By MIKE LOPRESTI
Gannett News Service

There is a place in major college football where the BCS rankings are not viewed like the holy grail, and Heisman hype does not resemble an oil spill.

There is a place where pepper spray is not needed after the game, and the field never looks as if it has been invaded by soccer hooligans.

There is a place where money does not mean everything, and agents never bother to come.

This is the last week of the regular season, and business must be done. Lobbying for votes, for bowl bids, for fatter payouts and higher Nielsen ratings.

This is a week for closed-door meetings, and rank politicking, and bewildering computer formulas, and complaining.

Except at the Meadowlands Saturday.

There, it will be simple and wonderful. By some measure, the most perfect college football game of the year, between two imperfect teams.

Army plays Navy.

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The numbers are as bleak as ever. Army is 1-10. So is Navy.

Army has 32 turnovers. The Cadets lost five fumbles to Holy Cross, threw six interceptions to Southern Mississippi.

Navy is even worse. Navy has 35 turnovers.

Navy has beaten four Division I-A teams with winning records since 1990. Navy is 2-30 this century.

Navy is 110th in the country in scoring defense, leaking 38.5 points each and every game.

Army is 112th, giving up 39.4.

Army has used six different quarterbacks this season, four of them freshmen, another a sophomore walk-on.

"We've had a pitching rotation at quarterback," coach Todd Berry was saying.

Rutgers finished 1-11. Army lost to Rutgers 44-0.

Connecticut has been a Division I-A team only three years. Navy lost to Connecticut 38-0.

But no matter how long the list of futility of the two teams in this game, the question is always the same at the end.

So?

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This game is always charming, but it seems a particularly appealing antidote this year, as the "in" crowd grapples over BCS points and bowl assignments. And the critics howl that the world is so unjust because there is no playoff, which supposedly would make everyone happy, not to mention rich.

Meanwhile, guys possibly headed one day for war will play a football game for pride and nothing else. And they will hold nothing back.

I'd rather spend a little time with a rivalry so even after 102 years, each side has scored the exact same number of touchdowns. It's a 177-177 tie.

A rivalry whose history may not show any recent ranked teams, but includes the 1914 game, where nine of the Army seniors would end up generals.

Don't come looking for NFL prospects. But notice Navy guard Grant Moody, who missed practice this week to interview as a candidate for a Rhodes scholarship.

The last Navy player to make it was Stansfield Turner in 1947, and he ended up an admiral and director of the CIA.

The Army-Navy games mean nothing in the polls. But eight of the past 13 games have been won in the final minute.

Army won five straight in the 1990s, which would suggest dominance. Except the five wins were by a total of 10 points.

Navy has a new coach who is trying to build a total program, and might be doing it. The Mids nearly beat Notre Dame.

"We have to do more than try and beat Army to be successful," Paul Johnson said.

But his emotions will be rubbed raw Saturday, like those before him.

There is a place where the competition is so pure, that records truly don't matter. Maybe the only day in sport that is genuinely true.

Given the choice, I'd rather see one Army-Navy game than one Super Bowl.