Midshipman, Indeed: Navy Player Sees Your Greg Oden-Grinding-On-A-Lady Photo And, Um, Raises You

The man getting his friction on in the above picture, a la Oden, is former Navy Midshipmen cornerback Lord Cole. At least I think it is. The only pictures I can find of him are a little blurry or inconclusive.

But who is Lord Cole?

Before we answer that, let me first explain how we got here. An email arrived this afternoon from Kazi. Said Kazi:

Hey Dave,

Came across a pic of a college football player from Navy #5 dancing with some white chick. You can tell her dress has been raised up and she is grinding all over #5's manhood.

Pic is at least from Sept 2009 but could be older than that. I checked the current #5 from Navy but he is a white guy so unless he changed his # he is no longer on the team. Which then means its at least 3-4 years ago since current #5 is a Junior.

Must be nice to be athlete in college. Not sure what you want to do with it but thought you could keep it for any future postings.

Now rather than just squirrel this away for an open thread, I did some mild sleuthing. Here are the results.

If you look closely, there is a patch on Cole's jersey from the 2004 Emerald Bowl, a game you might remember because of a 26-play drive during the four quarter of Navy's victory over New Mexico. The box score does not say if Cole entered the game. This is strange considering that Cole won the most improved player award during the previous spring, when former coach Paul Johnson claimed to love his speed— speed that was good enough for collegiate track and field meets, no less— and you'd figure Cole would be on the field in some way.

What—aside from dancing—does Lord Cole do off the field? According to this brochure Cole studied the bolts of 18th century ships to better understand the corrosion metals underwent during that time period. Cool, right?

How about now? According to his LinkedIn page, Lord Cole is currently in the Air Force, a graduate research assistant at UCLA Energy and Propulsion Science Laboratory and completing his PhD in aerospace engineering with a focus on "Specialization in Computational Fluids, Applied Mathematics, and Combustion." Judging by the photo, he was specializing in at least two of those fields a while ago.

It seems that Lord Cole is a sharp guy, but he probably won't be running for Congress any time soon. If that's not Lord Cole in the picture, I'd like to send my sincere apologies to Lord Cole at this point.

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