Go Navy! Beat Army! Star Wars Style

As an Air Force officer, it’s really tough to take sides in the Army/Navy football battle our country participates in at this time each year. Being that I’m a huge Star Wars geek, though, I’m afraid I’ll have to root for Navy as gratitude for coming up with such a brilliant “spirit video” as the one that was uploaded this week in advance of the Army/Navy football game on December 12.

Spirit videos are a tradition at America’s service academies. Cadets and midshipmen let their creative juices flow on YouTube, showing off what’s great about their own service academies while (respectfully) ribbing their competition.

Midshipman First Class Rylan Tuohy is the creative force behind the Star Wars parody video, as well as numerous other professional-quality videos issued on behalf of the U.S. Naval Academy over the past several years…

…including this recent parody of the Air Force Academy, but I’ll forgive him.

Titled “STAR WARS at Navy”, this latest video takes the cake, bringing in the 3-star admiral superintendent of the Naval Academy as “Supe Solo” and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, as “CNO Kenobi”. The midshipmen who took on the rules of Luke, Leia, and especially R2D2 and C3PO did a great job taking on their respective roles. The middie portraying C3PO did the walk perfectly!

Viewers will see and hear references to “the 14” in this video, which is referring to Navy trying to beat Army in football for the 14th year in a row. Viewers may also recognize a few other inside jokes, such as a reference to Army West Point’s pillow fight scandal.

May the 14 be with you!

P.S.: In the interest of full disclosure, I just discovered the Army response to the video, in which you will hear a sound byte from the above Navy video (pretty sneaky, sis!). Check it out here.