Imagine that Congress cuts $500 million from the Air Force’s budget and weighs whether the money should go to the Army or Navy. Which military branch should receive the money? That’s the topic West Point Cadets and Navy Midshipmen will debate in the nation’s capital before the 2024 Army-Navy football game.
While the football game showcases the physical abilities of the U.S. military’s future leaders, the debate match is a battle of wits that has all the hallmarks of the schools’ gridiron rivalry: The meetup will not affect who the national champion is, but beating their rival academy means a lot more than just a notch in the W column.
These two teams have met every year at the Army-Navy Game since 2012, performing a debate exhibition match for onlookers to witness not only a meeting of some of the best burgeoning minds America has to offer, but also a frank, relevant debate about U.S. military policy.
“There’s a bunch of other sideshow stuff that happens the day before [the Army-Navy Game], called the Patriot Games,” Maj. Anthony Davila, the Army debate coach, told Military.com. “Various teams from the academies will show up and do other physical contests. We are sort of the academic, intellectual competition to complement the physical struggles that happen that day, and then, obviously, the big game the next day.”
“I think debate is one of the best forms of education that anybody could do as an undergraduate,” Danielle Verney O’Gorman, adjunct professor and coach of the Naval Academy’s debate team, told Military.com. “For midshipmen and cadets, it’s so incredibly important, because it’s a training ground for making decisions quickly and thinking through the strategy and outcomes of the decisions you’ve made.”
Davila is a West Point graduate and former member of the Army debate team. He told Military.com that no matter how the team is performing during the regular debate tournaments, Army-Navy matchups are always more important, even if it doesn’t have a huge impact on the team’s season.
“This exhibition doesn’t go into our national standing at all,” Davila said. “But I probably spent more time specifically preparing with our team and thinking about this one, just because it is a huge rivalry. It’s something that we’ve been doing for over a decade, so it’s a big deal for us.”
A collegiate debate is more than just an argument. The goal is to persuade the judge (or judges) that your team is more right than the other side. The judges are often debate coaches from other college debate teams — people familiar with debate competitions.
“So then the question is, ‘How do you persuade that judge?'” said O’Gorman. “A lot of it comes down to strategic decision-making. Are you winning an overarching claim? Then the next thing to look at is the research you all have presented, evaluating the evidence you used, the sources you’ve used, thinking through what those things say, the claims that they’re making and then evaluate the way you’re using them in a debate.”
There’s just one judge to persuade in preliminary rounds, but the panels get bigger as the competition increases. In elimination debates, there’s more than one judge; sometimes it’s three, sometimes it’s five. At the National Debate Tournament, there can be as many as 7-9 judges.
In a regular debate, the teams would debate the national topic, which is about whether the United States should adopt a policy of decarbonization and which market instruments to employ toward that goal. At the Army-Navy Game, the two teams change up their format, performance and topic to flex their intellectual muscles and put on an impressive display of military knowledge. As mentioned, this year’s topic is: Which branch should get a $500 million budget increase?
“Our format is pretty technical, so we speak quickly, we read a lot of evidence, and it takes a bit of a learning curve to be able to adjudicate those rounds appropriately and understand some of the lingo,” Davila said. “What you’ll see on Friday [before the Army-Navy Game] is a little bit more of a public-facing debate. We’ll speak more slowly and be a bit more about the presentation, instead of just the tactical aspect of the debate.”
“We thought one of the fun things about this debate is that it really lets us play with our professional knowledge in an environment where the judging is going to be really appreciative of that and where we get to show that off,” said O’Gorman. “Some of the panel will be members of Congress who sit on relevant committees that may be implementing these things, and they might be really interested in those arguments.”
And so the stage is set. Army cadets square off against Navy midshipmen about which branch should receive a significant budget bump. The rivalry is on, the stage is the nation’s capital and the judges hold the real-world purse strings for the U.S. military. It’s not the national championship, but the stakes couldn’t be higher — so what does it mean for the competitors?
“Part of their uniform is a black jacket that’s worn when it’s cold outside and cadets get to sew on a patch for certain clubs that they’re a member of,” Davila said. “… When they face and defeat either Navy, Air Force or some international teams like Sandhurst [in England], there’s a marker they get to wear, a little award to say, ‘Hey, I faced and beat Navy.'”
“We debate each other quite a lot at tournaments, but we don’t get to have as much fun with it when we win, because we’re still trying to win the tournament,” O’Gorman said. “Here, they remember that the things they’re doing are different than that of regular college students. It is really fun to get to win for the bragging rights, but in the end, we enjoy the camaraderie of this competition being together on this stage.”
The 2024 Army-Navy Debate will take place on Friday, Dec. 13, at noon in the Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building (2 Constitution Ave. NE) in Washington, D.C. You can follow the Army Debate Team and/or Navy Debate Team on Instagram.
The 125th Army-Navy Game will take place at 3 p.m. EST on Saturday, Dec. 14, at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland.
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