This is for Googledom since I don't see much sports interest hereabouts.

This Saturday Maryland opens it's 2005 football season by beating Navy for the first time in 41 years.  Actually, it's the first meeting between the two teams in 40.  The purported reason was that Navy brass were outraged when Maryland defensive player Jerry Fishman ran along Navy's bench in 1964, giving the midshipmen the one-finger salute.  Even though he later offered to apologize, Navy said  nuh-uh -- after next year's  already scheduled game we will not play  again. You can read the story all over the place this week, here's a pretty good one in the TIMES,  but here's what's not being said today, that was said in 1964.

According to first hand accounts (at drunken fraternity parties that night), what set Fishman off was an incident just after he sacked Navy's All-American quarterback, Roger Staubach.  Staubach was so mad that he got into Fishman's face and said something to the effect of "your ass is grass you Jew bastard."  Fishman was Jewish.  What's for sure is that from that point Fishman played like a wild man.  With Maryland ahead 20-15 deep into the fourth quarter, Navy scored a touchdown to take a 22-20 lead with just seconds left.  Navy's taunting of Maryland at that point was world class bad.  But wait.  Maryland's Kenny Ambrusko took the ensuing kickoff and returned it 101 yards  for the winning touchdown.  That's when Fishman made the move along Navy's bench.  And, it has always been my contention that Navy  ended the series out of spite, not  Fishman's deportment.  The late Ambrusko, then a bartender at College Park's  Rendezvous,  confirmed the Staubach -Jew incident several years later, as I remember.

 I lifted more than one Midshipman's hat and sent it sailing over the years.  Gonna do it Saturday too, after we win. Well, prolly not. My Rascal isn't that responsive to evasive moves. Sigh.