Author: Mike

LET’S TAKE A FIELD TRIP

On By MikeIn navy football2 Comments

The Crystal Ball Run is a new collaboration between several fine bloggers, including some you’ve come across while reading this blog over the years like Blatant Homerism and In The Bleachers. They asked if I would answer a few questions on Navy football, and I obliged. You can read my responses here.

You can follow The Crystal Ball Run on Twitter. You can follow me too, for that matter.

THIS AGAIN

On By MikeIn conference talk, navy football23 Comments

Everyone knew that the last round of conference expansion left the Big 12 on shaky ground, with Nebraska and Colorado pulling chocks and Texas being allowed to start its own television network. Still, I thought we’d get through at least one season before the hate & discontent flared up again. I was wrong. Texas A&M has apparently had enough, and is once again looking like it’s headed to the SEC; if not right away, at least in the not-too-distant future. For the most part, the comings and goings of the Big 12 and SEC aren’t something I’m overly concerned about other than in a general college sports fan sense. If the Aggies do end up making the switch, though, there are ways that the fallout could potentially impact the Naval Academy.

Before the A&M story broke, the only expansion talk we were hearing was coming from the Big East. Army and Navy were part of the conversation as usual, along with regular supposed expansion targets like UCF and ECU. The conference had already added TCU and had a standing invitation to Villanova should the Wildcats choose to make the move to I-A football, although that offer was put on hold once the Big East football members realized that Villanova was actually serious about the move. The general response to the Army/Navy rumor was less than enthusiastic, which isn’t all that surprising, but doesn’t really take everything into consideration either. These moves are all dictated by television; conferences are looking to add schools that will bring more viewers and add more value when TV contract negotiations come up. To that end, a national name brand that sits within 30 minutes of two major cities, has the leverage to get a multi-year national TV contract on its own, and will appear on national network television three times this year (not including ESPN) seems like it would be worth considering. ECU and UCF don’t have any of that, let alone friggin’ Villanova. Sure, there are other considerations, and you could argue that ECU or UCF might have more drawing potential in the long run. Might. What Navy brings to the table here and now, though, shouldn’t be laughed off.

Still, if I’m the Big East, I wouldn’t bother with any of those schools at this point, including Navy. Everyone knew that the Big 12 was built on quicksand even before the Texas A&M story picked up steam. If the Aggies do end up going to the SEC, and if the SEC expands to 14 by tacking on, say, Missouri, then that whole conference could collapse. Maybe the Pac-12 will come calling for Texas and Oklahoma again. Either way, it isn’t like there’s anyone else beating down UCF’s door, so there’s no rush to add them when exercising a little patience could have half of the Big 12 falling into your lap. Imagine a conference with Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, TCU, Cincinnati, and Louisville in one division, and Syracuse, West Virginia, Pitt, Rutgers, UConn, and USF in the other division. That’s a great football conference and an elite basketball conference.  It also adds way more TV revenue potential than any of the other rumored targets would, since it would create a demand for the Big East in areas of the country where none exists now. I know that the Big East is trying to squeeze everything it can out of its next TV contract, but adding another Conference USA school isn’t going to do anything to support that cause. The smart move for the conference is to wait this one out.

What if they don’t? What if they decide they want Navy? I don’t think they will, but let’s assume they do. My feelings on the matter are unchanged. Navy would get a lot more money in the Big East, no doubt. The problem is that there is only so much that the Navy football program would be able to do with all that money. It wouldn’t change the service commitment, academic standards, or military lifestyle that scare away recruits now. By joining a league with other programs that don’t share those challenges, you set yourself up for failure. That doesn’t mean the idea should be completely dismissed, though. If the time comes when it appears that the BCS schools will break away from the NCAA to form their own organization, then I think you have to consider joining a conference if it would keep you in the top tier of college football (I’m not convinced that it would). But until you’re certain that’s the case,  it’s better to stay independent.

So keep an ear to the ground when it comes to the Texas A&M fallout. Everyone will be affected by it. The only question is to what extent.

WELL I GUESS WE SHOULD GET STARTED

On By MikeIn navy football20 Comments

Football practice started two weeks ago. Media day is done, the first scrimmage is in the books, and the season is officially underway. Usually around this time I start blathering about how the summer felt so short and that I’m not sure if I’m ready to start again blah blah blah. That mess won’t fly this year, since I basically took the second half of last season off. I might end up doing the same thing this year, but for now I’ll fool myself into thinking that I’m gung-ho.  Time to get crackin’. I have a lot of work to catch up on. The next week will be dedicated to clearing out my DVR and putting a bunch of games on DVD. That, and maybe I should actually write a thing or two. LOLLERS LET’S NOT GET TOO FAR AHEAD OF OURSELVES.

Anyway, a new season brings all the usual questions as we try to sift through the unknown. How do the new players look, how are the position battles shaping up, how do you fight complacency… You know the drill. This year it also brings a few not-so-usual questions too, as the Mids come into 2011 with someone else on the top of the service academy heap for the first time in a long time. The last time a Navy team started the season without the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy in Bancroft Hall, most of the current plebe class was entering fifth grade. It’s a weird feeling. If you’re in search of silver linings, that probably takes care of the whole “complacency” thing. The other questions are in the process of being sorted out.

Most of those questions come on the defensive side of the ball, where Jabaree Tuani, Max Blue, and Kwesi Mitchell are the only starters returning from a year ago. The last time we saw this kind of turnover was 2007, and those were some dark days. That was a bit of a different situation, though, since a slew of injuries pressed a bunch of freshmen and sophomores into starting roles. That isn’t the case this year. Of course, I said the exact same thing going into last year, and while the 2010 defense wasn’t anywhere near as bad as they were in 2007, they were incredibly erratic. Against Maryland, the run defense let everything through like it would’ve been impolite not to. A week later against Georgia Southern, they were fantastic. If tackling is an art, then the Notre Dame game was the Louvre while the Duke game the following week was more like those galleries that show crucifixes made of poop. Sure, you could say that some of the inconsistency stemmed from who they were playing, but we even saw Jekyll & Hyde performances in the same game like in the first and second halves against SMU. It was crazy, and it’ll be hard to build consistency in 2011 with the unit breaking in 8 new starters.

Hard, but not impossible. When you look at Navy’s recruiting classes over the last 2-3 years, the majority of the players that had other I-A offers were on the defensive side of the ball. Athletically, the defense is as good it’s ever been.  And while there aren’t many returning starters, that doesn’t mean these guys are devoid of experience, especially on the defensive line. It’s the linebackers that are the biggest unknown, but the coaches have said a lot of good things about Jarred Shannon and Mason Graham, and the inside linebackers all stood out because of their hard work  in the offseason strength and conditioning program. The pieces look like they’re in place, so there’s a reason for a measure of optimism. Anything more than that would just be blind faith.

The offense is a different story, with 4 returning starters on the offensive line, both starting slotbacks, Alex Teich at fullback, and a senior quarterback in Kriss Proctor that has seen plenty of reps and knows the offense cold. Aaron Santiago is finally healthy, and together with Gee Gee Greene they give the Mids a one-two punch at slot that we haven’t seen since Reggie and Zerb. The entire slotback rotation is stacked, for that matter. Even the wide receivers have been making plays in practice, although with Proctor not exactly known as a gunslinger it’s unlikely that they’ll be catching as many passes as they did last year.

The passing game might be the only potential hiccup in this offense. There was a time when Navy fans held their collective breath whenever the Mids dropped back to pass, but that changed a bit with Ricky Dobbs at quarterback. Ricky had a strong and accurate arm that made passing a viable and routine alternative in the Navy arsenal. While that kind of passing ability is more of a luxury than a necessity in this scheme, you do need to be able to connect on play action downfield. Navy’s defensive philosophy revolves around preventing the big play, with the idea that the more snaps you force an offense to take, the more likely they are to make a mistake. The same applies to the Navy offense as well; more snaps, more opportunity for error. That’s why you have to take advantage of big plays in the passing game when that’s what the defense is giving you. Remember the Delaware game in 2003? The Blue Hens completely sold out on the option and ignored pass defense altogether. Early on, the Mids were able to take advantage and shot out to a 14-0 lead after Craig Candeto connected with Eric Roberts on a long TD pass. But Delaware stuck to their game plan, and the Mids weren’t able to make those pass plays consistently. They would end up losing to Delaware 21-17. Last year, when Louisiana Tech tried the same thing, the Mids responded with 219 yards passing and a 37-23 win.

Kriss doesn’t have to throw like Ricky to make this offense go, but he does have to throw well enough to at least give the defense something to think about. He’s been compared to Kaipo more than once due to their mutual grasp of the offense. Something else Kaipo was known for early in his career was having a noodle arm. By the time he graduated, though, Kaipo had developed into a pretty good passer. It rarely looked pretty when he dropped back to throw, but it was effective. If Kriss can even come close to making that kind of progress, this might be the best Navy offense of the last decade. If not, it’ll still be pretty good. It will have to be with the schedule that the Mids will be facing this year.

So that’s how I see things coming into 2011. Thoughts?

CATCHING UP

On By MikeIn air farce, army, basketball, football, Ken Niumatalolo, navy football, navy lacrosse, Paul Johnson6 Comments

Thanks to my terrible work ethic, the M.O. for this blog over the last year or so has been for me to comment on things about a month after everyone stops caring (Man, the Casey Anthony verdict is making my Twitter timeline unreadable! And can you believe the U.S. women lost to Sweden?). But I can’t move on to other things without mentioning a few items of varying levels of interest, so let’s do that first.

LACROSSE: Obviously, item #1 on the docket is the hiring of Rick Sowell as the new lacrosse coach. Sowell comes to Navy by way of Stony Brook, where he went 47-26 over five seasons. The Seawolves won the America East regular season the last two seasons, and won the conference tournament in 2010. Stony Brook was a respectable America East program when Sowell took over, but the 2010 season was the best in the program’s short history, earning the #8 seed in the tournament and advancing to the quarterfinals before dropping a 10-9 decision to top-seeded Virginia. Stony Brook again advanced to the America East finals in 2011 before losing a heartbreaker to Hartford in the final seconds (or second, actually).

I like the hire. If Richie Meade had retired on his own terms instead of being forced to resign, I think most people would share my optimism. Unfortunately, the nature of Meade’s dismissal means that some people aren’t going to give any new coach a chance.  That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some legitimate questions to be asked, though. Is Sowell the kind of coach that the old-timers had in mind as they spent the last 5 years calling for Meade’s dismissal? He certainly isn’t as accomplished as Meade. He could be when all is said and done, but were the ’60s laxers expecting more of a sure thing? We’ll find out the answer when we see how long it takes for them to start complaining again. And make no mistake, they will; the kind of success that they want isn’t sustainable at many schools, let alone a service academy. Keep in mind that these guys were complaining before the struggles of the last two seasons. I’ll be happy if Sowell matches Meade’s record at Navy.

Some might question whether or not he can, but the basis for some of the criticism of the hire is unfair, in my opinion. While his record at Stony Brook was better, Sowell’s overall record is just a hair over .500 at 86-81. Not all .500 records are the same, though. Sowell took on some thankless jobs. Before taking the helm at Stony Brook, Sowell started the St. John’s program from scratch. Before that, he took over a Dartmouth program that had two winning seasons in the 16 years that preceded him. By the time he left the Big Green, he had won the Ivy League and had notched the program’s first win at Princeton since 1956. Seriously, he won the Ivy League at Dartmouth. I don’t think that can be said enough. They’ve had a steady downhill trend ever since he left. So yes, he’s about .500, but with some of the challenges he took on, that’s an accomplishment.

Everyone knows what I thought about Coach Meade’s dismissal, but none of that matters anymore. The program marches on– the Mids themselves will march on– and I’m excited to see where Coach Sowell can take them. Welcome aboard.

#@$%ING CBS: John Feinstein’s 14 years in the Navy football radio booth have come to an end. After having pitched the idea of an Army-Navy documentary for a while now, he was understandably upset when CBS decided to move forward with a documentary of their own. He says that he isn’t throwing a fit, but to watch CBS working on this documentary in front of him all year would be too much to take.

It’s a little bit like dating a girl for 10 years, getting dumped and then being invited to her wedding. I just don’t want to watch it.

It certainly does sound like a hissy fit, but I’m more than willing to give Feinstein the benefit of the doubt. One, because everyone I’ve ever talked to that knows Feinstein has nothing but nice things to say about him; and two, because I have no idea how much of a slap in the face this is professionally and can’t possibly relate to any of it. I might be a little disappointed in his decision since NAAA stood by John after he dropped an F-bomb on the air, but only a little; it wasn’t that big of a deal.

In fact, I’m actually sort of glad to see him go. I’ve never liked him on the radio. His ability to tell a story makes him a great writer (and probably would have made him a good documentarian for that matter), but that doesn’t translate much to an in-the-booth game broadcast. Yes, he’s a national media voice in a time when there aren’t many others who give a rat’s ass about the Naval Academy. On the other hand, I disagree with just about everything that comes out of his mouth on the air. I don’t know if losing Feinstein will lead to decreased interest in Navy radio broadcasts, but I do know that I’ll do less in-game yelling at people who can’t hear me, so my blood pressure likes the news.

I’m sure Feinstein will be back when he realizes how much he misses the postgame Juicy Juice benders with Socci.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THAT STORY: Showtime is going to air a two-hour documentary on Army-Navy!

SPEAKING OF CBS: They’ll be showing the Air Force game. That’s CBS as in CBS, not the CBS Sports Network as usual. That’s a big deal, but the cherry on top is that the game is now going to be played at noon. TAILGATERS REJOICE. Seriously though, noon game on CBS? The decision to partner with CSTV instead of ESPN looks better every year. Unless the game is preempted by some garbage ACC game locally, in which case I will embark on a murderous rampage (just kidding) (or am I) (I am) (maybe).

OTHER PEOPLE’S PROBLEMS: Georgia Tech has become the latest program to be flattened by the NCAA regulatory bulldozer. OK, “flattened” might not be the best way to describe it, but the punishment includes probation, a $100K fine, and forfeiture of all 2009 wins after November 24 (including the ACC championship). The From The Rumble Seat reaction ranges from acceptance to WTF as details of the story became public. Those details can be found here.

If the punishment seems excessive, it is. Remember, though, that Georgia Tech was already on probation when all this was happening, so any violations that happen during the probationary period are going to deliver an extra dose of boomshakalaka. Still, I don’t know if forfeiting Tech’s ACC championship makes sense. The school plans to appeal, and while it will probably be denied like most appeals are in the new NCAA process, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a point. The NCAA forces a forfeiture of wins when it finds that ineligible players were used in these contests. While they did find that one of the two investigated players received “preferential treatment” by being given $312 worth of clothes from his cousin’s roommate, the NCAA did not say that either player was ineligible in its report. If either player was in fact ineligible, the NCAA should have made that clear. If they did not determine that the players were ineligible, then Tech shouldn’t have to forfeit any wins. As for the rest of the penalties, meh.

I bring it up because Paul Johnson’s connection might be of some interest to Navy fans. His involvement in all of this is apparently that 1) he was told of the investigation when he shouldn’t have been, and 2) he then told the players in question. I know, rules are rules, but if I was in Johnson’s position I don’t think I would have done anything differently; coaches make their living in part by earning the trust of teenagers. Keeping something like this from them might feel like a betrayal of that trust, and I suspect that part of the reason why the NCAA doesn’t want coaches to know about investigations like this is for the coach’s sake. Still, if it is normal practice for schools to suspend players pending the result of inquiries into their eligibility, how can anyone not know what is happening? That sort of lets the cat out of the bag, doesn’t it? Someone explain it to me.

Anyway, for his part Coach Johnson has been pretty quiet on the subject LOL NO HE’S NOT.

WHAT REALLY SHOULD BE AN NCAA VIOLATION: Army’s duck-hunter uniforms from 2008 were certainly a violation of something. The all-camo getup against VMI had a little more to offer in gimmicky appeal, but didn’t exactly raise the bar aesthetically. Hopefully Nike takes a different direction with the Pro Combat unis they’ll be giving Army and Navy this year.

WHERE DID ALL THESE FLOATING TORSOS COME FROM

IN OTHER SERVICE ACADEMY NEWS: Troy Calhoun’s solution for graduation rates? Bribery!

NIUMAT’S CONTRACT EXTENSION: It was really just a down payment for a plane ticket to Guam.

FEINSTEIN’S DREAM DEFERRED: John will have to wait another 15 years for the Navy-Notre Dame series to end. I don’t think he’ll mind playing Marshall, though.

DAS HOOPS: The basketball schedule hasn’t been released yet, but we do know two games: Siena and Quinnipiac. Remember Quinnipiac?

My blog is sort of like the chicken pox virus: causes itchy bumps, then lays dormant for years before stress causes another painful breakout that can only be treated with herpes medication. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. If you’re institutionalized and miss the pain, though, don’t forget that you can find me on Twitter even when this place is gathering dust.

THE UNNECESSARY END OF AN ERA

On By MikeIn navy lacrosse26 Comments

Naval Academy fans spend a lot of time talking about the importance of having a coach that “gets it.” The exact definition of “it” depends on the person making the comment, but in general “getting it” means embracing the mission of the school to produce officers for the Navy and Marine Corps. We’ve all heard people say that they want a coach who takes that mission personally and incorporates it into his program. When I hear things like that, I just laugh. Sure, people say those things, but they should know better. None of that matters if the team isn’t winning.

Nothing proves that point better than the forced resignation of Richie Meade as the Naval Academy’s lacrosse coach. No coach on the yard reveled in the mission of the school more than Meade. You could see it in everything from the pride he takes in his players’ careers, to his team’s offseason conditioning program based on Marine Corps training, to his attire on game day. He is an Annapolis institution, respected not only by his peers in coaching for his success on the field, but throughout the Yard for his leadership. There is a reason why he was offered a position at the Stockdale Center. Speakers at the Academy’s Corbin Leadership Summit have included military leaders, corporate CEOs… and Meade. Hell, even the best sandwich at Drydock was named after him. Richie Meade was made to be a coach at the Naval Academy. You will never find a more perfect pairing of an individual with a school. But as I said before, none of that really matters. A coach could churn out a team full of war heroes every year, but that won’t be the standard to which he’s sooner or later held accountable.

I’m not one of those hyperventilating idiots who thinks that the athletic department should revolve around the lacrosse program, and that any AD decision made for the benefit of higher-profile programs (read: football) is evil. Major college athletics is a business. That business is to serve as the proverbial front porch for the school, increasing exposure and awareness, and driving interest that turns into applications for admission. Football, being the most mainstream of American sports, is the primary vehicle both for exposure and for revenue generation. Making money allows the athletic department to reinvest in itself with things like facilities, recruiting budgets, and hiring and retaining coaches. That, in turn, drives winning. Winning is ultimately what maximizes interest in a given team, enabling it to carry out its role in fulfilling the athletic department’s mission. It is important to the school that their teams win. These are the basics, and the opinions of those who won’t acknowledge these fundamentals should be ignored.

That’s the real problem with Coach Meade’s ouster: it’s a bad business decision. The fact that he has been such an excellent ambassador for the school is just icing on a really crappy cake.

There is no doubt that the last two seasons were a disappointment. It should take more than that, though, to justify firing a coach that has won 60% of his games, won 5 conference tournament or regular-season titles in the last 8 years, and taken his team to 7 NCAA tournaments. It’ll be hard to find a coach with a better resume than that. Hasn’t Richie done enough to earn the benefit of the doubt? Hasn’t he earned chance to turn his program around? Don DeVoe got 3 seasons before he was forced out, and his team fell a lot farther than the lacrosse program has. Billy Lange had two winning seasons in seven years, and he was going to be allowed to finish out his contract. Yes, these were the first back-to-back losing seasons in program history; but if the standard for Naval Academy athletic programs is to compete for conference championships, how can anyone claim that Coach Meade hasn’t done so, even during the 7-8 2010 season?

The problem is that the standard to which the lacrosse team is held is apparently different. Competing for conference titles isn’t enough for those influential lacrosse alumni from Navy’s heyday in the ’60s. In their view, Navy should be playing for national titles. Never mind that the game has completely evolved away from those days, where you could build a championship contender by stacking your team with football players to simply out-athlete the opposition. Today’s game is a specialized, year-round enterprise. The same challenges that Navy teams face in recruiting academically qualified talent willing to make a military commitment are just as applicable to the lacrosse team. You might expect the lacrosse team to be a little better nationally than others on the yard since there just aren’t very many lacrosse teams to begin with, but expecting a national powerhouse on a regular basis is unreasonable. One might argue that it wasn’t just the two losing seasons that led to Richie’s exit; it was the gradual downward trend since the 2004 dream season. Even that train of thought is short-sighted; what you call a downward trend, I call regression to the mean. Navy has never won an NCAA championship, and only played in one other title game back in 1975. In the 36 years since then, the typical Navy season has been somewhere between 6-6 and 8-5 or so, with only a handful of exceptions. Those who expect more are not only ignoring decades of precedent, but also ignoring the fact that Meade’s teams have outperformed that standard for most of the last seven years.

Most, but obviously not all. The Mids beat Johns Hopkins to put a silver lining on the 2010 season, but 2011 was all cloud. Holding Coach Meade solely responsible, though, is wrong. Coaching at the Naval Academy presents unique challenges; one of those challenges is dealing with NAPS. You’ll often hear people describe NAPS as some great advantage that Navy has over its opponents, but those who say so don’t understand how it works. The prep school is not USNA; players are not obligated to attend the Academy after going through NAPS. And in recent years, many haven’t been.  Someone once told me that the NAPS administration at the time viewed the school not as a preparatory school, but as a pre-screening to weed people out. NAPS retention has been a problem for several sports, not just lacrosse. The football team doesn’t feel quite the same effects simply due to the size of its roster; each lost football player potentially represents only 1/22 of a starting lineup as opposed to 1/5 of a basketball lineup or 1/10 of a lacrosse lineup. With the players who left the lacrosse program, it’s no wonder that the team struggled last year. Take 15-20 players away from any coach in the country and see if he does any better. Now that NAPS has new leadership, retention is picking up. Coach Niumatalolo recently brought in one of the smallest football direct admit classes in recent memory, citing improved NAPS retention as the reason. It’s getting better for the lacrosse program too, with last year’s team dominated by freshmen. This has the potential to be a fantastic class. Coach Meade has proven that he can do special things with players like these, and he deserved the chance to do it again.

It’s been almost two weeks, but I’m still having a hard time gathering my thoughts. I should probably be focused on the future by now, but that is apparently easier said than done. We’ve seen a lot of good moves from NAAA over the past several years, including where the lacrosse program is concerned. Forcing Richie Meade to resign, though, was a mistake. I am eager to see who the next coach will be and I will support him wholeheartedly once he’s named, but I may be in the minority. The next coach will not only have to live up to the standard of the old-timers who think Navy is entitled to games on Memorial Day weekend every year, but he’ll have to contend with another faction that will constantly compare him to Meade. It will be hard not to. Letting Richie Meade go isn’t the end of the world for Navy lacrosse, but it is the end of something really, really special.

It didn’t have to be.