Adam Nettina is getting way too high-falutin’ for us, getting interviewed by ESPN’s Bruce Feldman about a story he wrote on Andre Byrd. The story is about yet another football set-aside embarrassing the Naval Academy while he skates through his priviliged set-aside life, if “embarrassing” means “bringing credit to” and “skates through his priviliged set-aside life” means “works his ass off while inspiring others.” Who decided to let this slacker in?
Author: Mike
G.O.A.T. GOATS
Football Outsiders is a statistics-driven blog whose authors work to bring a Baseball Almanac/sabermetrics type of approach to gridiron research. Using one of their standard ratings systems, they decided to rank the top 100 teams of the last 100 years. Two Navy teams made the list: the Mids of 1943 and 1945, coming in at #52 and #42, respectively. If you think about it, that makes sense. There’s no doubt that these two teams were probably the most talented in Navy history relative to their competition, thanks to relaxed eligibility rules during World War II. Several football stars from schools around the country entered the service, and it wasn’t unusual for someone to play for four years at a civilian school, then step right back onto the field at a service school. Not only did this benefit Army and Navy, but it helped give rise to juggernauts like Iowa Pre-Flight, Bainbridge Naval Training Center, Great Lakes Naval Training Center, and Randolph Field. Some of the players who came to Annapolis after starring elsewhere included All-Americans like Penn’s Skip Minisi and Notre Dame’s Bob Kelly, Don Whitmire (Alabama), Jack Martin (Princeton), Jim Pettit (Stanford), and Bo Coppedge (VMI). It’s hard not to win when you’ve basically assembled an all-star team.
Even so, the Navy teams of World War II are overshadowed by the Army teams of the era, which rode their own cherry-picked squads to national championships. That probably keeps the average Navy fan from thinking of the ’43 and ’45 teams first when naming the best teams in the program’s history, despite the ridiculous amount of talent. Some would say that the 1926 national championship team was the best, since… well, they won a national championship. Many would pick the 1963 team, which played Texas for the national championship and featured Roger Staubach. Some people look at things a bit differently and feel that today’s athletes are bigger, faster, and stronger, and that a more recent team should be considered Navy’s best.
So what do you think is the best team in Navy history? Use whatever criteria you like. Here are your candidates, in addition to the two teams mentioned above:
THE GB&U, 7/12
The Good: The Kia Soul hamsters:
Two hamsters driving a toaster to the sound of Black Sheep’s The Choice Is Yours. Ninety years of television history have led to this moment. Embrace it.
The Bad: Bob Sheppard, who was the Yankee Stadium public address announcer for more than half a century, passed away yesterday at 99. His long list of credits outside of Yankee Stadium included PA duties at West Point and five Army-Navy games.
The Ugly: Remember David Graham? The Air Force half of LOVE’S DEADLY TRIANGLE? The inspiration for the greatest USNA wardroom movie ever (and murderer, probably should mention that too) is raising the esteem of bloggers everywhere by starting a blog of his own!
Graham and another inmate, Aaron Flaherty, plan to debate prison issues on line for people looking for insight into the corrections system. Their first topic: a story on rape in Texas prisons.
Well way to ease your way into it.
The Dumb: I understand the whole civiliter mortuus angle of punishing USC, but isn’t it a little dumb to automatically leave them out of the coaches’ poll? It’s just an opinion poll. If I beat USC, I would certainly like to get credit for beating a ranked team, assuming that the Trojans would be good enough to make the top 25. If they’re going to field a team, it’s stupid to forbid the coaches from opining as to where that team stacks up with all the others. They did the same thing to Auburn when they were on probation in 1993 & 1994, but who were they kidding? Like an SEC team that goes 11-0 and 9-1-1 in consecutive seasons isn’t one of the top 25 in the country.
The New Deal: ESPN has planted its flag on the ACC, grabbing the conference’s broadcast rights in a 12-year $1.86 billion deal. Patrick Stevens discusses the details here. Strangely, Navy doesn’t have any ACC teams on future schedules, although that can easily change (and might have already). On the other hand, with Georgia Tech helping the rest of the ACC grow spread-option calluses, maybe that’s by design.
The Eye Strain: Football scheduling conflicts are almost as difficult to manage as reading gray type on a maroon background.
The iPod: Arcade Fire– Broken Window
The Padres: The offense has picked up over the last 6 games before the All-Star break: .311 BA, 9 HRs, and 6.2 runs per game. Naturally, they were 2-4 in those 6 games.
ANOTHER LOUSY SET-ASIDE
Anthony Piccioni– hard-hitting special teamer, reserve linebacker, and by extension a taxpayer-robbing, unqualified set-aside from some school where the streets are paved with misery and the tears of the disillusioned– has acquired a new label from ABC News: “counter-insurgency guru.” Be sure to write your congressman in protest.
VIVA LA REVOLUCION
Blatant Homerism says we need a Heisman candidate for the people. And who am I to argue?
THE GB&U, POST-INDEPENDENCE DAY (OBSERVED) EDITION
A snapshot of the random crap that’s on my mind…
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was supposed to be a Wednesday thing, but last Wednesday I was busy driving a 1999 Buick Park Avenue with 3 hubcaps, a cracked windshield, and no A/C from Jacksonville to my parents’ house in Virginia Beach. I know what you’re thinking; how can a baller who makes it rain with his mad blogger cash be rollin’ in a decade-old Buick? Because the paparazzi gets all up in my business when I drive the Bentley, that’s how. I like to take the Buick when I want to travel on the DL.
The Good: While I’m pretty sure that this is the only Navy football blog out there, most of you know that it wasn’t the first. That was Pitch Right, written by Adam Nettina. Despite the fame, fortune, and respect that come from being a blogger, Adam gave up this glorious life to concentrate on frivolous details like “college.” He still writes though, both for the Utah State Statesman, and by doing the bulk of the original content– player interviews, recruit profiles, and all the other things people expect from a Scout.com site– for GoMids.com. Adam recently wrote an excellent piece on Eric Douglass that you need to read if you haven’t already.
I’m sure that my my rather low opinion of GoMids.com is no secret. Their handling of whole Fleming thing is a great example of why. To interview Bruce Fleming is to put a microphone on a human vuvuzela. What’s the point? Is anyone unaware of his opinion? Is he going to reveal anything that he hasn’t already said in a dozen other media outlets? And at this point, do you even care if he does? Yet here’s GoMids, stretching Fleming’s 15 minutes into 15 weeks by keeping him front and center while the rest of the world has (rightfully) moved on. While the “countdown to the special sneak peek at part two of the preview to the video of the interview” is downright spine-tingling, one would hope that if GoMids insists on dwelling on this “story,” they could at least take a different angle on it. While probably not his intention, that’s exactly what Adam did– detailing one football player’s academic struggles, how he’s overcoming them, and how the coaches played a role in his academic development. In an issue that deals primarily in high-falutin’ theoretical arguments, Adam wrote a story about real life, and lets us be the judge on how well the situation was handled. It’s a fine piece of reporting. Douglass also deserves credit for being as candid as he was.
The Bad: Don Coryell, offensive mastermind and one of the two greatest coaches in Chargers history (along with Sid Gillman), passed away last week at 85. Anything I could possibly say about Don Coryell would fail to do the man justice. He is the embodiment of the two things I value most in a coach: innovation, and winning in San Diego. Howard Balzer wrote a fine column for USA Today lamenting that Coryell won’t be around to see his overdue Hall of Fame induction. His piece includes some great quotes from Dan Fouts and Charlie Joiner.
Coryell isn’t in the Pro Football Hall of Fame yet, but he is in the College Football Hall of Fame. While more famous for the Air Coryell Chargers, college fans will also remember that he was the architect of the best stretch in San Diego State football history. From 1961-1972, Coryell was 104-19-2 on Montezuma Mesa, including three undefeated seasons and two NCAA College Division national championships. His success was the primary motivator for San Diego State making the move up to the University Division (the predecessor to what is now known as Division I) in 1969. The Aztecs’ success didn’t end with the move; from 1969 until Coryell’s last season in 1972, SDSU won three Big West Conference titles, won the Pasadena Bowl, and claimed victories over Arizona, Oregon State, BYU, and Iowa State. I doubt that Coryell will ever get the kind of credit he deserves outside of San Diego County.
The Ugly: We’re all tired of conference expansion talk, but it isn’t going to go away just because you want it to. Somewhat lost in the Big 12- Pac 10 brouhaha is the WAC, which lost Boise State to the Mountain West. Does that mean that more dominoes will fall as that conference looks to make up for what it lost? Probably not. It seems that– for now, anyway— the college football version of Hungry Hungry Hippos is done, and all the little white marbles have been consumed. That is, unless you believe BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe.
“Things may settle for a little bit,” Holmoe said, “but there’s opportunities — great opportunities for BYU that did not exist last week.”
Opportunities that didn’t exist last week? Holmoe wouldn’t get specific, but by being vague he is obviously trying to imply that some other conference wants BYU. Maybe it’s true. Or maybe he’s just trying to save face after their biggest rival was invited to the BCS party while BYU was left behind. For all we know, this “great opportunity” might be the women’s golf team taking a summer trip to Scotland.
The Animating Contest of Freedom: As long as nobody else leaves the WAC, Hawaii probably won’t have to consider anything drastic like going independent. It’s an interesting idea, but good luck filling THAT schedule. The most interesting part of that article, other than the quotes from Niumat, is this stroke of genius from Birddog-endorsed coach June Jones:
When June Jones was the UH coach, he floated the idea of selling ESPN on a last-game-of-the-night package for UH home games, a concept that has long had appeal at UH but is currently prevented by the school’s rights being tied to the WAC agreement with ESPN.
What a fantastic idea.
The Schedule: Speaking of June Jones, when he was coaching Hawaii he made a point to mention that he’d like more games against service academies. He said that they were good games to expose Hawaii to a national audience that would otherwise never see them. If the creation of the Gansz Trophy and an ongoing rivalry with Navy is any indication, Jones still feels that way at SMU. Meanwhile, Navy played in Honolulu last year, and the ‘Bows are starting a series with Army this season. And it might not be ending there.
The Benefit Of The Doubt: We’re going to assume that Ken Niumatalolo wasn’t included on this list because it’s for “non-Big Six” conference coaches and not “non-Big Six conference” coaches. Especially considering that he’s 6-2 against coaches that are on the list.
The Thaw: If you’re in Anne Arundel County and wondering what that joyous sound was coming from College Park last week, it was probably Maryland fans celebrating the news that their athletic director, Debbie Yow, has left to take the same job at North Carolina State. I really have no idea if she was a good AD or not, and don’t really care. If you’re wondering why some Terps fans might be happy, though, John Feinstein sums things up pretty well. In the interest of full disclosure, Feinstein is hardly an impartial observer; he freely admits that he’s good friends with Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams. However, Yow’s relationship with the Naval Academy certainly doesn’t conflict with anything Feinstein wrote. She tried to use the media to pressure Chet into closing the deal for this year’s Navy-Maryland game in Baltimore, and I have heard from two different people that she once made less-than-gracious comments about Chet at a Maryland booster event. If you were hoping for a thaw in relations between the two schools’ athletic departments, Yow’s departure doesn’t hurt.
The More You Know: The secret to football success? Schoolhouse Rock!
LOS LIIIIIIIINKS: Sandlapper Spike, author of the Birddog-endorsed The Citadel blog The Sports Arsenal, twittered a link to this interesting story about West Virginia and the break of the original ACC schools from the Southern Conference. Speaking of the ACC, Pre-Snap Read continues its countdown, including Navy opponents Wake Forest and Duke. Mouse Davis, father of the modern Run & Shoot, is back on the staff at Hawaii. Some hometown loves their set-aside so much that they couldn’t waste any time editing; they just had to get this article out as quickly as possible. I can’t blame them.
The iPod: Lush– Light From a Dead Star
The Padres: How bad have the Padres been in their 42-year existence? This is only the 7th time in franchise history that the Padres have had a lead of 3 or more games in the division.
The team is also trying to push Heath Bell for the final fan vote for the All-Star team. While I think the best pitching staff in the National League should probably have someone representing them in the All-Star Game (even if Bell wouldn’t be my first choice), my vote went to Joey Votto. The fact that Votto’s inclusion has even come down to the last-chance vote is incredibly absurd. A quote I read earlier on Facebook sums it up:
“Leaving Joey Votto off the All-Star Team is like…leaving Joey Votto off the All-Star team. That’s the only thing that’s that stupid.”
THE GBU, 6/23
The Good: Some dude talking about some set-aside:
This is basically the first political ad for the 2040 election.
The Bad: He’s got soul but he’s not a soldier… Slowly but surely, the “victims” of Army’s forced reversal of the ASO are matriculating back from whence they came.
The Ugly: For most of my life, every single team that I like has pretty much sucked. It’s an unusual feeling for me to cheer for teams that actually win. Rest assured, though, that Chargers GM A.J. Smith is working hard to get things back to normal.
The Chargers: If the Chargers are doomed to be mediocrity’s standard-bearer, at least baby steps have been taken toward making sure that they do it in San Diego. With the buyout in their Qualcomm Stadium lease being cut in half in 2011, though, I’m still convinced that they’re moving to Los Angeles.
The Lacrosse Schedule: Don’t expect too many changes. Richie Meade was a pioneer among lacrosse coaches when it came to finding talent in areas outside of the traditional lacrosse footprint. Rather than go head-to-head in recruiting against the game’s titans, Coach Meade was able to get the pick of the litter in areas where other schools just didn’t bother to look. When the Mids made the finals of the NCAA tournament in 2004, it was almost a running joke how cosmopolitan their roster was compared to the New York and Maryland-dominated squads they were beating. Navy’s schedule reflected that recruiting effort; the Mids regularly played Ohio State, played Colgate in Orlando, Holy Cross in Dallas, and Bucknell in San Diego. But the Mids are no longer alone in canvassing all corners of the country for lacrosse talent; a quick scan of Johns Hopkins’ roster, for example, yields players from California, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Colorado. Being lacrosse’s travelling roadshow was worth it when you could hit ’em where they ain’t, but the cost-benefit isn’t really there anymore. Now it just makes more sense to play relatively high-profile games against the likes of Loyola and Towson in our own backyard rather than spending money to fly all over the country.
The Vuvuzelas: Like the World Cup, but wish there was a blog that stressed tactical matchups kinda like we do here with Navy games? Meet Intelligent Soccer.
The Blogs: The Pre-Snap Read preview countdown continues, including a look at Maryland. Barking Carnival continues to comment on the inner workings of the Big 12’s realignment turmoil, including this cogent bit on what really matters when confereces look to expand:
If I see another poster offering New Mexico and TCU as potential partners, I’m finding out what industry they’re in and entering it both guns blazing, with confidence that I’ll be a billionaire within a decade. Or at least be their shift manager at Quik E Mart.
He will, too. And finally, One Foot Down ponders the possibilities of Notre Dame’s own network.
The iPod: School of Seven Bells– Half Asleep
The Padres: The Padres beat the Rays 2-1 yesterday because Mat Latos is good at throwing baseballs. Last night, I had a dream that they lost 5-4 with a blown save from Heath Bell. I’m sure my subconscious is just trying to keep my optimism in check.
ON SOUTH CAROLINA
I was going to wait until Wednesday’s GBU to talk about this, but I think there’s enough rattling around in my brain on the subject for me to give it a post of its own. Navy will be playing at South Carolina in 2011. Initial reaction:
OK, I know I’m usually the one leading the charge with the whole “reasonable schedule” thing, and my initial response to scheduling Ohio State was, shall we say, tepid. Scheduling SEC teams, even of the middle-of-the-pack variety, doesn’t seem like the greatest idea when the next 6 games (for now, at least) are TCU, Air Force, at Rutgers, East Carolina, at Notre Dame, and at SMU. That said, as someone who finds the best part of football to be the coaching duel, Navy-South Carolina is a dream game. The thought of a Niumatalolo-Spurrier showdown makes me all tingly. I mean, this is what makes college football so much fun, right? You’d never see a matchup of contrasting styles like this in the NFL, mainly because the most “contrast” you’ll see in the NFL is between teams who pass 50% of the time and those who pass 55% of the time. Yes, I know that his South Carolina stint hasn’t exactly been the second coming of Spurrier’s fun & gun Florida heyday. And yes, Spurrier might not even be coaching by then. But the possibility is too good to pass up. Getting almost a million dollars out of the deal isn’t so bad, either. At least on the surface.
I’m not about to complain about NAAA being handed a $950,000 check, but having just agreed to a home-and-home series with Ohio State that paid even more, it’s hard not to wonder if NAAA is scheduling these money games because they need to. Consider:
- The economy is in the crapper. Athletic departments are adjusting however they can, whether it’s by taking the bus instead of flying, or no longer printing media guides, or whatever else they can think of. Cuts might be avoided if you can find new ways to raise money.
- Without a big-name neutral-site game in Baltimore to drive season ticket sales (Maryland, Notre Dame), and with bad weather pretty much every week, football attendance was down in 2009.
- NAAA has two new mouths to feed.
- CBS extended its contract to broadcast the Army-Navy game, but the game had to be moved back a week to make it palatable to them. There really isn’t anywhere else for the game to go now. NAAA will need to find other revenue streams if the Army-Navy golden goose dies.
So are there cashflow problems in Ricketts Hall? No, according to SID Scott Strasemeier:
Strasemeier said the nearly $1 million payout had nothing to do with athletics director Chet Gladchuk’s decision to schedule South Carolina. Rather, recruiting was the primary consideration as the program will receive significant exposure in the south as a result.
“This is a great game against a quality opponent in an area in which we recruit heavily,” Strasemeier said. “We have 13 players from South Carolina and North Carolina on the current roster so clearly those two states are very important in terms of recruiting. This game will pay huge dividends down the road by exposing Navy football to a region of the country that has great high school football.”
The last time I saw Coach Johnson speak in Jacksonville, he stressed how important it was for Navy to schedule games against Florida schools for recruiting purposes. Since then, Navy has scheduled two games with Florida Atlantic. The Carolinas are another important recruiting area for Navy, and while Duke and Wake Forest are regulars on the Midshipmen’s schedules, South Carolina reaches a whole different audience– one that reaches beyond the Carolinas and into Georgia and Florida as well by virtue of the Gamecocks’ SEC membership. I doubt that getting paid for a regular road game like it was the Las Vegas Bowl had nothing to do with the decision, but I do believe that recruiting was the primary motivator. Besides, even in this economy, some athletic departments are raising more money than ever. Conventional wisdom doesn’t always apply.
The addition of South Carolina makes 2011 a pretty challenging schedule, but hopefully it’ll be worth it.
THE GBU, 6/16
The Good: Not that anyone cares about basketball news after everything that’s happened in the last week, but Navy’s first game in the season-opening Coaches vs. Cancer Classic has been announced, and it will be against none other than Texas. On top of that, the Mids will play three more games against teams that could include, among others, Rhode Island, College of Charleston, and Louisiana Tech. It won’t take long to find out what this team is made of.
The Bad: My air conditioner decided to crap out when Jacksonville is flirting with 100 degrees. That makes it about 130 with a computer on your lap. There is an epidemic of swamp ass at the Casa de Birddog.
The Ugly: Or The Good if you’re a fan of anyone else in the Pac 10… The NCAA has ensured that USC won’t be good for a while, taking away 20 scholarships and bowl games for two years. After SMU’s “death penalty” destroyed that program, the NCAA has been reluctant to go that far in punishing athletic programs that stray from the straight and narrow; USC got just about the max that the NCAA has the stomach for. They stopped short of a television ban, although considering how strongly-worded the report was, I’m not sure why.
USC AD Mike Garrett had this to say about the complexities of the investigation:
“As I read the decision by the NCAA, all I could get out of all of this was … I read between the lines and there was nothing but a lot of envy, and they wish they all were Trojans,” Garrett said to cheers Thursday night at the San Francisco Airport Marriott.
When the Pac 10 finally gets its network, the Mike Garrett Literary Review is sure to broaden minds across the Pacific time zone. A sampling:
“As I read The Iliad, all I could get out of all this was, they wish they all were Trojans.”
“As I read War and Peace, all I could get out of this was, they wish they all were French.”
“As I read the New Testament, all I could get out of all of this was, they wish they all were Pharisees.”
Air Force should make this guy their AD, since he sounds exactly like fans who think the only reason anyone dislikes Fisher DeBerry is because they’re jealous of him.
The Pipe Dream: …is over for the Richie Meade haters who thought John Tillman was ever coming back to Annapolis. Tillman is now the head lacrosse coach at Maryland.
The Cuban Missile Crisis: … has nothing on the behind-the-scenes drama of the Big 12’s miraculous comeback.
The Blogs: Along those lines, Barking Carnival has their doubts about the Big 12’s new TV deal that was supposedly the glue that kept the conference together. There are conflicting reports as to whether the Pac 10 has made an offer to Utah or not; Block U is staying on top of it. UHFanblog.com canvasses the Hawaii writers’ reactions to Boise State’s Mountain West move. One Foot Down ponders whether the preservation of the Big 12 also saved Notre Dame’s independence. They also rank their favorite running quarterbacks of all time. Navy quarterbacks as a whole get a generic honorable mention, although that’s sort of a copout. Chris McCoy is good enough to stand out on his own. The lack of any Air Force QBs on the list is also suspect; Beau Morgan and Dee Dowis have to get recognized on any list like this. Pre-Snap Read continues its countdown, including Navy opponent Central Michigan. And Patrick Stevens has a podcast.
The iPod: Fishbone– Unyielding Conditioning
The Padres: Slipped back into first place, even though they only score 3 runs per game. I’d say that there’s no way this can last, but here we are in June…
REPRIEVE
After a fascinating week of panic, rumors, and closed-door dealmaking, the Big 12 will remain intact minus two teams. The worst-case scenario has been averted only two days after it appeared that it was all but inevitable. Some thoughts:
— The departure of Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech to the Pac 10 was at one point considered in the bag, at least to Pac 10 commissioner Larry Scott:
Scott was quoted later saying he thought he had a deal with Texas. But UT officials apparently told Scott if the Longhorns didn’t have Texas A&M with them, it would cause too much political strife and would be a deal-breaker.
I don’t know how much I believe Texas’ claim. I would definitely believe it if the situation was more like the breakup of the Southwest Conference, with the threat of Texas A&M being stranded like Houston, Rice, and TCU were. But if the Aggies could’ve latched onto the SEC (as they were reported to be on the verge of), then everyone would be taken care of. It seems like a convenient excuse for Texas if you’re the Pac 10. If you’re Texas, it’s sound negotiating tactics. Either way, it gave the Longhorns the out they needed to grab the better deal.
— That better deal being increased television revenue and owning their local television rights. The Pac 10 could offer the former, but not the latter if it wanted to start its own TV network. Meanwhile, FOX has apparently upped the ante in what it will pay for Big 12 football, which is driving the increased revenue. Of tangential interest is that apparently NBC is also looking to expand its college football offering.
— Another part of the better deal for Texas, A&M, and Oklahoma comes in the form of, basically, extortion. Nebraska and Colorado are required to pay exit fees for leaving the conference. That money will not be split among the 10 remaining teams; instead, the five schools that weren’t on the Pac 10’s expansion list will give their share to the big three. That’s expected to be $15 million split between them, which makes for a pretty nice up-front incentive to stay put.
— Two days ago, Dan Beebe was looked upon as the most helpless, quasi-capable man in sports. Today, he’s the Anatoly Karpov of conference grandmasters. Some crow-eating might be in order for his harsher critics in the media.
— How awesome is Big 12 basketball now? A true round-robin between 10 schools including Kansas, Texas, Baylor, Kansas State, Missouri, and Texas A&M? The Big 12 is now what the ACC used to be.
— Of course, while the Big 12 is still alive for now, conference expansion isn’t necessarily over with. The Pac 10 is reportedly targeting Utah, and the Big Ten has long been rumored to be looking east. If I’m the Pac 10, though, I hold at 11. Nothing against Utah, but they aren’t the reason the Pac 10 got into this mess. Texas officials are saying that they’re committed to the Big 12 for the “long term;” but the school’s leadership can change. Even if it doesn’t, these same officials appeared ready to jump ship just two days ago. A lot can happen a year or two from now. If circumstances change and this opportunity comes up again, does the Pac 10 want to be stuck with Utah? Is a championship game that important? It wasn’t to Texas and Oklahoma…
Anyway, even if armageddon is inevitable, at least it’s postponed.
Is it wrong that I spent half of the last week remembering how awesome it was that you could create custom conferences in NCAA 2001?
The Birddog 