#013 - The Black N with Ricky Conlin '99 - The Secret Society of Bad Boys of the Naval Academy

The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience

My guest is author Ricky Conlin. He is a proud member of the mighty class of 1999, was an economics major and a member of the sixth company.
Ricky describes himself as a very mediocre midshipman. He graduated smack dab in the middle of the class militarily and was relatively quiet. He did stand 14 days of collective restrictions. He played varsity football at the Naval Academy. He describes his football career also as mediocre but is a really, really proud member of the Navy Football Brotherhood and has friends from there to this day that he keeps in touch with.
He graduated, served as an officer and eventually became a novelist. Ricky has had the opportunity to write all about his Naval Academy experience in the first book of his trilogy The Black N. He has some forthcoming books on the horizon.
Ricky and Grant discuss what a Black N is (The Naval Academy scarlet letter). You get it for getting the maximum disciplinary penalty without getting expelled. Ricky never received a Black N but does hold some sort of unofficial Naval Academy record in that he has lived with five different Black N "winners"... all from separate disciplinary incidents.
Ricky tells some great stories from his Naval Academy experience and makes an announcement about his next book in the trilogy Sex in the Hall.
Ricky is thoughtful, funny and a proud graduate of the academy that lets readers with his fictional novels behind the scenes of the midshipmen life.
His book The Black N is a must-read for those who love stories set at the naval academy with a little edge to the story. Please order a copy today on Amazon here. I highly recommend it.
The Black N is described as - Sometimes good guys do bad things: The nineties were a turbulent time for the U.S. Naval Academy. The first half of the decade and several subsequent scandals left a proud institution licking its wounds. By the summer of ’95, the Academy’s response to ornery midshipman behaving badly was to clamp down on discipline. By Halloween of that same year, the Naval Academy’s largest drug scandal in its history had everyone reeling. Enter the “Black Ns.” This exclusive, unsanctioned club is comprised of the Naval Academy’s most prolific bad boys. Midshipman Jim “Mick” McGee is unwittingly about to find out what it takes to become a member. Whether surf

The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.
Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast and the USNA Property Network Podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.

He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a boutique residential real estate company that specializes in serving the United States Naval Academy community PCSing to California & Texas.

We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.

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