New London

Third quarter Saturday at Cadet Memorial Field, passions running almost magnetically between the field and the packed bleachers, evidenced best by the priceless skirmish at halftime between some of the cadets of Coast Guard and the Merchant Marine Academy. No, really (and Coast Guard won that one, too).

Third quarter. And suddenly it's touchdown, Coast Guard. Tie game. Fourteen-point deficit kaput.

And then another major commotion ensued, this one more peaceful, emanating from the floor over the main level of the press box. It was brass en masse, flying down the stairs, out the door, headed to the field, led by Rear Adm. Sandra L. Stosz, superintendent of the Coast Guard Academy.

There was Adm. Stosz, grin wider than the Thames, as if on a safety blitz through the bleachers, heading to the field, where she would do 28 pushups with the rest of the corps, matching the 28 points the Bears had amassed.

Oh, if someone could have hit the cosmic pause button. And we could have summoned a pow wow of the brassiest of the Coast Guard brass. Pause button still pushed. And one voice from the wilderness - I'd volunteer mine - to encapsulate the whole scene, its whole meaning, with one word:

See?

Nothing, nothing, nothing else captures the fancies of Coast Guard Academy better than football. It's where they gather, celebrate, tell stories, sing the alma mater and the fight song. It's a four-hour infomercial. And where the dignified superintendent channels her inner cadet all over again for joyous pushups.

What a day. Tremendous game. Coast Guard 42, Merchant Marine Academy 31. The Secretaries' Cup, the coveted prize between the blood rivals of the seas, returns to 31 Mohegan Ave., New London, CT, after a three-year absence.

Let the record show that ESPN's College GameDay, the burgeoning conscience of college football, spent more time on Coast Guard-Kings Point than UConn-Boise State on Saturday. Chris Fowler, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit even picked the game. The nautical version of Army-Navy. Coast Guard goes national. And it goes through football.

"This game was very important as to how this place feels about itself in a very, very broad context," Coast Guard athletic director Tim Fitzpatrick said, happily drenched after the game from the late-afternoon rain. "At a service academy, and I experienced this at West Point, everyone feels better when you have that success. It's one of those rare opportunities that everyone is together. We had the support of the corps, a great crowd (a full house of 4,228), all those intangible things that came together in a very unique way."

And so once again, with feeling: Is it too much to ask for more days like this? To mimic Army and Navy and relax weight standards for linemen who can play football at the requisite weight, understanding they'll need to lose some of it before graduation? Is that really, truly, asking too much, given the rampant esprit de corps felt Saturday?

"We're going to have more days like this," Fitzpatrick said. "We're now building a total athletic program. The level of support our administration gives us, understanding how everybody is part of something bigger than themselves here is important. It's the way all those things come together to make a whole here. I'm very happy for our coaches and players who got a chance to experience a day when everything panned out environmentally."

This was not at easy week. Coast Guard played poorly in its season opener. The rival game loomed. Three straight losses. Plus, Kings Point runs the dreaded option, which is usually more successful than the Joe Torre Yankees. Maybe the buzzards weren't circling, but they were pondering formation.

"It was a rough Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I calmed down Friday," Coast Guard coach Bill George said. "A hard game to go through. Good win, challenging game. It's hard to go through it when you lose three in a row and you are on the edge and you're down 14 and rallying these guys."

Which is what they did. The Bears, down 28-14 and staring at an 0-2 start, played brilliantly in the second half. George said offensive coordinator Ray LaForte called "one of the greatest games I've ever seen." The defense allowed three points. And the "environment," as Fitzpatrick called it, responded.

"The week was kind of like a reality check," senior defensive lineman Aaron Black said, after playing tougher than Clorox. "After last week, we pretty much shut it down and didn't get sucked into the Merchant Marine week thing. Strictly business."

And now the Bears have a win, some momentum, and the memory of a day they'll talk about when they're retired and pondering sunsets. Here's to more of these days at Coast Guard.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.

Twitter: @BCgenius