A week after West Point’s football team debuted a custom football uniform full of subtle symbols for the upcoming Army-Navy game, the Midshipmen have fired back.

U.S. Naval Academy officials unveiled the team’s 2025 game uniform Tuesday, which — like West Point’s — embraces a post-colonial theme, as both services celebrate their 250th anniversary this year.

The Navy uniform is based on the original six frigates of the U.S. Navy, which includes the still-active USS Constitution. The uniform includes a blue jersey with details that reference the historic ships, and a custom-painted copper-colored helmet.

“The USS Constitution and the five other frigates of the original U.S. Navy were each copper-clad before launching,” the school said in a release. “When coppered in the summer of 1797, Constitution’s lower hull required 12,000 feet of sheet copper and thousands of copper nails.”

The copper helmet has a hand-painted image of the frigate on one side and its logo on the other. Around the helmet is an image of a rope with 63 knots on both the front and back — the sum of which nods to this year’s Army-Navy game being the 126th edition, and to Navy’s 63 wins in the series (West Point has won 55 games, with seven ties).

<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The custom, copper-painted helmet of the 2025 Navy football uniform includes the image of a rope with 63 knots on both the front and back, symbolizing the 126th Army-Navy game. Photo from Navy250Uniform.com. </figcaption></figure>

Details of the jersey include images of six ropes, representing the original six frigates. The back of the jersey has both an engraved eagle and six stars found on the stern of the Constitution.

The jersey numbers and names are in a font similar to the typography used in the written copy of the “Act to Provide Naval Armament,” the 1794 law — signed by then-President George Washington — that ordered and funded the six frigates as the Navy’s first ships.

The font used on the helmet mirrors the USS Constitution’s depth markers.

Original Six Frigates

Three of the original six frigates — the United States, Constellation, and Constitution — were launched in 1797. The USS Congress and USS Chesapeake were launched in 1799, and the USS President in 1800.

Each could be armed with as many as 50 cannons, and all saw combat, either with French forces in the early 1800s, in the Barbary Wars, or the War of 1812. The United States was decommissioned in 1848, then briefly pressed back into service by the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. 

The Constitution remains on active duty, based in Boston.

As West Point did for its uniform, the school also created a website with details. The Army-Navy game is Dec. 13 in Baltimore, Maryland.

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