Author: Mike

PARITY, SCHMARITY (AKA THE STATE OF NAVY LACROSSE)

On By MikeIn navy lacrosse11 Comments

With a 14-5 dismantling at the hands of Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the Navy lacrosse season came to a rather unceremonious conclusion. That was one painful game to watch, wasn’t it? It was the HBO free preview weekend on DirecTV, and I could’ve changed the channel to Schindler’s List and not have been as depressed as I was watching that debacle. Already a 10-0 blowout by halftime, it was probably the most disheartening Navy performance since the loss to Air Force in 2003. My father, after sending me a text message at the half announcing that he’d switched to the NASCAR race (I can’t blame him), called me after the game saying, “Well, at least we won the second half.” Which to me kind of felt like saying, “Well, I know we’re at the vet to put the dog to sleep, but at least we got a good parking space.” He was right, of course, but at the time I wasn’t really in the mood for silver linings.

With such a lousy ending, it would be easy to forget that there were, in fact, “up” parts in this up-and-down season. Looking at the big picture, there is quite a bit to be happy about. Navy went to the NCAA tournament for the 6th consecutive year after having missed the previous four. The Mids also won their fifth Patriot League tournament in the six years that they’ve been a member of the conference. The regular season included the first win over Georgetown since 2004, an absolute manhandling of Maryland, and a convincing win over Army to erase the memory of last year’s loss. There isn’t a Navy fan out there that wouldn’t have taken these results if they were offered to him at the beginning of the season.

Continue reading “PARITY, SCHMARITY (AKA THE STATE OF NAVY LACROSSE)” →

TROY CALHOUN’S IS THE SUPERIOR INTELLECT

On By MikeIn air farce, going pro18 Comments
Troy Calhoun relaxes after a long day of thinking.
Troy Calhoun relaxes after a long day of thinking.

We all know it’s the topic that won’t die. But now, Troy Calhoun has put his two cents into the “service academy players turning pro” debate, so I guess it’s worth talking about. And what does the esteemed Air Force coach have to say?

“Are we losing literally hundreds upon hundreds of outstanding officer candidates that will not consider going to any of the service academies because they have no chance to pursue a possibility?” Calhoun said. “I think right now we’re deterring a good chunk of young men and young women just because of a door that’s immediately shut.”

Brilliant. If you just make it easier to get out of the service commitment, then more people would be willing to go to service academies! Now THERE’S the argument we want to be making hot on the heels of Washington Post op-eds calling for service academies to be closed. But if that’s your logic, then why limit it to football players? If we just shortened the commitment for everyone, or if we let anyone defer or eliminate service obligations whenever something better comes along, then imagine how many awesome candidates we’d attract!  But you never hear that argument made. Somehow, it’s ridiculous to suggest such a thing for midshipmen/cadets in general, but it’s a candidate-enhancing boon when applied to football players. It’s just too hard to believe.

It’s hard to blame a football coach for making this argument. His job is to win games, and he’s just looking for ways to to help him do his job. It is, however, easy to blame a service academy graduate. The service commitment is more than just paying back the cost of an education. It’s the very reason the schools exist. The op-ed in the Post was right; there are cheaper ways to produce new ensigns and second lieutenants. The reason why the cost of the service academies is justified is because it’s cheaper to produce admirals and generals that way; service academy graduates become career officers at a higher rate than their ROTC and OCS counterparts. Trying to lure applicants who aren’t even willing to commit to 5 years isn’t going to increase the rate of academy graduates who make it to 20. It’ll do the opposite. And if you love your school at all, you don’t want that.

Sometimes I wonder if the people making these arguments really understand what they’re saying.

THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: NAVY

On By MikeIn navy football12 Comments

With the success of the football program from 2003-2007, Navy fans might have become just a wee bit spoiled. Taking their cue from the “Expect to Win” mantra used by NAAA as their football marketing slogan, supporters of the Blue & Gold had set their sights higher and higher before the start of each new football season. Preseason optimism– that force which makes diehards look at the upcoming schedule and figure that every game is winnable– was running rampant, as was the daydreaming about “what if” scenarios should the team do the impossible by running the table. Ah, the offseason. For all the complaining that we do once it arrives, it never fails to recharge the batteries of imagination for the hopelessly partisan. The Mids were never quite able to reach those lofty dreams of going undefeated and unleashing their fury in BCS bowls, except on my Xbox. Yet they were remarkably consistent: five straight years of 8+ wins, 5 straight bowl games, and 5 straight Commander-in-Chief’s Trophies.  This standard for success was the fuel-air mixture in the internal combustion engine of fan expectations.

If the program’s prosperity was the fuel for high expectations, then Paul Johnson was the piston that drove the machine. (Smartass comments from former RX-7 owners are not necessary. You know who you are.) Johnson was a master motivator, knowing just how and when to apply pressure so that his team would respond. He was a master playcaller, knowing just the right way to wield his offense for maximum effect. He was a master recruiter, reversing two decades of losing recruiting battles to Air Force. And in the end, he was a heartbreaker, leaving Annapolis for Atlanta– and taking those daydreams of some Navy fans with him.

Enter Ken Niumatalolo, Johnson’s successor. As Johnson’s right-hand man with the offense, Niumat was the no-brainer pick to replace Johnson by just about everyone who followed the program closely. He was received well by the Navy faithful; Athletic Director Chet Gladchuck earned praise from fans and from the press (and from this blogger) for acting quickly to name Niumat as head coach rather than carry out an extended coaching search. If Johnson was ever going to leave Navy– and just about everyone expected it to happen sooner or later– then Niumat was the guy we wanted to replace him. Yet despite the almost universal agreement that the right man was hired for the job, the confidence and optimism that accompanied the Johnson years wasn’t really there to start 2008. For the most part, I don’t think it was a slight to Niumatalolo as much as it was recognition for just how hard it is to win at Navy. At least that’s what I hope it was. After all, the last winning coach to leave Annapolis was George Welsh in 1982, and that started what would become the darkest period in Navy football history. It was the only experience most Navy fans had in this situation. Adding to the uncertainty was the national media’s persistent love affair with Troy Calhoun, and their almost universal expectation for Air Force to return to the top of the service academy heap.

Well, that didn’t happen. And if you had any doubts before, you can cast them aside. The job that Ken Niumatalolo and his staff did in 2008 was as impressive as anything we saw in the Johnson years.

Continue reading “THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: NAVY” →

ADDENDUM

On By MikeIn air farce, conference talk, football, recruiting8 Comments

Since we’re talking about Air Force, now would probably be a good time to talk about the recent hullabaloo over the Mountain West’s attempts to gain BCS membership, or to create a playoff. With all the talk we do around here about recruiting advantages, can you imagine if Air Force coaches could go into a recruit’s living room and tell him that he could play for a BCS conference? Especially when that recruit’s options are probably something like Air Force, Navy, Bucknell, Dartmouth, and Rhode Island. Those three little letters would certainly enhance the Mountain West’s image, Air Force included. Perception is reality, as the cliché goes. It would also add a lot of money to Air Force’s coffers. So… Is it time?

In a word, no.

The Mountain West can talk about how good Utah, TCU, and BYU are all they want, but it won’t matter. The BCS isn’t about quality of competition. The BCS is about putting together a television package that generates the maximum amount of revenue while being split between the fewest possible number of teams. To that end, it doesn’t matter how good the teams are. All that matters is how many people will watch. This is where the Mountain West’s case falls flat.

The BCS isn’t made up of the best teams in college football; any number of non-BCS teams routinely knock off BCS-conference foes every year. The BCS is made up of the most popular teams in college football. Take a look at the average home attendance of each BCS conference last year:

SEC 76,844
Big Ten 70,125
Big 12 62,956
Pac-10 57,350
ACC 52,737
Big East 43,145

Now, compare that to the Mountain West’s average attendance: 35,125. Only two MWC teams, BYU and Utah, have a higher home attendance than the Big East’s average. Those two teams skew the league’s average a bit. The average home attendance for the rest of the conference is a paltry 25,802. In short, nobody cares about the Mountain West.

That isn’t meant to be a slight to the MWC. It’s just reality. If the MWC or anyone else is serious about joining the BCS, they don’t need to show how their teams are good enough to compete; Utah, BYU, and TCU have done that. What they need to do is show how their inclusion would make current BCS members more money. But as the attendance numbers show, the Mountain West doesn’t add enough value in terms of a dedicated following for the BCS to be able to charge a significant premium for its television package. Adding nine more teams would just reduce the per-school share of the BCS money pie. That’s also why there’s resistance to a playoff; the money generated from the tournament would have to be split between too many teams. There is no incentive for the BCS schools to be more inclusive.

The people running the Mountain West aren’t stupid. I’m sure they know that they have no chance at seeing their proposals come to fruition. But by making a public to-do out of it, they generate free publicity for their best teams, highlight the true nature of the current BCS system for the public, and help to establish themselves as a leader among the non-BCS conferences.

Those are all good things as far as Mountain West schools are concerned, but nothing any Navy fan should really worry about.

THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: AIR FORCE

On By MikeIn air farce, football10 Comments

At this time last year, it appeared that Air Force head football coach Troy Calhoun and AD Hans Mueh were preparing fans for the worst. At the very least, they probably wanted to temper the expectations of those who dreamed of a future filled with Mountain West greatness after Calhoun went 9-4 in his first season in Colorado Springs. The recurring theme to their responses when asked about how the 2008 season would go was how young the Air Force football team would be. There was talk of “thin senior classes” and how it would be three years before Calhoun has the team full of the juniors and seniors he needs to really succeed. With talk like that, it would have been easy to expect disaster, but disaster isn’t what happened. Not exactly, anyway.

Continue reading “THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: AIR FORCE” →

WHY WON’T YOU DIE

On By MikeIn army, going pro6 Comments

Which is scarier? Jason Voorhees repeatedly rising to terrorize counselors at Camp Crystal Lake with a machete despite being vanquished at the end of each Friday the 13th movie? Or the fact that someone thought it was a good idea to make another Friday the 13th movie?

The same question could be asked of Army’s Alternative “Service” Option– the villain in the slasher-flick world of service academy football. Just when you thought the topic was dead, it comes out of nowhere to hack internet conversation to bits and haunt your dreams. (OK, that last part is a Nightmare on Elm Street reference, but they made Freddy vs. Jason, so the judges have allowed it.) At a West Point Board of Visitors meeting a couple weeks ago, the question of the ASO came up. On Tuesday, Sal Interdonato wrote about the responses given by the superintendent, LTG Franklin Hagenbeck, athletic director Kevin Anderson, and new head football coach Rich Ellerson, here. And whoa Nelly there’s some classic buck-passing going on in this one.

BUT FIRE WILL ONLY MAKE IT ANGRIER!
BUT FIRE WILL ONLY MAKE IT ANGRIER!

The Supe has some hum-dingers. Highlights:

Hagenbeck: “In ’05, we wrote a particular standard in line with OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense). We moved out and had some youngsters go to the professional ranks other than football. Last year, Caleb Campbell was drafted by the Detroit Lions. The spotlight was on him. Another service academy was very outspoken and their view was we had an unfair competitive advantage and had that policy turned around in a blink of an eye…We are all under the same policy and how you look at it and implement it is the question.”

It’s bad enough that Hagenbeck completely dodges any responsibility that he might have had in this debacle, but he didn’t stop there. No, he takes it a step further and decides to blame the Naval Academy. With that, I would like to cordially invite LTG Hagenbeck to screw himself. (All the Army fans that will inevitably read this and feign offense because I told an OMG GENERAL to screw himself can likewise screw themselves). He gets away with it because there’s nothing that some Army fans like more than blaming Navy for their problems. I don’t know where that trend began, but it’s as pathetic as it is absurd. “Evil Navy is a bunch of wimps that don’t fight the real war, so they tell Army recruits’ parents that their kid will die! Evil Navy went to the NCAA about Army player eligibility!” Etc., etc. Maybe it makes some Army fans feel better to think that way, but the result of believing this nonsense is that they fail to hold accountable the people truly responsible for their problems. People like LTG Hagenbeck, who can’t even get his story straight while he tries to play the victim:

Another service academy was very outspoken and their view was we had an unfair competitive advantage and had that policy turned around in a blink of an eye…

They (cadets) could buy out. It was $280,000 and spend their remaining time in the reserves subject to recall. If you didn’t show progress in the pro ranks, Army could recall you back. That was all laid out. OSD came back literally at the 11th hour, actually less than 48 hours when Caleb reported to Detroit to say that definition of active duty for the first two years was not acceptable.

Which is it, General? Did mean ol’ Navy get that policy turned around in the “blink of an eye,” or did it drag on so that you heard nothing until the “11th hour?” You can’t have it both ways. And his claim that he received nothing in writing is suspect. Do we need to go over the ASO timeline again?

2005: Army creates the ASO.

August 2007: After representatives from each of the academies voiced their concerns over differing policies between the services, a memo is promulgated from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) regarding the “Policy for Academy and ROTC Graduates Seeking to Participate in Professional Sports Before Completion of their Active Duty Service Obligations.” The policy orders two years of active duty before a service academy or ROTC graduate is able to apply for excess leave to attempt to catch on with a team. The policy becomes effective Jan. 1, 2008.

April 2008: Caleb Campbell is drafted.

Only three freaking days after the draft: Dr. David Chu, the Under Secretary in question– who has absolutely nothing to do with the Navy or the Naval Academy, by the way– sends out a new memo, “retransmitting” the August 2007 policy and stating that it is “a policy that remains in force and may not be supplemented.” In order to address any claim that playing in the NFL could itself be considered “active duty,” the memo goes on to add that “constructs for ‘active duty’ service should not include arrangements typically unavailable to others in uniform.” This all happened three months, not 48 hours, before Lions training camp.

May 2008: After this new memo is sent, Army begins their “internal review.”

July 2008: Caleb Campbell is pulled away from Lions training camp.

We can deduce from Hagenbeck’s comments that our initial suspicion about the nature of that “internal review” was pretty much dead on. It wasn’t an “internal review” as much as it was weeks of begging and weaseling between Army officials and the OSD, with the former trying to manipulate the ASO into legitimacy. If anything happened at the “11th hour,” it was someone at OSD saying “no means no” for the thirtieth time. LTG Hagenbeck had been told “no” a whole hell of a lot sooner than “less than 48 hours” before Campbell reported to Lions camp. Chu’s “retransmit” memo proves it. For Hagenbeck to say otherwise is nothing but dishonest revisionism.

Did Naval Academy officials complain about the ASO after Campbell was drafted? Of course they did, and they should have. But Dr. Chu obviously didn’t need to hear anything from Navy to smack the ASO down; his reaction was immediate. The facts are simple; the OSD had a policy in place. West Point tried to violate that policy. The OSD didn’t let them. And by fighting the decision until the last minute, Army jerked Campbell around and created a public relations train wreck for themselves. Hagenbeck’s lack of accountability is disappointing. Trying to blame the Naval Academy is just shameful.

(By the way, can you imagine if a cadet went to a conduct board and said something like, “We are all under the same policy and how you look at it and implement it is the question.” I’m sure that’d fly!)

ALL-NMCMS TEAM

On By MikeIn navy football7 Comments

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, and NAAA intends to celebrate. According to the release  just sent from the desk of Scott Strasemeier, the celebration includes honoring the 1959 team that beat William & Mary in the stadium’s first game, a 1959-themed NavyFest tailgate, and this snazzy uniform patch. Most importantly, the All-Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium Team will be revealed.

Fans will be allowed to nominate players who have played at least one season at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. Once nominations are taken, fans will be able to vote for the final candidates.

A committee will then take the nominations and pair them down to a select number of players at each position. Starting April 13 fans will have the opportunity to vote for the all-time team at http://www.navysports.com. Fan voting will be worth 50 percent towards the final selection of the team with a committee of Navy football historians determining the other 50 percent of the vote. The all-time team will be revealed at halftime throughout the 2009 season.

I don’t know what Navy football historians will form this committee; maybe Jack Clary will be like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor and just play the role of everyone at the table. But wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall for THAT meeting?

We will, of course, be submitting official Birddog nominations. So head over to the message board to throw in your two cents.

THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: ARMY

On By MikeIn army, football32 Comments

At the end of the football season, I like to take a step back and look at how each service academy program is doing relative to each other and the college football world in general. A “state of the union” of sorts. First on the list: Army.

2008 was a season that began with optimism. Most seasons do at any school, I suppose, but not at Army. Not since Todd Berry took the West Point football program and gave it a tombstone piledriver from which it has yet to recover. Since Berry’s 0-13 debacle, the hope amongst the Army faithful was that one day, option football would return. After all, even a coaching legend like Bobby Ross failed to reverse the Army team’s fortunes. Army fans decided that there was no other recourse; it’s option football or bust. So when it was revealed that Jim Young  had been seen helping out at Army football practices, well… That’s enough to work any Army fan into a frenzy. Young, of course, is the Army coach who took over in 1983. After a 2-9 season that saw the Cadets average a paltry 12 points per game, Young switched to a wishbone offense and found immediate success, winning 8 games (including the Cherry Bowl) and more than doubling point production for the season. His presence could mean only one thing: that option football was returning to West Point. So why not have a little optimism? Even if getting to a bowl game was still a bit pie-in-the-sky, it seemed reasonable that Army would at least be more competitive, right?

Apparently not. Not to start the season, anyway. What was thought to be a winnable game against Temple turned into a 35-7 blowout loss. I-AA New Hampshire came to Michie Stadium a week later and dominated the Black Knights in a 28-10 win. Army had the week off after the New Hampshire loss, but it did them no good as Akron came to West Point and dealt out a 22-3 thumping of their own. Army fans, players, and coaches had to believe that those were three winnable games at home; instead, Army was outscored 85-20. With another loss on the road at Texas A&M, Army started the season 0-4. That’s not how it was supposed to go.

While there was disappointment on the field, there was drama off of it. Carson Williams, the team’s returning starter at quarterback, was benched after three games in favor of sophomore Chip Bowden. Army’s prize recruit in its freshman class, Indiana quarterback Paul McIntosh, left the school. Both the West Point Superintendent and athletic director allegedly came to the Army locker room and berated the players for their supposed lack of effort. And then there was the all-too-ominous kiss of death vote of confidence given to head coach Stan Brock by AD Kevin Anderson. By the end of September it was getting to be apparent that Stan Brock’s second season as Army’s head coach would be his last.

But then a strange thing happened; Army started to play better. It began with a 44-13 rout of Tulane in New Orleans. Fullback Collin Mooney led the way with 187 yards rushing and 4 TDs. Army won again a week later, topping Eastern Michigan 17-13 behind Mooney’s 229 yards. The Black Knights had a 24-10 lead on eventual MAC champion Buffalo before falling in overtime, 27-24. A 14-7 win over Louisiana Tech a week later, and Army had won 3 out of 4 games going into the first leg of the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy round-robin against Air Force. Army lost a tight game to the Falcons, and lost another close one to an explosive Rice team that would go on to win the Houston Bowl. Rutgers had Army completely overmatched, but for six straight games, Army was doing what the faithful thought they should. They were competitive. And what better way to announce the resurgence of Army football to the world than a win over their biggest rival on the season’s biggest stage?  The Mids had lost Paul Johnson to Georgia Tech, after all. Besides, Army was able to hang with “teams that are a lot better than Navy,” right?

It didn’t take long for everyone in the stadium to realize that wasn’t the case. Shun White’s touchdown run on Navy’s third play from scrimmage deflated whatever high spirits Army might have had coming into the game. While some stubborn Army alums continued to make the laughable assertion that Navy’s athletes were “no better than ours, if not worse” (!), it felt as if every play in the 2008 edition of the Army-Navy game served as an argument to the contrary. White’s run was the most obvious example, but some of the best demonstrations of the talent gap came when Army had the ball. The Black Knights had open plays, but simply weren’t fast enough to take advantage of them. While the Mids were clearly focused on bottling up Mooney, their linebackers were fast enough to keep any Army play that went outside from doing significant damage. In the last two years, Army has scored a total of three points against Navy.

The 34-0 pounding delivered to Army was the last straw. Maybe Army had made progress over the course of the season, but they were getting no better relative to the one school they just have to beat. On December 12, Stan Brock was fired.

It was an exercise in the inevitable. When athletic administrators take it upon themselves to make on-field football decisions, you know the end is near. That’s exactly what happened over the offseason; it sure wasn’t Stan Brock’s decision to go to an option offense. How do we know? Well, just ask him what he thinks about the option:

“I don’t think a 100-percent triple option is the answer,” Brock said. “If it was, Navy would be national champions because there’s nobody that runs it better than Navy, nobody. …

“There’s a lot of positive things that are part of that offense and some other things, you have to be able to do when the situation arrives,” Brock said. “You have to be a well-rounded offense.”

Army actually scored more points per game running their old offense against a tougher schedule in 2007. If the head coach didn’t even believe in the new offense he was running, then it could hardly be considered a surprise that the players struggled with it. And so, out went Brock, and a search–one that Army fans feel should have happened the last time they hired a coach– began.

From comments he made in the media at the time, it was apparent that Anderson was determined to hire an option coach. Based on some names that were floating around (which may or may not have had any merit), being an “option” coach was more important than being a “good” coach when it came to qualifying criteria in the search. Fortunately for Army fans, they have found a bit of both in Rich Ellerson.

Ellerson isn’t an “option coach” in the truest sense of the phrase; he’s made a name for himself as a defensive innovator. But even though he was never the guy drawing up the Xs & Os of the triple option himself, he believes in the spread option and has been dedicated to it as a head coach. Ellerson was the defensive coordinator at Hawai’i from 1987-1991. The Rainbows’ offensive coordinator at the time was, of course, Paul Johnson. Ellerson might have been a defensive assistant for his entire career, but he knew a good offense when he saw one. When he finally got the chance to be a head coach himself– first at Southern Utah, and later at Cal Poly– he knew what offense he wanted to run. When Ellerson was named the head coach at Cal Poly in 2001, he hired Gene McKeehan away from the Naval Academy to be his offensive coordinator. McKeehan installed a spread option offense that would become among the most prolific in I-AA under the direction of succeeding coordinators Ian Shields and Joe DuPaix. While DuPaix is on Ken Niumatalolo’s staff as the slotbacks coach, McKeehan and Shields have followed Ellerson to West Point and will add their expertise to Army’s coaching staff.

The spread option, combined with Ellerson’s defenses, were a winning formula for Cal Poly. Once a Division II power, the Mustangs had only one winning season in the six that preceded Ellerson’s hiring. Ellerson went on to post a 56-34 record in San Luis Obispo, including two appearances in the I-AA playoffs. That’s especially significant, since Cal Poly’s conference– the Great West Football Conference– does not receive an automatic invitation. Of course, that also tells you a little bit about Cal Poly’s competition– it stinks. But don’t get hung up on that. A school with the academic challenges of Cal Poly taking down I-A San Diego State twice in three years and beating traditional I-AA power Montana in a 2005 playoff game says a lot about its coach. It says a lot about San Diego State too, but that’s a different story for a different day.  

So if you’re wondering if Rich Ellerson is a good coach, don’t bother. He is. But if there’s a lesson to be learned in service academy football, it’s that being a good coach is not the same thing as being the right coach. Navy fans might not have anything nice to say about Gary Tranquill, Elliot Uzelac, and George Chaump, but believe it or not these guys were good coaches.  Gary Tranquill has long been a respected offensive mind. He was the offensive coordinator for George Welsh at Virginia, Nick Saban at Michigan State, and Bill Belichick with the Cleveland Browns. He was recently hired for the same position at Boston College. Elliot Uzelac is another well-respected offensive coach who has been the offensive coordinator at four different BCS schools, including the 11-1 Fiesta Bowl champion Colorado team in 1994 (the year of Kordell Stewart and the Hail Mary). George Chaump never had a losing season as Marshall’s head coach. He led the Thundering Herd to two 10+-win seasons, including the school’s first two I-AA playoff berths and an appearance in the championship game. They all appeared to be solid hires at the time.

This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about this good coach/right coach concept here. But what does being the “right coach” mean? Honestly, I’m not completely sure. I think it may be about a guy’s personality more than anything else. There are a few traits, though, that fans seem to like to talk about when it comes to what makes the right coach, but are instead completely irrelevant. First and foremost, running the option doesn’t make someone the “right coach.” Bob Sutton has a somewhat similar background as Rich Ellerson in that they are both defensive coaches who ran option offenses. Sutton had only two winning seasons in 9 years, and even those seasons featured a combined 5 wins over I-AA teams (four of them non-scholarship I-AA teams). Elliot Uzelac brought the wishbone to Navy and went 8-25 over 3 years.

Having service academy experience is another thing a lot of fans look for, but that doesn’t make someone the right coach either. Sutton was an Army assistant under Jim Young. Tranquill and Uzelac were both former Navy assistants; Tranquill under George Welsh, and Uzelac under Rick Forzano. Charlie Weatherbie spent six years on Fisher DeBerry’s staff. None of them had lasting success at Army or Navy. There are other things that fans like to think matter, too, like “getting the mission” of the school or wanting to coach at the school forever and ever. That’s all nice and flowery, but only if the guy actually wins. If he doesn’t, then nobody cares if he’s super gung-ho about creating military officers. Hell, West Point itself wasn’t even super gung-ho about turning its football players into officers as of last year. Yes, Army is Ellerson’s dream job, and he’s bringing the option to Michie Stadium. But that’s not what will make or break him. Recruiting, however, will.

Army has a pretty steep hill to climb in that category. First, the good news for Army fans: Coach Ellerson has stated that the team needs better speed across the board, and that finding speed is his top recruiting priority. Hey, the first step is admitting that you have a problem, and with that Ellerson has already done more than his predecessors who thought that Army had “closed the gap” on Navy. But recruiting is easier said than done. I’m sure some Army fan will read this and think it’s just some Navy fan being arrogant, but Navy should beat Army for recruits. All else being equal, the Naval Academy has two distinct advantages on top of simply being the best program right now. The first is location: downtown Annapolis vs. middle-of-nowhere Highland Falls is a no-brainer. The second is far more important: the Naval Academy is the only school of the three that can offer pretty much anything that the other schools do after graduation. Want to fly jets? You can do that. Be a ground-pounder? Ditto. Drive ships? Submarines? Jump out of airplanes? Drive tanks? Yes to all of them. The same can’t be said of USMA or USAFA, barring the rare interservice transfer. To an 18-year old kid, this is huge. Making a commitment to the military can seem intimidating enough without having to rule out service options from the get-go. Having four years to to make an educated decision about what’s appealing to you isn’t just comforting; it’s smart. Why burn bridges? Of course, all other things are rarely equal. There’s always some difference in coaching, facilities, and the whims of individual recruits. But this advantage plays out over time. Of the 14 men’s sports in which Army and Navy compete against each other, Navy leads the all-time series in 12 of them (with one tie).  And by switching to an offense that’s similar to Navy’s, it makes it that much more important to beat Navy for players.

And that is what will ultimately decide whether Rich Ellerson is the right coach for Army: getting the right players. It’s a tall task, but not an impossible one. If it happens at all, it’s going to take time– which may or may not be a luxury that Kevin Anderson posesses. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, Army fans can at least look forward to a spring game that promises to be more than just a “defensive scrimmage.” So it’s already better than last year, right?