants from 2008, but wore a blue jersey with white "epaulets," simply inverting the 2008 color scheme.

Game Winner: Navy 17, Army 3

Uniform Winner: Army. A classic look is a classic for a reason.

2010 - Philadelphia

While Army again came to "America's Game" wearing its regular-season uniform, Navy came with its white jersey and blue "epaulets," this time bordered in red. The Midshipmen also wore the same pants. This would be the last year before the uniform changes became both a big deal and a more explicit celebration of the services' respective histories.

Game Winner: Navy 31, Army 17

Uniform Winner: Navy. C'mon Army, get into the spirit.

2011 - Landover, Maryland

In 2010, 10 college football teams began to wear new Nike "Pro Combat" uniforms. Army and Navy weren't among those teams, but for their 2011 meetup, both teams came to the game wearing something similar. The Black Knights added a black stripe to their helmet and wore white jerseys with stencil type and black, striped undersleeves, a throwback to old-school football uniforms. Their shoes were also remade to look like combat boots.

The Midshipmen finally changed up the whole uniform, wearing white helmets with a gold Navy anchor and stripe along with monochromatic blue uniforms with gold numbers.

Game Winner: Navy 27, Army 21

Uniform Winner: Navy. Army looked cool, but those uniforms were trying to do too much.

2012 - Philadelphia

Army adopted black jerseys and pants for 2012, featuring gold piping and a kind of subdued map on their sleeves and stencil numbers. Conversely, Navy wore its whites to the game, and its uniforms featured a custom helmet with Navy blue and gold stripes and anchors.

Game Winner: Navy 17, Army 13

Uniform Winner: Navy came with a lot of novelties, but Army's all-black look was really cool.

2013 - Philadelphia

Army's uniform carried a lot of meaning in 2013 with a War of 1812-themed motif that paid homage to Gen. Winfield Scott. The team wore gray pants with gray belts, but seniors in the game wore red belts, similar to the red sash cadet leaders wear in their West Point uniforms. Their gray underlayer was filled with representations of the West Point crest. Cadet gray also outlined the white jersey.

In contrast, Navy wore an inverted version of its previous design and reused the helmet and pants from the previous year, but its Nike Pro Combat uniform featured a base layer that read "Don't Give Up the Ship." The back of the helmet had both the "Don't Tread on Me" First Navy Jack and a series of signal flags that spelled out "BEAT ARMY."

Game Winner: Navy 34, Army 7

Uniform Winner: Army. Scott would be proud.

2014 - Baltimore

By the time Army and Navy met in 2014, Navy had a new uniform supplier: Under Armour. And Under Armour made its presence known during the Army-Navy Game. It leaned into the "First Navy Jack" stripes theme, with the red and white stripes on their shoulders, gloves and helmet, which swapped the previous year's anchor for a striped Navy "N" and "Don't Tread On Me" snake.

Army was much more subdued, wearing an all-black uniform with gold, stenciled lettering and numbers.

Game Winner: Navy 17, Army 10

Uniform Winner: Navy's look stole the show and is still one of the most memorable of the series.

2015 - Philadelphia

After the previous year's Navy uniforms, both teams brought their best. The Black Knights wore black and white uniforms with special black helmets that featured 17 different symbols for each player position, representing the different areas of the Army a cadet can enter when they graduate, which included Army aviation, field artillery, infantry, armor and more.

Navy came wearing all blue uniforms with gold and gray accents, along with gloves that read the immortal Navy line: "Damn the Torpedoes." But the Midshipmen's helmets were special, too. They featured seven hand-painted ships that corresponded to each player position, ​​paying homage to seven of the historic ships that make up the U.S. Naval Fleet. Each position played roles similar to the role those ships play in the fleet.

Game Winner: Navy 21, Army 17

Uniform Winner: Navy. Army just looked drab in comparison.

2016 - Baltimore

Navy came to play wearing an homage to its 1963 team, one led by the legendary Roger Staubach. The uniform featured gold helmets and pants with a white jersey and gloves that read "Beat Army." The anchor made its reappearance on the Midshipmen's helmets, along with a star-studded stripe and "Beat Army" on the back.

Army's uniform paid homage to the 82nd Airborne and its Parachute Infantry Regiments of World War II. Its all-black uniforms had silver accents and black helmets with netting similar to that worn by WWII-era paratroopers and symbols of the various paratrooper regiments who jumped into Nazi-occupied Europe during the war. Players also wore the 82nd Airborne Division patch on their sleeves.

Game Winner: Army 21, Navy 17

Uniform Winner: Army. Airborne.

2017 - Philadelphia

The Black Knights honored the World War II-era 10th Mountain Division with an all-white uniform featuring gray stenciled lettering. Various uniforms also had patches from the 85th, 86th and 87th Mountain Infantry Regiments, along with the 126th Mountain Engineer Battalion.

Not to be outdone, Navy's 2017 uniforms were a tribute to the Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy's Flight Demonstration Squadron. Light blue with gold lettering, the Mids' uniforms sported the unit's patch and helmets similar to the flight helmets worn by the Blue Angels' naval aviators.

Game Winner: Army 14, Navy 13

Uniform Winner: It was a close call, but not only did the Army uniforms look better, they helped the team during the game's driving snow.

2018 - Philadelphia

Bill the Goat, the Navy Midshipmen's mascot, was the theme of Navy's 2018 rivalry game uniform. The uniforms were white with blue and gold accents, and their helmets were adorned with Navy's Bill the Goat logo and gloves that showed the same logo when put together.

Army went all-black once again, this time to honor The Big Red One, the 1st Infantry Division, the first permanent division of the U.S. Army. The all-black look set off the red accents, which included the Big Red One "1" emblem (and, of course, the Nike logo). Uniforms also featured the unit patches of infantry regiments that make up the 1st Infantry Division.

Game Winner: Army 17, Navy 10

Uniform Winner: Army. And it wasn't even close.

2019 - Philadelphia

In 2019, the Navy football program honored itself and its history with uniforms honoring its Heisman Trophy winners, Joe Bellino and Roger Staubach. Its blue jerseys were a throwback of sorts, with simple gold stripes and gold pants. But Navy brought back its custom-painted gold helmets with the Navy anchor.

Army's inspiration was also a throwback to the 1960s, but specifically the Vietnam War. Its uniforms were a tribute to the vaunted 1st Cavalry Division, with olive-drab helmets that had gold cavalry insignia, olive pants with "United States" stenciled down the legs and white jerseys with the 1st Cav's big yellow horse insignia.

Game Winner: Navy 31, Army 7

Uniform Winner: Army with the olive drab.

2020 - West Point, New York

The 2020 Army-Navy Game came amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, so many might have missed the Army's homage to the 25th Infantry Division, also known as the "Tropic Lightning Division." For this game, the entire uniform was olive drab (albeit different shades of olive). Their helmets sported the division's lightning patch and a nametape that read "Tropic Lightning."

Meanwhile, Navy commemorated the U.S. Naval Academy's 175th anniversary, with a blue and white uniform with a kind of marbled helmet and shoulders, meant to look like the ocean.

Game Winner: Army 15, Navy 0

Uniform Winner: 2020 was all Army, apparently.

2021 - East Rutherford, New Jersey

Who doesn't love "Top Gun"? The Midshipmen returned to the Army-Navy Game in 2021 paying homage to naval aviators in helmets that featured the Navy's roundel and a custom-painted F/A-18 Super Hornet. Its all-blue uniforms also had the roundels on its sleeves.

Army commemorated the 20-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Task Force Dagger -- the Special Forces soldiers who were the first to go into Afghanistan in the days and weeks that followed. Its jerseys, pants and helmets featured desert combat uniform (DCU) camouflage of the era, along with the Special Forces motto "De Opresso Liber" -- Latin for "to free the oppressed" -- on nametapes and "United We Stand" on the back.

Game Winner: Navy 17, Army 13

Uniform Winner: It was a tough call, but Navy soared.

2022 - Philadelphia

In 2022, Army paid its respects to the men of the 1st Armored Division of World War II who landed in North Africa during Operation Torch. Their olive uniforms were a gradient-spatter pattern, reminiscent of the mud and dirt kicked up by the tanks as they rolled over the Axis. The 1st Armored's patch could be found on the helmet and gloves. Individual uniforms had the players' regiment numbers and cadet company mascots on the shoulder and nametape, respectively. A "1Δ" embroidered on the pants was how the division's vehicles were identified in North Africa.

Navy honored NASA and the 54 Annapolis graduates who became astronauts during their military careers. Their blue helmets featured the NASA logo while their white uniforms were designed to replicate astronauts' spacewalk suits. The helmets were once again custom painted to show the moon's surface and Navy graduate Bruce McCandless II, who made the first untethered spacewalk.

Game Winner: Army 20, Navy 17

Uniform Winner: It was hard to compete with Army in 2022.

2023 - Foxborough, Massachusetts

Army once again paid tribute to one of its most storied units in 2023, this time honoring the 3rd Infantry Division. Specifically, it was commemorating the division's thrust into Iraq in 2003, which was the longest and most rapid advance since World War II. The tan-colored uniform was accented in black and had the 3rd Infantry Division emblem on the sleeve. On the back of the helmet was the unit's nickname, "Rock of the Marne." Directly below, on the jersey collar, were the stripes of the Iraq Campaign Medal.

Navy honored the "Silent Service" of its submarine force. The Eclipse Navy (Under Armour's darkest shade of blue) uniforms were meant to mimic the "covert design" of a submarine hull. The uniform's white lettering is representative of the classification numbers of a submarine's hull. Numbers on the pants were stacked vertically to represent the depths of a sub's dive.

Game Winner: Army 17, Navy 11

Uniform Winner: Navy. There's something to be said for subtlety.

2024 - Landover, Maryland

Army is again looking back to its World War II heritage and again going for the all-black look, this time recognizing the 101st Airborne Division and its actions during the 1944 Battle of the Bulge.

Navy is also throwing back to World War II, but will honor the legendary naval aviators of VF-61, also known as the Jolly Rogers, the most lethal flying squadron in naval history.

Read Next: Army-Navy Game 2024 Uniform Drip: the Screaming Eagles vs. the Jolly Rogers

Game Winner: TBD

Uniform Winner: You decide..

All-Time Navy Best: 2023's Silent Service

All-Time Army Best: 2020's Tropic Lightning

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