BOSTON—On a brisk November morning, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy shipped up to Boston with two goals: making his forgotten Merchant Mariners remember who they were, and bringing home the Secretaries’ Cup.
That’s the trophy that goes to the victor of an annual college football game that pits the Merchant Marines against the Coast guard, a smaller but beloved version of the annual Army-Navy game. Fans, alumni, and family of the “Kings Point” mariners and the Coast Guard travel from all over the country to support their teams.
This year, Duffy and Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem — whose agency includes the Coast Guard — joined their teams for the final showdown of the season. They had a bet: whoever lost would host the other team at their agency back in the nation’s capitol. It was a rare non-political event attended for the two high-profile politicians, who were there to cheer on their teams and talk trash to each other.
“Our Merchant Marine Academy, they’re excited to play on a on a big venue like this,” Duffy told The Daily Wire ahead of the game. “And sometimes they don’t get the attention that they deserve … they’re critical as part of America’s infrastructure and making sure that we can defend ourselves.”
“The Merchant Marine Academy, our young men and women go out and make sure we have the capability of supporting the military in doing sea lifts, making sure products are moving, supplies are moving, and our midshipman provide those services,” he explained.
The Merchant Marine Academy is housed under the Department of Transportation, which formerly also housed the United States Coast Guard. The “Coasties” were moved under Homeland Security’s umbrella in 2003. But the reshuffling did nothing to the football rivalry, which dates back to 1949.
The Daily Wire spent the day with Duffy as he wandered around Fenway Park, even down to the locker room, where he aggressively hyped up the mariners before they headed out onto the field. “You guys have more heart, more grit,” Duffy told the animated mariners. “So please go kick some Coast Guard ass today!”
Many of the midshipmen who were at the game were delighted to chat with the transportation secretary, who spent a big chunk of his time hanging out in the stands with them.
“Oh, yeah,” Edward Lippert told The Daily Wire, asked if he was a Duffy fan. “He’s the man. He’s the man.”
“I love that guy,” added Christian Meyers. “I can’t wait to see him.”
The two young men, who are both seniors at the academy, responded emphatically when asked what it means to them to be mariners. Meyers will go into Navy aviation after graduation, and Lippert will be sailing on his third mates license in the maritime industry.
“Oh man, it’s everything,” said Lippert. “I mean, it’s how cargo moves around the world right? World needs mariners.”
“Pretty much everyone here will graduate with a license in the US Coast Guard that’s capable of operating any boat or vessel in the American fleet,” he added.”We move cargo, whatever it be, cars, containers from point A to point B. We’re what puts food on your shelves.”
The second mariner conceded that without their work, American lives would be significantly impacted.
“It’d be really hard to live,” he said, asked where Americans would be without them. “Costs would be insane. I mean, there would be no food in supermarkets. There’d be nothing. There’d be nothing without us.”
Duffy feels that the Merchant Marine Academy has been not only forgotten but downright neglected by other secretaries of transportation, including his predecessor, Pete Buttigieg (“Boot-edge-edge,” as Duffy chuckled aside to his kids).
“They’ve been shunned,” Duffy said of the mariners. “They haven’t had the investments. They have one of the most beautiful campuses, but no one has reinvigorated it. No one has invested in it.”
When Duffy first arrived in Kings Point, New York to visit the Merchant Marine Academy, he found out that these midshipmen had gone four months without hot water. A green energy effort brought in an electric boiler that didn’t work and ultimately led to the midshipmen going without water for months, he said with a shake of his head.
“So they’re taking cold showers. They have mold in in their dorms. Their dishwasher broke. They didn’t have regular plates and silverware. They had plastic plates, plastic silverware.”
When he brought it up to the midshipmen, he expected that they would be angry. Instead, he joked, they beat their chests and were proud of their tough situation: “I said, ‘No hot water?’ And they’re like, ‘ROAR!! You’re damn right we did! No hot water!’”
He also found out that President Joe Biden’s administration removed a mural of Jesus Christ on the water from the academy and put it in the basement.
“Shameful,” said Duffy. “It’s been in the academy for over 50 years!”
“I said that’s it, we are going to we are going to resurrect the painting of Jesus on the water out of the basement and put him back in his place of prominence. And when I mentioned it to the to the midshipman, they lost their minds.”
He doesn’t have to “bring faith back to the academy,” he said, questioned about the move: “These are faithful young men and women.”
One way that he’s boosting morale is by telling the mariners that the “black sheep” is their mascot, leaning into the idea that they are the “black sheep” of the academies and need to fight to reclaim their identity. Duffy himself was sporting a Merchant Mariners sweatshirt with the black sheep on it, as were his daughters and son who attended the game with him.
“I just I think it’s wrong that we have a great American academy with great young American men and women, that we don’t respect them,” Duffy shared. “They are the black sheep of all the academies, right? And sometimes when you feel a little beaten, you’re an underdog, you come back, have a little more heart, a little more energy, a little more fight.”
“You can see we have our our black sheep shirts on,” he added. “And we embrace it and we still kick ass. We still have grit. We still crush it like what’s going to happen today on the football field here at Fenway.”
The mariners did indeed crush the Coast Guard that day in the very final seconds of the game. Duffy joined them on the field, holding the trophy high above his head as he cheered, exuberantly celebrating with the young men — and even jokingly trash talking Noem, who didn’t come down to the field for the Merchant Marine Academy victory.
“Well done man,” he told the mariners as they left the field, shaking their hands and slapping them on the back. “Thank you for fighting! Well done.”
