The Secretaries' Cup

The Secretaries’ Cup

U.S. Merchant Marine Academy vs. U.S. Coast Guard Academy

By Denis M. Crawford, College Football Hall of Fame Historian

The Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy is not the only service academy trophy in college football. The United States Merchant Marine Academy and United States Coast Guard Academy have played for the Secretaries Cup since 1981 and they meet again November 14 at Audi Field in Washington D.C.

The Academies

The United States Merchant Marine Academy is in King’s Point, New York and trains officers who can support both commercial marine transportation and defense needs during wartime and peacetime. Merchant Marine has played football since 1945, and the team is known as the Mariners.

Their chief rival is the United States Coast Guard Academy, which is located across Long Island Sound in New London, Connecticut. Coast Guard trains officers who will serve in fields such as law enforcement, safety, rescue, and environmental protection. They have played since 1922 and are known as the Bears.

Both teams play at the NCAA Division III level.

The Series

The two teams first met in 1949, and Coast Guard won the game 21-14. The two teams did not meet again until 1965-66 with Merchant Marine sweeping the home-and-home matchups. The game did not become an annualized event until 1981. Like most rivalries, Merchant Marine and Coast Guard meet in the final game of the regular season. Coincidentally, the Division III season is just ten games long, so the annual game is appropriately played around Veterans Day.

Merchant Marine has dominated the series, leading 38-16. Thanks to ESPN+ streaming the game for the past decade, it has grown in popularity and recently moved from a home-and-home contest to a neutral site contest. In 2025, Merchant Marine outscored Coast Guard 39-38 in a thriller at Boston’s Fenway Park. This year the game will be played in the nation’s capital at Audi Field, home of D.C. United of MLS and the Washington Spirit of the NWSL.

The most important game in the series occurred in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down NCAA D III football during the fall, except for one game. On November 14, 2020, Coast Guard traveled to King’s Point and the Secretaries’ Cup was played in an empty stadium. Merchant Marine won 24-14, but the score was incidental. The fact the game was played at its traditional time proved just how special and meaningful the rivalry is to the two academies.

The Cup

The trophy is a standard cup atop a black base. In addition to the historic result of the game being inscribed, the base also includes the mottos of the two academies: Semper Paratus (Coast Guard – Always Ready) and Acta Non Verba (Merchant Marine – Deeds Not Words).

For fans of grammar, the original name of the trophy was Secretary’s Cup because the two services were under the Department of Transportation from 1981-2003. However, in 2003 the Coast Guard was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. This necessitated a very subtle name change to reflect two cabinet secretaries instead of one. Hence, it is now the Secretaries Cup.

You come for a football story; you leave with a lesson on possessives! Now you are prepared to watch the 46^th annual Secretaries Cup, a military and football tradition that is growing in stature.