Two months before the 2015 college football season kicks off, the Navy Midshipmen announced plans for their 2016 meeting with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish: The game will head south to EverBank Field in Jacksonville, Florida. Navy athletics officials and representatives of the Jacksonville Sports Council revealed the site of the Nov. 5, 2016, contest at a Wednesday news conference at the stadium. The council is accepting ticket requests; prices start at $60. It’s a long trek from Annapolis, but the contest serves as a home game of sorts for sailors stationed at Naval Station Mayport, Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia, and…
Browsing: Mayport
The men’s college basketball season ends tonight. The two-year experiment of playing college basketball on warships may have ended over the weekend. A report published Saturday by The Florida Times-Union outlines how a mixture of unexpected insurance costs, the downsizing of the proposed host ship from a carrier to an amphib and the on-court condensation that canceled the game at halftime contributed to a $736,000 loss for the city of Jacksonville in staging the Navy/Marine Corps Classic at Naval Station Mayport, an game that was supposed to benefit military charities. In the report, Alan Verlander, Jacksonville’s executive director of sports…
Naval Station Mayport, Fla., has been without a carrier to call its own since 2007. Local leaders have asked the Navy repeatedly for another flattop, a move that would involve millions of dollars’ worth of construction to make Mayport capable of hosting a nuclear-powered vessel and would add millions more to the area economy. So far, they’ve had no luck. When the Navy and the city of Jacksonville announced last month that the Georgetown and Florida men’s basketball teams would square off on a ship for the inaugural Navy/Marine Corps Classic, it was assumed a carrier would be brought down…
What would you pay to see college basketball played on an aircraft carrier in Florida? To see two Division I powerhouse programs work out the kinks in their season-opener? To be part of a sporting event so unique … well, rare … well, different … well, look, it’s becoming a fad and we can’t stop it. At this rate, the UFC will hold a pay-per-view from the well deck of an amphib in six months (Free advice: Brian Stann should headline). We digress. How much would you pay? If you answered less than $500 a pop, you’re out of luck,…
No carrier? No problem. Even though Naval Station Mayport, Fla., has been flattop-less since the decommissioning of the John F. Kennedy in 2007, and even though there are already two games on decommissioned flattops (classic carriers?) set for Nov. 9, the city of Jacksonville announced Friday that Georgetown and Florida will face off at Mayport in the Navy-Marine Corps Classic. The city’s news release makes no mention of a ship, but other reports have made it clear: Plans are to put this game between two college basketball powerhouses on a carrier — although a big-deck amphib might not be a…
