The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families. Through the perspective of a community of former graduates and Naval Academy insiders, this podcast will help you learn about life at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. Through our shared experiences, Academy Insider guides families through the anxiety and frustration caused by lack of understanding, misinformation, and confusion. This platform is designed to better relationships between midshipmen and their loved ones. This podcast is not affiliated with the United States Naval Academy, the United States Navy or Department of Defense. The thoughts and opinions are exclusively those of your host and his guests.
The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
#120 Super Bowl Sunday at the Naval Academy - On The Yard (010)
Ever wonder how midshipmen celebrate Super Bowl Sunday while living under the structured environment of the Naval Academy? In this quick episode, I share an inside look at one of the most anticipated events during the challenging Dark Ages period at Annapolis.
As someone who experienced four Super Bowl Sundays as a midshipman, I'm excited to give you a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how the Academy transforms Dahlgren Hall into the ultimate game-watching experience. We'll explore how thousands of midshipmen come together for this special tradition that offers a much-needed break from their rigorous routine.
What Makes Super Bowl Sunday Special at the Academy
- How Dahlgren Hall becomes a massive viewing party venue with projector screens and hundreds of tables
- The incredible food spread that includes thousands of pounds of wings and ribs
- Special uniform allowances that let plebes wear football jerseys for the occasion
- Why this event becomes such a memorable experience during the demanding winter months
Your Opportunity to Shape Future Content
This episode also serves as an important call to action for our Academy Insider community. I'm actively seeking your input to create the most valuable content possible for upcoming episodes covering:
- Commissioning Week insights - featuring a Naval Academy Alumni Association representative
- Summer training logistics - covering the block system, scheduling, and administrative details
- Preparation for Plebe Summer content - designed for newly appointed midshipmen and their families
How You Can Get Involved
Whether you're a current midshipman parent, recently received your letter of appointment, or want to learn more about I-Day preparation, your questions will help shape these episodes. Send your questions through email, fan mail on your podcast platform, or reach out via social media.
This short but engaging episode captures the spirit of community and tradition that makes the Naval Academy experience so unique. Join us as we celebrate both football and the bonds that unite the Brigade of Midshipmen!
To stay most up to date with Grant, Naval Academy updates, and real estate insights, follow him on LinkedIn
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.
Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a residential real estate company that matches service academy families with trusted real estate teams all across the country. Text (650) 282-1964 with any real estate questions.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
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Everyone and welcome to another episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. Today is a really quick, really short episode all about the Super Bowl at the Naval Academy. Just want to provide a quick rundown of what goes on in Annapolis, how people, how the midshipmen are able to celebrate and watch the game and what's being taken care of. I hope it leads to some conversation and questions. And then at the end, it's going to be a call to action for any future questions you may have regarding commissioning week for any prospective students who just received their letter of appointment and families. If you have information or questions about I Day, feel free to ask those and summer training as well. So make sure to listen to get information about what kind of questions I'd like to receive in order to be able to generate and help schedule and build outlines. And I appreciate it. So thank you all so much. I hope you have a great day. Enjoy the listen. And as always, beat Army. All right, happy Super Bowl Sunday. I know Academy Insider is probably the last thing we want to be listening to on Sunday in preparation for the game. So I'm gonna keep the episode short, but I think Super Bowl Sunday at the Naval Academy is a fun topic. You know, this is really interesting because I'll go back to my time in Annapolis quite literally. I think it was 2016. I think that was the year. Again, I was in my second class year, and it was so sweet because there's like a local Annapolis barbecue restaurant called Chad's Barbecue. And they they had kind of like, I again, I don't fully know how it works, but I'm sure they like won the contract of providing food to midshipmen on Super Bowl Sunday. And they literally delivered like 20,000 chicken wings and multiple thousands of pounds of ribs to the midshipmen. Because again, when it comes to Super Bowl Sunday, you know, the midshipmen are being fed, like they they will kind of transform everything in Dahlgren Hall into a seating area to watch the football game. And again, it's not necessarily mandatory, but when you're providing thousands of pounds of chicken wings and thousands of pounds of ribs and beers for midshipmen who are over 21 and massive screens to watch the game, like people are gonna tune in and watch the game. I uh you know, I I I remember sitting in Dahlgren all four years, like watching the Super Bowl, and that was always it was a super fun night because again, you're in the midst of everything with the dark ages, you're in the midst of everything that's going on. And so trying to like get one afternoon off to just like fully relax, eat some delicious food, hang out and watch some football, it was always a really good experience, right? And again, in that year in 2016, we had Chad's barbecue come and do it, which was incredible. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I don't know exactly like what the food is gonna be today for your midshipmen, but I think the important piece of this discussion today is realizing that again, Dahlgren Hall, which again, if you've ever been to the Naval Academy campus, it's that like massive building near gate one, and uh, you know, dry dock is the restaurant that's kind of underneath in the in the basement area there. But they have that entire area, they put hundreds of like tables out there for midshipmen to sit. They have water, sodas, obviously the food, alcohol for midshipmen above 21, well, beer for midshipmen above the age of 21. And you can just sit and watch the football game. I mean, they'll literally literally bring projector screens down and and have the game stream in there, and so a super fun opportunity. So, for all the Seahawks fans, for all the Patriots fans, I hope today is a really good opportunity to enjoy some football. You know, my sponsor dad is a huge Seahawks fan, so I'm excited for him to watch this game. You know, as a as a salty 49ers fan, someone who watched our team be injured the entirety of the year, but still put on a good showing. Today's a tough day for me. Today's a tough day for me because we just we have so much potential, man. Like we have such a good team. They're just all hurt. They're just all hurt. And so yeah, anyway, I'll try and save this from being too bitter. But again, not too much to add, honestly, on the Super Bowl front. Really fun opportunity. My encouragement to all y'all listening is to to talk to your Machim and ask him questions about what the food is, how they have everything in Dalgren set up, you know, like what is going a lot of times, again, especially for plebes who aren't allowed to wear, you know, like civilian clothes. A lot of times they'll allow them to wear a football jersey, right? Like actually wear a jersey for the game and just kind of participate in the festiv festivities of the event. So anyway, I hope this is a fun one. Really what I want today to be all about is really a call to action. I have a couple of episodes coming out in the next couple weeks that I want a little feedback on. So we're gonna be talking about two things commissioning week and preparation for eye day as well. So if there are any midshipman parents out there who want to get a little bit of insight into commissioning week, I'm actually gonna have a representative from the Naval Academy Alumni Association come on and kind of give like a commissioning 101 conversation here on the Academy Insider Podcast. So if you have any questions, make sure to shoot those over. Again, you can do that via email, grant at academyinsider.com. You can do fan mail, you know, on whatever podcast platform that you're on, and I'll be able to receive the questions. You can send me a message on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever the case is, and I'm gonna compile those and start to build stuff out. Obviously, we'll have uh a set foundation of information. But if you have anything in particular, make sure to reach out so I can try and incorporate that in the planning and scheduling. I'm also gonna be doing a big episode on summer training, specifically like how the blocks works foundation, how much shipment pick their schedules, how they come out, like everything about summer training from almost an administrative and logistics standpoint. And we'll do more stuff into the summer about what the summer trainings actually do and some of the experiences that'll be fun. But we'll talk about blocks, we'll talk about the summer structure, we'll talk about how it works, how you can plan around everything that's going on. So if you have any questions about those two general areas, let me know. And then the third one is I'm seeing so many future midshipmen. Again, a lot of people who are receiving their letters of appointment and family members who are so excited. And we're gonna start to build up our like preparation for plebe summer content all over again. So if that is something that fits your world, if you are a future midshipman parent and you have questions, feel free to start sending them now so we can start to generate and build those episodes. Again, we'll have a representative from the Alumni Association come on to talk about I Day specifically as well and kind of build that out as the as the year goes on. But just wanted to, again, make this episode all about a call to action to make sure to kind of get the word out and let me know if you have anything that I can make content about to help out and be of service. So, you know, we'll do that. I'm gonna really start in 2026 here building out the newsletter so that way we have multiple formats of information in case you don't want to listen for you know me ramble for 30 minutes and make odd comments, but rather just get the information. You know, you can subscribe to the newsletter so that way we can get that information out to you and avoid the rambling on my part. But but yeah, anyways, I hope you enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday. We're keeping this one short today. I really appreciate y'all. Let me know if you ever have any questions. Otherwise, beat Army. Have a great day. I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. I really hope you liked it, enjoyed it, and learned something during this time. If you did, please feel free to like and subscribe or leave a comment about the episode. We really appreciate it to hear your feedback about everything and continue to make Academy Insider an amazing service that guides, serves, and supports midshipmen, future midshipmen, and their families. Thank you.
