The team played the sport under rules that made it much closer to soccer, where the players were permitted only to kick the ball in order to advance it.

Maxwell met with two of his friends, Tunstall Smith and Henry Woods, who played for the Baltimore Athletic Club and officially challenged their team to a game with the Naval Academy.

The squad received encouragement from some of the faculty, who allowed them to eat a late dinner and skip final drill for additional practicing.

[6][8] The Naval Academy hosted the Baltimore team on a temporary field drawn on part of the superintendent's cow pasture.

[6][8] The Baltimore American and Chronicle, which covered the contest, described it as such:[9] The game, played under rugby rules, was a battle from beginning to end—a regular knock down and drag out fight.

[9] The scrimmages were something awful to witness—living, kicking, scrambling masses of humanity surging to and fro, each individual after the leather oval.

If a Baltimorean got the ball and started for a run, he was unfailingly caught by one of the brawny Cadets and dashed to earth with five or six men falling on him.

Using his knowledge of sailing, he decided to design a sleeveless canvas jacket which would make his players "difficult to grasp when they began to sweat".

[9][12] He presented the design to the academy's tailor, who created the double-lined jackets which "were laced down the front and drawn tightly to fit snugly around a player's body".

[15] He was the thirteenth head coach of the Naval Academy's football program and, under his tutelage, the Midshipmen compiled an undefeated 8–0–1 mark in 1910.

[16] Three undefeated teams with nearly identical records would cause a stir among fans and pollsters today, but this was the case when Navy earned its lone national championship in 1926, as the Midshipmen shared the honor with Stanford and Alabama.

The tie gave the Midshipmen a share of the national championship based on retroactive rankings by both the William Boand and Deke Houlgate mathematical poll systems.

[3] Navy was one of the very few programs to field a football team during World War II, with John Whelchel leading the Midshipmen from 1942 to 1943 and Oscar Hagberg serving as head coach from 1944 to 1945.

After the bowl victory over Rice, Erdelatz was courted by other schools and nearly accepted the task of replacing Bear Bryant at Texas A&M University.

[27] After the 1958 season, he was also seen as a candidate for the NFL's San Francisco 49ers head coaching job, but began spring practice the following year at Navy.

[28] On April 8, 1959, Erdelatz resigned as head coach of the Midshipmen, citing a number of factors, including the desire for an easier schedule.

[31] Hardin coached Navy's two winners of the Heisman Trophy, Joe Bellino, who received the award in 1960,[32] and Roger Staubach, who did so in 1963.

[38][39] However, the Midshipmen's struggles continued, with Navy failing to post a single winning season, something that hadn't occurred in Annapolis in decades.

[82] The 2005 Navy squad recorded a mark of 8–4,[83] highlighted by victories over Army, Air Force, and Colorado State in the Poinsettia Bowl.

[85] Johnson dominated the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy competition, going 11–1 (.917) in his six years, with the only loss against another service academy coming at the hands of Air Force in his first season.

[91] In 2016, the Midshipmen upset 6th-ranked Houston at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium 46-40 for their first win over a team ranked in the top 10 since defeating South Carolina in 1984.

[102] Three undefeated teams with nearly identical records would cause a stir among fans and pollsters today, but this was the case when Navy earned its lone national championship in 1926, as the Midshipmen shared the honor with Stanford and Alabama.

The tie gave the Midshipmen a share of the national championship based on retroactive rankings by both the William Boand and Deke Houlgate mathematical poll systems.

The contest more closely resembled soccer, with teams scoring by kicking the ball into the opponent's net, and lacked a uniform rules structure.

[114] Even though the number of teams participating in the sport increased, the game was still effectively controlled by the College of New Jersey, who claimed eight national championships in ten years.

[115] According to biographer C. Douglas Kroll, the first evidence of football at the United States Naval Academy came in 1857, but the school's cadets lost interest in the game shortly afterward.

[116] The first occurrence of serious interest in the sport came in 1879, when a squad of twelve cadets challenged men from the Baltimore Athletic Club to a contest.

[134] Of historic interest, it was during the Pitt-Navy game at Annapolis on October 23, 1976, that Pitt running back Tony Dorsett broke the NCAA career rushing record.

[135] This rivalry stems from Navy and Rutgers being two of the only three programs (the third is Army) to come out of the original, informal "Ivy League" that are still members of the top tier of NCAA college football (Division I-FBS).

Gansz later served on the coaching staffs at numerous colleges, including all three service academies and Southern Methodist, as well as several professional teams.