Category: football

UNAPPRECIATED WARRIORS

On By MikeIn air farce, football38 Comments

Graduation is a special time at any school, but at the nation’s service academies it takes on an even greater significance. It is more than just the culmination of four years of academic work. Graduates not only receive their degree, they also receive their commissions as officers in the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, or Air Force. On that day, these young Ensigns and 2nd Lieutenants will set out to do the work that the American people paid to train them to do. Some of them will become aviators. Some will hit the ground and go into armor, infantry, or artillery. Others will take to the seas on warships deployed around the world. A few more newly-minted officers will find their way into roles that directly support those on the front line, such as in intelligence or supply. There are a number of ways to serve.

Each of these pursuits can be arduous at times, with dangerous tasks to be completed on long deployments away from home. But the work can also be as rewarding as it is difficult. There is a special satisfaction that comes from knowing the importance of what you’re doing. The American people know how important it is, too. These aviators, soldiers, and sailors are among the most celebrated figures in American society. There are organizations like the USO that support them. Hollywood tells tales of their exploits. We have national holidays to honor them. America appreciates what it takes to defend itself, which is why it pays for service academies; a top-notch education is worth paying for if it results in men and women willing to commit to one of these challenging careers.

Sadly, some of those in uniform aren’t shown the same appreciation as the rest. They toil in virtual anonymity, their contributions unknown to the general public. The work they do is vital to the defense of this nation, yet they have nobody to tell their story… until now. I am proud to use my little corner of the internet to bring attention to these distinguished service academy graduates who make the most of their four years of military training. So read on as I pay homage to the best of the best: Air Force football coaches.

If you thought Fallujah was hard,
try two-a-days!

Their records speak for themselves:

  • Head coach Troy Calhoun graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1989. Of his six years of active duty in the Air Force, four were spent as an academy football coach. From 1989-1990 he was a graduate assistant for Fisher DeBerry. From 1993-1994 he was DeBerry’s recruiting coordinator.
  • Blane Morgan is the quarterbacks coach for the Falcons. He graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1999 and spent the next year as a graduate assistant. After spending 2 1/2 years doing less important work at Laughlin AFB, he returned to the academy in 2003 to complete his active duty obligation as the wide receivers coach and an assistant coach for the junior varsity team.
  • Running backs coach Jemal Singleton is a classmate of Morgan’s. He spent two years of his active duty obligation at Little Rock AFB. The rest was spent in Colorado Springs working in the athletic department, and as an assistant coach with the USAFA Prep School, junior varsity, and varsity football teams.
  • Mike Thiessen graduated from USAFA in 2001 and remains on active duty while coaching the team’s wide receivers. Thiessen not only carries out this daring mission as a coach, but he had the unique opportunity to defend the Constitution by playing minor league baseball. Through the Air Force’s vital World Class Athlete Program, Thiessen more than repaid the taxpayer’s cost of his education by hitting .278 for the Lancaster JetHawks. If that wasn’t already of incalculable benefit to the American people, the former Falcon quarterback also spent the three seasons prior to 2007 as the offensive coordinator at the prep school.
  • Joining Thiessen on active duty is Charlton Warren, another 1999 academy graduate. Capt. Warren is the least accomplished of this elite military unit, having spent the majority of his military career doing things other than football, and in places other than Colorado Springs. Fortunately for you & me, though, he’s back serving where America needs him most: as the Air Force secondary coach.
  • Tight ends coach Ben Miller is a real hero. I’m not sure if he wasted any time on active duty at all. Following his 2002 graduation, Miller signed with the Cleveland Browns. He spent 2005 as a member of the Philadelphia Eagles’ practice squad, and in 2006 was a graduate assistant at Illinois.
  • Brian Knorr, a 1986 grad who coached linebackers at Air Force, was hired away this week by Jim Grobe at Wake Forest. Knorr should feel right at home in Winston-Salem, though, as he will be joined by another group of Air Force Academy patriots. Steed Lobotzke, the Demon Deacons’ offensive coordinator, is a 1992 graduate of the Air Force Academy that jumpstarted his military career with a two-year graduate assistant job immediately following graduation. Another new Wake Forest assistant, Steve Russ, is a 1995 Air Force graduate who, like Ben Miller, didn’t bother with the hassles of active duty military service. Instead, Russ went straight into the NFL. After spending 5 years with the Denver Broncos, Russ began his college coaching career at Ohio, where Knorr was head coach in 2001.

One would think that such an awe-inspiring collection of military might would be sure to make headlines, yet the American taxpayer never seems to hear about the fruits of their valuable investment. I know… Crazy, right? Especially when you consider how many Air Force football coaches spend their active duty time in public affairs when they aren’t coaching. But the Air Force Academy, unlike Annapolis and West Point, doesn’t release the service assignments of their graduating seniors. Why they would keep this information to themselves, I have no idea. But America should know when one of their service academies is producing this kind of excellence.

Any Air Force fan can tell you the obvious benefit to our nation’s security that comes from active duty football coaches. You see, the Air Force Academy is the most difficult of the service academies by a mile. It really isn’t even close. In order for cadets to have a chance to make it through the grueling 4-year pressure cooker that is the Air Force Academy experience, they need mentors. These mentors work best when they aren’t tainted with too much exposure to the, you know, Air Force. Their minds need to be sharpened, fresh with the memories of what it took to survive such an ordeal as found in Colorado Springs. That’s where these football coaches come in. Unencumbered with the fetters of actual operational experience, only they can deliver the kind of leadership that cadets need to make it through. Unconvinced? Navy’s APR score in the last NCAA report was 982. Even with their elite cadre of mentors, Air Force’s score was lower– 975. Imagine how low it would be without football coaches on active duty! The higher attrition clearly shows how much harder it is at Air Force! And just having a graduate assistant or two stick around for a few months while he waits for a spot at flight training (or another service school) doesn’t cut it. Unlike the Army and Navy, the Air Force needs officers whose military careers are dedicated to mentorship. They also need graduates who don’t serve a day on active duty, and instead go straight into the NFL. Because the NFL and minor league baseball, as we all know, prepares someone to lead cadets far better than operational Air Force experience.

Now that you know how crucial it is for Air Force grads to embark on a coaching career immediately upon graduating, you can understand my befuddlement when it comes to the lack of recognition that these warriors of the clipboard receive. But as any good Air Force football-trained leader will tell you, it isn’t enough to just complain. If you see a problem, point it out and offer a solution. So that’s what I’m going to do. The first step in getting our heroes recognized would be for the Air Force Academy to release the service selection information of its graduating football class. Shout it from the top of Pikes Peak! “We need mentors for our football team so we can produce more mentors for future football teams!” It’s hard to imagine a better use of service academy graduates than a self-sustaining pipeline of mentorship without any significant operational service.

The second step we can take is to create a piece of uniform insignia so that fellow airmen know when they are in the presence of the elite. Something should set these leaders apart. Why should pilots get wings while these highly trained officers go unrecognized? If I may be so bold, I have a suggestion for this badge of honor:

Nothing says “airpower through the intricacies of zone blocking” quite like a winged football. One look at this, and Hollywood will know that there’s a story to be told here. Imagine the possibilities… “You want me on that sideline. You need me on that sideline!” Finally, we’ll have an Air Force movie to compete with the cinematic masterpiece that is Iron Eagle.

It’s hard to believe, but there are actually people who don’t think that it’s appropriate for service academy graduates to spend their active duty careers as football coaches. How dare any of you think that way. For shame. Air Force fans have taught us a great lesson; the job that you do isn’t important. What matters is the clothes that you wear while you do it! Anything done in a uniform must be mission essential. If it wasn’t, then nobody would do it! Duh. And if it’s mission essential, who better than an academy grad to do the job? I mean come on, if you can’t trust the U.S. Air Force, an agency of the federal government, to make good use of your money– then who can you trust?

If only she was in an Air Force uniform.
Then it’d be as valuable as storming the beach at Normandy!

Now, I know that I rub some people the wrong way by placing these coaches on a pedestal. All service is valuable, you might be thinking. It isn’t appropriate to “rank” the service of various Air Force Academy graduates. Well, you’re wrong. The fact is that service gets ranked every single time someone’s record appears before a promotion board. And you and I both know that assignments as a football coach are a bullet train to General. All you have to do is compare the bios of the two active duty Captains on the Air Force staff right now. Here’s Charlton Warren’s:

Warren began his military career at the Academy in the admissions office as the Southeast U.S. admissions coordinator for the minority enrollment office from 1999-2000. He then went to Warner Robins AFB, Ga., from 2000-03 where he was the C-130 avionics program manager for the Air Logistics Center. While stationed there, Warren earned an MBA from Georgia College and State University. He was also recognized as the company grade officer of the quarter in 2002.

Before returning to the Academy in 2005, Warren was stationed at Eglin AFB, Fla., from 2003-05 as the MK-82 joint direct munitions program manger for the Air Armament Center. He also worked as the anti-spoof/anti-jam program manager while at Eglin. Warren was honored as part of the weapons program team of the quarter in 2003 and the direct attack group company grade officer of the quarter in 2004.

How on earth is a record as lackluster as this supposed to compete with fellow Captain Mike Thiessen, who worked in a personnel office, played minor league baseball, and taught algebra? I mean, if you were going to promote someone to Major, who would you pick? Face it, guys–service is “ranked” all the time. California League Player of the Week is a far bigger eye-opener than something like Officer of the Quarter no matter how many times you receive that award. Air Armament Center? Avionics program manager? Please. Give me some of that career-enhancing quadratic equation action instead.

But don’t feel sorry for Capt. Warren. Chances are that he will get that promotion. The sad reality is that the grueling life of a combat football coach takes its toll. Despite being on the fast track to promotion, career Air Force coaches shockingly don’t seem to stick around beyond their active duty obligation– well, those that actually have an obligation, anyway. The reason for this is that the Air Force does a terrible job taking care of these warriors. There is no career track established for Air Force football coaches. Think about it– there’s only one Air Force Academy. Once they’ve coached there, where are they supposed to go? And who has oversight responsibility for these coaches? Who mentors the mentors? The Air Force needs to establish an Office of Football Affairs. That way, football coaches who want to continue their life of valuable service have the means to do so.

As in-tune as I am with the plight of these champions of football warfare, even I have some questions. What manner of classroom training do cadets receive about this branch of service? Are they even aware that this is an option available to them? I mean, surely this path is open to more than just members of the football team. The Air Force wouldn’t limit career choices based on extracurricular activities, would they? That would be silly. Actually, since attending the Air Force Academy is such a backbreaking endeavor, why is it that only the football team receives this elite mentoring? Wouldn’t all cadets benefit from the guidance of a specialized mentor? In fact, the Air Force Academy should probably grow by another 1,000 or so cadets just to ensure that it graduates enough career mentors to meet its needs. For that matter, why is it that only select Air Force Academy graduates get to serve as football coaches? Why can’t ROTC graduates fulfill that role? Imagine the quality of coaching the American people would receive if we expanded the talent pool from which to draw football coaches! And are coaches on active duty eligible for individual augmentation assignments? I imagine not, since coaches are far more mission critical than other Air Force officers.

Hopefully these questions will be answered. And hopefully the Air Force Academy will highlight their football coaches so the American people can give them the accolades that they deserve. Because the longer that the practice of using a service academy to produce football coaches is swept under the rug, the more some people will think that it’s just a taxpayer-funded boondoggle designed to help recruit players like Brad Padayao who want nothing to do with actual military service. And we can’t have that, now can we?

Loose Change 2/15/08

On By MikeIn football, lacrosse, navy football, navy lacrosse, patriot leagueLeave a comment

Odds & ends you may have missed over the past week:

  • Ron Snyder wrote a great piece on Jordan DiNola.
  • Speaking of the lacrosse team’s defense, Inside Lacrosse says that Navy has the 4th best defense in the land. Why? Because they’re always good! Expert analysis! It won’t be enough, though, according to Lacrosse Magazine; they think that Army beats Navy this year.
  • Ron Snyder was busy this week, as he also previews the first Navy women’s lax team. Those of you excited to see them in action will have to wait an extra week, as the season opener against St. Francis was postponed. The team will begin their season at home next weekend against Longwood.
  • More women’s lax: the Patriot League released its preseason poll, and surprisingly our upstart Navy team isn’t picked to finish last. That dubious distinction belongs to Lafayette. How bad do you have to be to get picked behind a team that’s in its first year of existence? Try 1-15, which was the Leopards’ record last year. Don’t be surprised if the season plays out as the SIDs and coaches predicted, too. Cindy Timchal brings instant credibility to the Navy women’s lax program, and she can find a way to coach the team out of the cellar.
  • Logan West is a lacrosse recruit.
  • Some of you may not have known this, but a professional soccer team made its home at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium last year. Crystal Palace USA, a developmental squad for Crystal Palace FC of The Championship (England’s second division for you soccer noobs), played in Annapolis. You’d never have known it with their lack of marketing. Well, now the team has decided to actually market themselves a little, but they’re moving to UMBC.
  • Press Box has an article on the state of youth football in Maryland. It probably isn’t anything you’re interested in, but it does mention Ben Gabbard.
  • Mike Wahle, formerly of the class of ’99, was cut by the Carolina Panthers in a salary cap move. It didn’t take him much time to find a new home in Seattle.
  • Bill Wagner wrote about the Touchdown Club of Annapolis awards banquet, where Reggie Campbell received the Tony Rubino Memorial Silver Helmet Award.
  • More lacrosse: An interview with Lafayette head coach Terry Mangan.
  • The Sun has a good writeup on the new faceoff rules in college lax this year, including quotes from Richie Meade. And check out the video highlights of the VMI game.
  • And finally, there’s the proposed rule changes in college football. My opinions on these changes more or less echo those of EDSBS. In case you were wondering, here’s the current definition of a chop block:

Chop Block

ARTICLE 3. A chop block is:

a. An obviously delayed block at the thigh or below against an opponent
(except the runner) who is in contact with a teammate of the blocker, is
in the act of disengaging from the first blocker or has just disengaged
from the first blocker but is still confronting him. When in question, the
contact is at the thigh or below (A.R. 2-3-3-I-V).
b. A high-low, low-high or low-low combination block by two nonadjacent
linemen with or without a delay between contacts occurring in the
neutral zone.
c. A high-low, low-high or low-low combination block by any two
offensive players with or without a delay between contacts when the
initial contact clearly occurs beyond the neutral zone (i.e., all involved
players are beyond the neutral zone) (A.R. 2-3-3-III and IV).

Life on the Outside

On By MikeIn football7 Comments

If you’re reading this blog, chances are that you’re a college football fan– that, or your Google search has gone horribly, horribly wrong. “College football fan” means different things to different people, though. The typical college football fan cheers for a big BCS school, watches College Gameday every Saturday morning to see a preview of their team’s game, and can track the whims of the players that their school is recruiting on any number of websites. They can see the highlights of their games on Sportscenter, read about their team in just about any paper in the country, and look for where their school sits in the top 25. This is the mainstream; the fan that the national media serves.

But there is another group out there. These people might watch College Gameday, but only with a passing interest; they know that their school won’t get mentioned (unless Herbstreit brings them up just to call them a fraud). Some fans can read countless interviews with their teams’ recruits that break down minutiae you’d never imagine to care about (BREAKING NEWS: Terrelle Pryor ranks his favorite desserts at the dining halls of schools he’s visited!). Other less-privileged fans have to scour the internet just to find a newspaper clipping that might have a sentence or two about a local high schooler who committed to play for their school. This congregation of college football faithful doesn’t worry about the top 25, because their schools are rarely included. News coverage for their schools is limited to papers in the immediate metro area of the campus– before the internet, these die-hards heard nothing if they lived too far away. They are the great unwashed, the low rung on the caste ladder of college football fandom. I’m talking, of course, about fans of the non-BCS conferences.

We are as hardcore about our college football as anyone– maybe more so, considering how hard we have to work to get our news– but sometimes it’s hard to convince other people of that. You know how it is. At work, everyone stands around the ol’ water cooler & talks about the weekend’s big games. One group is talking about the Illinois-Ohio State game, while another group is in the corner talking about Auburn & Georgia. A third group is talking about the latest BCS rankings and how they think the top 5 should shape up. You’ll walk up to one of those groups and listen, and when the conversation appears to be dying down a bit you’ll chime in by saying, “man, that Navy-North Texas game was a real scorcher, wasn’t it? 74 to 62!” At that point, everyone feels a bit awkward as they stare at you like you just chose that moment at the company water cooler to come out of the closet. After 5 seconds or so, they pretend they didn’t hear you and resume their previous conversations, while you slink away, dejected. If it’s outside of the BCS, people don’t want to talk about it.

There’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily; living in Jacksonville, I don’t expect people around here to care about Navy any more than I care about Florida. The problem is that my attitude isn’t reciprocated. Around here, if you don’t care all that much about the SEC, then you aren’t even a college football fan. No, tell someone that you root for Navy and you’re met with the most clever of responses, such as, “You mean they have a team?” followed by a hearty guffaw. With my pride crushed by such witty and stinging rebukes, I often escape to my elaborate fantasy land– otherwise known as NCAA 08 on Xbox– to alleviate my anger by building Navy into a national leviathan that tramples teams like Florida every week on the way to 9 straight national championships. Of course, even my fantasies have their limitations as I play my way to glory in some half-assed generic gong show of a stadium. It usually takes a year or two for EA to get around to including Navy-Marine Corps Menorial Stadium whenever the game moves onto next-generation consoles, while BCS conference stadiums are beautifully rendered down to the slightest detail from the beginning. But that’s life as a Navy fan.

So why do we do it? Why do we go through the trouble of unearthing scraps of information when we could have a bounty handed to us? Why put up with the indignities of national anonymity when we could instead revel with the fans around us? Wouldn’t it be easier to just put loyalty aside, find some typical bandwagon reason to like some other school (“my uncle went to Virginia Tech!”) and hop onboard the Mainstream Express? Yeah, it’d be easier. Easy, but empty. We don’t want to root for someone else. Nobody likes a bandwagon fan anyway. We are already as loyal and rabid about our team and the game as any other fan. We just happen to be loyal to schools that aren’t as celebrated. Our boosters might not maintain a log on how hard our coach is working based on on how late the light stays on in his office each night, but that doesn’t make us lesser fans. It makes us well-adjusted.

But this isn’t a plea for pity. As trying as it can be sometimes, there are perks to being a fan of a lower-profile school. The ability to afford season tickets without selling your children into slavery is a plus. And you’d be mistaken if you assumed that the on-field product was inferior. The BCS schools have the advantage in money, facilities, and for the most part, talent. But there’s more to college football than that. College football is more than the lowest-common-denominator world of ESPN, sports talk radio, and other hype outlets. Lost in the glamour of polls, highlights, and televised commitment announcements is the game itself.

We all love football, but we love it for different reasons. “College football” consists of so many different elements. We love the traditions, the rivalries, and the amazing athletes. Yet while each of these items are undeniably critical to the college football experience, they are only supplemental to the game. You know– the game. The coach at the chalkboard, Xs & Os kind of stuff. This is the cerebral component of college football, with coaches matching wits against each other in preparation for and during each game. It’s this clash of ideas that brings about the evolution of the sport, and it’s here that we find the true strength of non-BCS football. For those who enjoy creativity in strategy and scheme, this is the best show in town.

There’s a saying in football that gets tossed around a lot, almost to the point of cliché: “It ain’t about the Xs & Os, it’s about the Jimmies & Joes.” The expression makes the point that it’s talent rather than strategy that ultimately makes for a good football team. There’s truth in that. But for the coach outside of a BCS conference, it’s a truth he must disregard. In most cases, the talent won’t be going to his school. The talent is going to schools with glamour, big recruiting budgets, and posh facilities. But non-BCS coaches are under all the same pressure to win as their BCS counterparts. A lack of talent can’t be used as an excuse for losing. So what does the coach do? He hits the drawing board, and in doing so he begins the next cycle of football evolution.

The cycle goes something like this: faced with the pressure to win against more talented competition, a coach will devise a scheme that accentuates his team’s strengths while masking their weaknesses. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention. At first, this new scheme is dismissed as a “gimmick” by media outlets and fans. But the more that team is winning, the more credible that scheme is in the eyes of the mainstream. Eventually, someone at a BCS school gets the idea that if a scheme works that well with lesser talent, it will be unstoppable with BCS talent. So the innovative coach is hired at a BCS school, where he installs his scheme and keeps on winning. Success breeds imitation, and other coaches start to incorporate bits of that scheme into their own systems. Eventually, what was once labeled a gimmick becomes part of the mainstream, and soon the non-BCS coaches are devising something else to overcome this new standard. The non-BCS coach subscribes to a slightly different bit of football wisdom: “Good football teams either do something different or they do it better.” Doing it better isn’t really possible without the best talent. That leaves doing things differently.

And when it comes to doing things differently, no place is better than the non-BCS conferences. This is the proving ground of football ideas. This is where Urban Meyer unleashed his offense before taking it to the SEC. This is where Paul Johnson did the impossible at Navy before taking his spread option to Georgia Tech. This is where Jim Grobe devised the schemes that would take Wake Forest to places it could never have imagined. This is where a school might be willing to take a chance on a high school legend like Art Briles at Houston or Todd Dodge at North Texas. This is the realm of Chris Ault’s pistol and Todd Graham’s Tulsa offense that leaves defenses cross-eyed. This is the last bastion of innovations past, with June Jones running the run & shoot to perfection and Ken Hatfield having clinged to the wishbone at Rice years after both were abandoned by everyone else. Innovation isn’t limited to the offensive side of the ball either, with coaches like Rocky Long perfecting his 3-3-5 scheme at New Mexico. The variety of schemes and ideas are what make the game of football interesting, and the laboratories for these ideas are the non-BCS conferences.

So why don’t more BCS schools innovate? Why don’t they take more chances? Sometimes they do, especially at schools that have traditionally struggled (Kentucky and Hal Mumme’s Air Raid, Duke with Spurrier’s fun & gun). But for the most part, BCS schools don’t want to innovate. It’s too risky. With the money at stake from boosters, TV, and ticket sales, there is tremendous pressure to win right away. That means hiring proven winners, not visionaries. Faith is something that doesn’t have a place in the BCS hiring process; they don’t want to believe that a coach can win games; they want to know that this coach will win games. And they usually have the money to hire someone who fits the bill.

That leaves the non-BCS schools to carry the flag of ingenuity. And that makes non-BCS football the thinking man’s game. Sure, nobody at the water cooler will care, but they aren’t football fans as much as they are fans of everything that surrounds it. Maybe you don’t have anyone to talk to, but hey– that’s life on the cutting edge. When we watch our games on Saturday, we’re watching the future of the sport.

No Ring For Kyle

On By MikeIn football, Kyle Eckel10 Comments

I wrote a few months ago after having given up on the Norv Turner-led Chargers that the only wish I had for this NFL season was for Kyle Eckel to get a Super Bowl ring. I certainly felt like an idiot after the Chargers advanced to the AFC Championship Game to face Kyle’s Patriots (I’m sorry, Norv!). While I was disappointed in the outcome of that game, I still felt good knowing that Kyle would get to go to the big one. Can you imagine? Kyle went from an 0-10 Navy team his plebe year to an 18-0 Super Bowl-bound juggernaut now. Talk about two different ends of the spectrum. And #38 was all over TV last night too, taking the field on special teams. It was great to see. Unfortunately, not only did Rodney Harrison not separate Eli Manning’s head from his neck, but the Patriots lost. Kyle didn’t get his ring. Fortunately, after his recent contract extension, we know he’ll get another shot next year.

On a tangential subject, watching the Giants win the Super Bowl made me glad that we don’t have a playoff for I-A football. How pointless is the regular season when a 10-6 division runner-up is crowned your champion? Not to take anything away from the Giants– they did what the NFL says they had to do. I’m just glad that college football is more do-or-die each week. There’s nothing like it.

Seeing Stars

On By MikeIn football, recruiting5 Comments

Emmitt Smith isn’t big or fast and he can’t get around the corner. I know all the folks in Pensacola will be screaming and all the Florida fans will be writing me nasty letters, but Emmitt Smith is not a franchise player. He’s a lugger, not a runner. The sportswriters blew him out of proportion. When he falls flat on his face at Florida, remember where you heard it first. 

The above words of wisdom were brought to you by long-time recruiting analyst Max Emfinger back in 1987. I bring them up because it’s that time of year again. Signing day is fast approaching, and more and more college football fans are wired to their favorite recruiting service, obsessing over the ratings that “experts” like Emfinger give their school’s recruits and each team’s recruiting class. It’s modern-day alchemy; a pseudo-science that has turned into a thriving, multi-million dollar industry. With that kind of money changing hands, you’d think that people would dig a little deeper into how these recruit ratings are developed. But nobody seems to care, or at least care enough to raise their voice over the hype, anyway. But in my isolated internet kingdom/suicide hotline, I’ll try to convince you not to jump off of that bridge after some Scout 4-star linebacker commits to another school.

A lot of people put a lot of stock into recruiting rankings. Recruiting aficionados believe that recruiting rankings matter because, for the most part, the teams at the top of them are winning games. But does correllation imply causation? The San Diego Union-Tribune put together an analysis last year of teams and their recruiting rankings, and put their results into a lovely PDF for us all to admire: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070205/images/bluechip.pdf

Of the top ten recruiting classes in the years leading up to 2006, 6 finished outside of the top 10 in the AP poll. Two teams, Miami and Florida State, missed the top 25 altogether. You can read the paper’s conclusions here.

Even if you disagree with the U-T’s conclusions, think about what you’re really saying here. The recruiting rankings correctly predicted that USC, Michigan, Florida, LSU, etc. would be talented.

Wow. Stop the presses. Is it really much of an accomplishment on Rivals’ part to correctly predict that USC, Michigan, Florida, and LSU would be good? Who couldn’t predict that, even without these rankings? These teams are traditional powerhouses. It’s an anomaly when they aren’t the dominant powers in college football. So we’re left with a chicken & egg situation. Are teams good because their recruiting rankings are high, or are their recruiting rankings high because they are traditionally good teams? To answer that, one must look at how each individual player is rated.

The assumption amongst recruiting junkies is that each recruiting service’s team of about 20 experts analyzes each player’s ability and rates them accordingly. That’s pretty hard to believe. Most coaching staffs have a hard enough time evaluating the talent they’re targeting just for their school. The idea that this small team of “experts” can break down the relative ability of the thousands of recruits listed in their database, then rank them accordingly, is just slightly ridiculous. They obviously haven’t seen all of these players in person, and several of these players don’t have any video in their profiles. So how on earth can all these recruits be ranked according to ability? The answer is that they aren’t. Oh, they’re ranked, obviously… but it isn’t according to ability. It’s according to popularity.

It’s a subtle but important distinction. Ratings are not assigned by talent. Ratings are assigned based on which schools are recruiting a particular player. For example, a player with offers from USC, Notre Dame, and Ohio State will be rated higher than players with offers from Akron, North Texas, and Ball State. The clearest proof of this is that it’s fairly common to see a player’s rating change. For Navy fans who follow the recruiting scene, it’s almost an annual joke to see the way a player’s rating changes when he commits to the Naval Academy. A lot of the one-star players magically become two-star, and sometimes three-stars become two-stars, too. The best example of the latter is Bayard Roberts, the 3-star New Mexico LB/DE who became a 2-star after he committed to Navy instead of UTEP. Of course, most recruitniks scoff at Navy football as some insignificant outpost on the I-A recruiting scene. Fortunately, Lisa Horne provided us with a more high-profile example here. But if you follow recruiting, you don’t really need examples. You see ratings change all the time.

Great, but so what? Football coaches are the real experts, right? And if all these guys are recruiting a kid, then shouldn’t that be a good indication of how talented he is? Well, there are a few problems with that assumption.

First, it assumes that the recruiting analysts are actually getting their information from college coaches. But they can’t; NCAA rules prohibit coaches from talking about a recruit until he has either enrolled or signed a Letter of Intent. So where does the information come from? In a lot of cases, it comes from the player himself. Take the (in)famous example of Travis Tolbert. A little bit of self-promotion on a few internet sites, and things start to snowball. Eventually, other sites won’t want to miss the boat, and they’ll start hyping him too. Next thing you know, he’s making Top 100 lists. It all came crashing down once people actually bothered to talk to Tolbert’s coach. But there’s another problem; some coaches will be frank about their players’ ability. Others really want to see their kids get scholarships and will actively promote them. It’s no guarantee that you’ll get a straight answer from coaches, either. Of course, Tolbert’s example is clearly an extreme case. But you don’t have to take things all the way to the extreme to work the system.

Another fundamental flaw in recruit ratings is that they don’t take into account the wide variety in scheme that you find in college football. Let’s look at Sean Renfree. Renfree, listed as a 4-star quarterback by Scout.com, had committed to Georgia Tech before Chan Gailey was fired. Once Paul Johnson was hired, it was obvious to Renfree that he’d be a fish out of water in the spread option, so he de-committed. PJ then went out and got a commitment from a 3-star quarterback named Jaybo Shaw, whom he had recruited while still at Navy. According to Scout’s rating system, that’s a downgrade. But Shaw was a 1,000-yard rusher in high school. Georgia Tech will clearly be better served with him under center in their new offense. Renfree might be all-world to Scout, but to Paul Johnson he’s useless. It isn’t just quarterbacks, either. Different offensive systems place different priorities on certain skill sets, as do defenses– there is a difference between the ideal 3-4 and 4-3 player. But to recruiting services, one size fits all.

A recent column by Tim Stevens in the Raleigh News & Observer found that the average Scout.com rating of the All-ACC first-team was 2.77 stars. Along those lines, Andrew Carter of the Orlando Sentinel asks how on earth some of Florida State’s players could have been so overrated relative to other players within the ACC. After reading these, I decided to take a look at this year’s AP All-America team and the Rivals ratings of those players. Four first-team All-Americans were rated as 5-stars: Tim Tebow, Darren McFadden, Illinois guard Martin O’Donnell, and Penn State linebacker Dan Connor. There were seven who had a 2-star rating. Seven! It’s one thing to say that some fluctuation is inevitable and that maybe a 2-star guy should have been a 3-star. But to whiff on that many future first-team All-Americans? Come on. And I’m sure that the recruiting rankings of the teams that brought these players in would have received a boost if Rivals knew that the group included All-American-caliber talent.

Here’s another thought: if recruiting rankings were all that some people claimed they were, then there shouldn’t be any surprises in college football. Where was Miami’s slide in the recruiting rankings prior to this season? How about Florida State? Why did Nebraska actually regress under Bill Callahan despite the almost universal applause for his improved recruiting by Nebraska fans? Where were the steady recruiting ranking increases of Missouri and Kansas leading up to this season? Or Boston College and Wake Forest? Or Kentucky? Why haven’t North Carolina and Mississippi State ever lived up to the lofty rankings they’ve received over the years? The reason is that recruiting rankings are reactionary. If we follow the recruiting rankings, we should see things coming. Maybe not everything… But it’s disingenuous to ignore all this while hailing recruiting rankings for predicting which teams were going to be good. Every single person reading this blog could probably make correct predictions at the same rate as Rivals and Scout without having any idea of what players each team has recruited.

I’m not saying that all 5-star players are overrated and all 2-star players are underrated. I’m just saying that you need to understand what’s really being evaluated with these star ratings– it isn’t talent. But don’t take my word for it. Jamie Newberg, one of Scout’s top recruiting analysts, said this about last year’s Georgia recruiting class:

“From a rankings perspective, maybe it’s a little below the bar Mark Richt has set. But recruiting rankings don’t mean crap.”

Couldn’t have set it better myself.

Recruiting sites serve a purpose. Hell, I read them. It’s fun to get a look at the Mids of the future. These sites are a great source of information. Evaluation? Not so much.

Loose Change 1/25/08

On By MikeIn air farce, army, football, lacrosse, navy football, navy lacrosse, navy sports, patriot league, Paul Johnson6 Comments

Odds & ends you may have missed over the past week:

Stan Brock Sends The Congressional Bat Signal

On By MikeIn army, football16 Comments

Army coach Stan Brock had a Q&A recently with Sal Interdonato of the Times Herald-Record. Navy fans might be drawn to the last line where the coach proclaims that he is “very, very close” to winning the CIC Trophy. If he says so. I was more interested in this snippet:

Is there an area you’ve tried to focus your recruiting efforts on?

“I’ve tried to build this program through our prep school. So every year, we recruit a full team to our prep school. So we will have 50 kids down there and we will have a limited amount of kids come in directly. We’re not like USC, the big schools, who have a couple of needs. We really try to build depth. We have very little depth. So, you are always trying to get the best players you can get at all the positions.”

Fifty kids at the prep school? Really? How is this possible? This sounds remarkably similar to Air Force’s modus operandi in the 80s and 90s that almost got all three service academy prep schools shut down once Congress got wind of it. It might have been within the letter of the law at the time, but those bastards on Capitol Hill decided that a taxpayer-funded redshirt isn’t what the prep schools were designed for. Now I’m not even entirely sure that it’s still within the letter of the law, and I really don’t want to find out on 60 Minutes one day. I sure hope the Woops are treading lightly on this one.

I don’t know if Navy ever has a full team of recruited players at NAPS. We’ve always had a lot of walk-on types on the prep school team as long as I can remember– someone correct me if I’m wrong here. Navy players are sent to NAPS only if they need to strengthen their academics before enrolling at the Naval Academy. Coaches don’t even like sending kids to the prep school because there’s no obligation on their part to come to Annapolis afterwards; coaches from other schools can still recruit NAPSters.

Anyway, this looks like something to keep an eye on.

The State of Service Academy Football: Navy

On By MikeIn football, Ken Niumatalolo, navy football3 Comments

If there is a theme to this “State of Service Academy Football” series this year, it’s change.

Army dealt with a head coaching change last season, and a new offense– whatever it may be– is on the horizon for 2008.

Air Force had to replace a legend in 2007, and will head into spring practice with one of the youngest teams in school history.

And then there’s Navy. With five head coaching switches in the last 20 years, change isn’t exactly unusual at the Naval Academy. What’s unusual this time around are the circumstances; for the first time since George Welsh left for Virginia, a Navy coach moved on because someone else actually wanted him. And with six years of accomplishment at a school where accomplishing anything is extraordinarily difficult, it’s no surprise that someone finally bit the option bullet and went after Paul Johnson.

Biting that bullet probably became a whole lot easier after this season too, not that Johnson’s record as a head coach shouldn’t have been enough to get the attention of college football’s big names. With Navy’s defense taking an inexplicable nose dive, it was up to Johnson’s offense to come up big if Navy was to have any chance of winning. And great googly moogly did they ever. Navy became the first I-A team in history to lead the nation in rushing for three consecutive years. They were 22nd in total offense as well, and finished in the top 10 in scoring offense– all with players that most I-A schools wouldn’t even sniff at. Navy walked away with wins at Pitt and at Notre Dame, two teams that even in their worst years would never trade the talent on their roster for that of Navy’s. The Mids won their 5th straight Commander-In-Chief’s Trophy, went to their 5th straight bowl game, and was the victor in the highest-scoring game in I-A history. A few ADs finally figured it out. The 5 teams ranked directly behind (!) Navy in scoring offense in 2007 were LSU, Oregon, Arkansas, Texas, and Kentucky. Those are the kinds of names with which schools like Georgia Tech would like to be mentioned; and if Paul Johnson could do it at Navy, it’s difficult to comprehend the kind of carnage he’ll leave in his wake with access to ACC talent.

Difficult to comprehend, but imminent nevertheless as Johnson left for Georgia Tech after a week of barnstorming between Annapolis, Dallas, and Atlanta. Now that the inevitable has happened (I’m still amazed that it actually took 6 years), Navy is looking to regroup under new head coach Ken Niumatalolo.

The first question on every Navy fan’s mind is, “What’s going to change?” Niumat’s answer comes straight from the “ain’t broke and not gonna fix it” department. In a podcast with CSTV’s Greg Amsinger, Coach Niumat said that some things might evolve as it’s up to him to handle various situations in his own way over time, but he isn’t looking to do anything differently right off the bat. Of course, that’s not entirely true. The most obvious departure from Paul Johnson’s formula is that Niumatalolo won’t act as his own offensive coordinator. That honor falls to Ivin Jasper, the quarterbacks coach under Johnson who along with Niumatalolo was one of Johnson’s top two offensive assistants; and it’s in playcalling that we find the most immediate change under Niumatalolo.

While I was in San Diego for the Poinsettia Bowl, someone talked to me about what I thought was a very interesting point. How many games over the last 6 years did Navy win almost entirely because of Paul Johnson’s playcalling? Just look back at 2007, with plays like the two QB draws at the end of the Duke game, or bringing in the wide receivers tight to the formation against Notre Dame, or calling plays we’ve never seen before in the Northern Illinois game; Paul Johnson always seemed to know exactly what adjustments to make. That, and he had an incredible memory. Ask Coach Johnson why he made a particular adjustment in a game, and he would probably say something along the lines of, “Well, Middle Tennessee tried the same thing against us on defense back at Southern in ’86 and I didn’t really have an answer for it. But I saw it again when we played Middle Tennessee in ’93 and I was at Hawaii, and we were ready. I just did the same thing here.” Johnson’s memory for detail made him a sort of football savant. He knew what to do because in the 20+ years that he has been running this offense, he has seen every possible way a defense can line up against it.

But there’s the rub. Johnson has seen defenses line up against this offense for two decades. Ivin Jasper and Ken Niumatalolo have not. The two of them are as well-versed in the fundamentals of Paul Johnson’s offense as anyone other than maybe Mike Sewak, but do they have the same mastery of adjusting on the fly? Maybe, maybe not. Both have had the chance to run offenses on their own before; Niumatalolo replaced Johnson as Navy’s offensive coordinator in ’97, and Jasper ran the offenses at both NAPS and Indiana State. There’s no doubt that the two of them have picked up on some things, but 20 years of experience is hard to replace. It isn’t unreasonable to assume that there will be a learning curve as Niumat and Jasper take charge. That doesn’t have to mean disaster, of course; Navy was 7-4 in 1997, and Georgia Southern won two national championships in PJ’s first two years as offensive coordinator.

Other than the delegation of playcalling duties, the other obvious change is that there are four new assistant coaches on the staff and some reassignments of coaches who are returning. Jasper is not only the offensive coordinator, but he will retain his duties as the quarterbacks coach and coach the fullbacks as well. Jasper coached both positions at Georgia Southern and in his previous stint at Navy, so the move is a natural one. Chris Culton moves from fullbacks to the offensive line, a position he coached for Tim Stowers at Rhode Island. Niumatalolo will continue using two offensive line coaches, and Culton will be joined by another former Rhode Island offensive line coach, Ashley Ingram. Ingram spent last season as Bucknell’s offensive coordinator. Another I-AA offensive coordinator also joined Niumatalolo’s staff as Joe DuPaix left Cal Poly to coach the Navy slotbacks. Danny O’Rourke moves from defense to offense, replacing Brian Bohannon as the wide receivers coach. On the defensive side of the ball, Steve Johns fills the void left by O’Rourke at inside linebackers. Tony Grantham returns to Annapolis to join Keith Jones in coaching the outside linebackers. Justin Davis is now assisting with the defensive line.

DuPaix and Johns appear on the surface to be great hires. DuPaix’s offense led all of I-AA last year in total yardage, and he was considered to be a front-runner for the head coaching job at his alma mater, Southern Utah. But DuPaix’s biggest shoes to fill might not be in coaching players, but recruiting them. Bill Wagner makes the excellent point that DuPaix is taking over Todd Spencer’s recruiting area in Texas. Spencer had been recruiting Texas since Paul Johnson’s first stint in Annapolis and had built several contacts over those 11 years. Not coincidentally, the Navy roster is loaded with Texans every year. It will be up to DuPaix to make sure that things stay that way.

For Johns, recruiting is apparently right in his wheelhouse. Coach Niumatalolo was responsible for west coast recruiting under Johnson; now that he’s taken over as head coach, that area of responsibility will fall to Johns. Johns came to Navy from Grossmont Junior College, a national JUCO powerhouse. According to Wagner, Niumat feels that Johns’ time there, coupled with his six years as UNLV’s recruiting coordinator, has helped him build relationships with area high school coaches. While Navy hasn’t packed its roster with west coast players, they have had their share of impact players from the region– guys like Kaipo, John Chan, and Marco Nelson. It’s a valuable pipeline.

On the player side, the biggest losses are on the offensive line and Reggie Campbell. The core group of Kaipo, Eric Kettani, and Shun White are as good a returning group as the Mids have had for a while, but their performance in 2008 will depend on how well Navy can replace one of the best offensive lines ever to play in Annapolis. Anthony Gaskins returns after starting all year at guard, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him move to center in the spring. It could be one of many position changes as the coaches try to find the right mix of players up front. On defense, just about everyone returns. Irv Spencer won’t, obviously, but Clint Sovie will after missing most of 2007. Jeff Deliz will too. How effective Sovie and Deliz will be after their injuries is a big question mark. The defense as a whole played its best games at the end of the year, so it’s easy to be optimistic about how they’ll do next year. Maybe too easy.

The biggest obstacle facing Navy next year might be their schedule. With trips to Ball State, Duke, and Wake Forest, and a home game against Rutgers squeezed in the middle, it isn’t hard to imagine Navy being 1-4 going into the Air Force game. And even that game is on the road, followed up with home dates against a more mature Pitt team than last year and an SMU team that will now be coached by June Jones. All subject to change, of course… But as it stands right now, that’s no cakewalk. It’s possible that the team could be better next year but still end up with a worse record. Keep that in mind when you set your expectations. Navy should still win the Commander-In-Chief’s Trophy again next year assuming that everything keeps humming along under Niumatalolo the way they did under Johnson. But it’s reasonable to expect some growing pains.

The State of Service Academy Football: Air Force

On By MikeIn air farce, football4 Comments

The Air Force Academy completed 50 years of major college football in 2006, having played their first NCAA season in 1957. For nearly half of those 50 years, Fisher DeBerry was their head football coach. Think about that for a second; DeBerry was Air Force football. He was the face of the school, the answer to any word association quiz when told “Air Force Academy.” Any tradition associated with the relatively young football program probably stems from some point during DeBerry’s tenure. At Air Force, he was a legend in his own time.

But even legends have their limits. The Air Force Academy as a whole has faced several allegations of religious intolerance in recent years, and DeBerry was caught up in the middle of it. In 2004, he was ordered to remove a banner that he had hung in the football team’s locker room which read in part, “I am a Christian first and last… I am a member of Team Jesus Christ.” DeBerry received “sensitivity training” as a result. A year later he was officially reprimanded for remarks he made following a loss to TCU in which he essentially blamed it on his team’s lack of black players:

It’s very obvious to me the other day that the other team had a lot more Afro-American players than we did, and they ran a lot faster than we did. It just seems to be that way, that Afro-American kids can run very, very well. That doesn’t mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can’t run, but it’s very obvious to me they run extremely well.

Their defense had 11 Afro-American kids on their team, and they were a very, very good defensive football team.

Proselytizing and reinforcement of stereotypes aside, DeBerry probably would have survived all of this if he was still winning. Air Force was 5-0 and ranked 25th in the Coaches’ Poll coming into their game at Navy in 2003. The Mids won that game, 28-25. It was a program-altering event for Air Force, who went on to lose 4 of their last 6 games to finish at 7-5– Fisher’s last winning season. After that loss to Navy, Air Force was 15-25 until DeBerry either retired or was forced out following the 2006 season.

I say “retired or forced out” because the story differs depending on who’s doing the talking. Officially, DeBerry retired. But according to rumor, he chose to quit rather than be forced to fire any of his assistants. One way or another, though, he was gone. Air Force athletic director Hans Mueh was then left with the unenviable task of replacing an institution. Fortunately for him, Air Force had essentially been grooming several potential successors over the years, as some Air Force graduates were allowed to begin coaching careers while on active duty. One of those graduates was Houston Texans offensive coordinator Troy Calhoun.

Calhoun played quarterback for Air Force and graduated in 1989. He spent his first two seasons after graduation as a GA on Fisher DeBerry’s staff. Calhoun returned to the Air Force Academy in 1993 and took over the role of recruiting coordinator as well as coaching the JV team’s offense. When fellow Air Force assistant Jim Grobe was named head coach at the University of Ohio in 1995, he brought Calhoun with him to be the quarterbacks coach. Calhoun added the title of offensive coordinator two years later, and had the same role after following Grobe to Wake Forest in 2001. In 2003, Calhoun started his NFL career with the Denver Broncos. Then, in December 2006, he accepted Mueh’s offer to replace Fisher DeBerry as head coach at Air Force.

The first question that everyone asked of Calhoun is what he planned to do with the Falcons’ offense. Ken Hatfield had installed the wishbone in Colorado Springs when he took over the Air Force job in 1979, and some form of the wishbone/ flexbone/ broken bone/ fishbone (whatever you want to call it) option offense had been in place ever since. Calhoun played in that same offense, but had moved away from it under Grobe and in his NFL career. Many (if not most) service academy fans believe that to win at a service academy you need to run an option-based offense, so it raised a few eyebrows when Calhoun’s comments after being hired appeared to indicate a shift away from that. Instead, Calhoun wanted more of a run-pass balance, and a running game that would have a feature back averaging about 20 carries a game:

I think you still have to run some option. It’s tough to defend, but we have to find ways to get more predetermined carries. You can find the guy who is a pretty darn good player and start to feed that guy the ball 20 to 22 times a game. And a good one only gets better. He starts to get into a little bit of a rhythm, feeling a knack for a cut or where a hole might start to open.

Then, ultimately on offense, you have to be balanced. Defenses are bigger, they move much better and because of that, they are going to clog up some spaces if you don’t make them work all 53-plus yards widthwise and go ahead and push the ceiling a little bit down the field. We’re going to be a balanced offense.

Armed with this new philosophy, Air Force quickly jumped to a 3-0 start at the beginning of the season. That 3-0 record, however, was more in spite of this new offense than because of it. The Falcons got a little lucky in their first few games. They played Utah the week after the Utes lost both quarterback Brian Johnson and running back Matt Asiata in their season opener at Oregon State, and still needed a goal-line stand at the end of the game to win. TCU made some baffling coaching blunders in the 4th quarter at Air Force after dominating through most of the game. And South Carolina State just stinks. Not surprisingly, the luck didn’t last. Air Force followed up their 3-0 start with double-digit losses to BYU and Navy.

To Troy Calhoun’s credit, he adjusted. While Air Force’s defense had been playing well all season, the offense wasn’t getting it done. Sometimes they just weren’t productive, while other times they gained a few yards but made critical mistakes in execution with turnovers and penalties. Basically, Calhoun had bitten off more than his offense could chew. Shaun Carney wasn’t quite the passer he was hyped up to be, he didn’t have anyone to really throw to, and the offensive line just wasn’t built for pass protection. Rather than insisting on the whole square peg in a round hole strategy, however, Troy Calhoun went back to doing what Air Force did best– running the football.

Calhoun’s rededication to the running game paid off. Air Force won 6 of their last 7 regular-season games by an average of nearly 20 points. They probably should have won the one game they lost, too, committing 5 turnovers to fall 34-31 at New Mexico. Going into the Navy game, Air Force was averaging 223 rushing yards per game, 11th in the country. By the end of the year, they were 2nd in the country with 299 yards per game. Calhoun’s revamped offense earned him Mountain West Coach of the Year honors, put Chad Hall in position to be named Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year, and gained the team a berth in the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth (a 42-36 loss to Cal). They might have been lucky at the beginning of the year, but by the end of the year luck had nothing to do with it. With a new approach on offense and the best of the three service academy defenses, Air Force was playing good football.

At 9-4, Air Force had a better season than just about anyone could have predicted. The challenge now will be to maintain that success, and it doesn’t look promising in the short term. Of their 474 yards of offense they racked up against Navy, 430 were gained by seniors. The heart of the Air Force defense was their linebackers and secondary, and 6 of 8 starters are graduating from those units as well. High turnover is nothing new at service academies, as players usually have to be developed over 4 years and rarely make an impact as a freshman or a sophomore. But losing this particular class is more critical than usual. When Paul Johnson used to talk to the Foundation, he was very frank about how he was doing in recruiting against Air Force. In his first year, he didn’t win a single head-to-head recruiting battle with them. This group of graduating Air Force seniors are the last remnants of that recruiting class. Johnson won more and more recruits from Air Force as the years went on, eventually dominating them the way they used to dominate Navy. That means that Navy looks to be more talented relative to Air Force with each passing year until Calhoun has a chance for his own recruiting to take hold. Once that happens, it’s doubtful that either team could expect to rule head-to-head recruiting like they used to; but things will get worse for the Falcons before they get better.

Calhoun and Hans Mueh have more or less admitted that the immediate future for Air Force isn’t terribly bright. Before hiring Calhoun, Mueh warned him that he would have “thin senior classes for the 2008 and 2009 seasons.” Calhoun himself said that he expects it to be three years before he has the juniors and seniors that he wants, and that the next two Air Force teams might be two of the youngest in school history. Calhoun also said that he expects to use two quarterbacks next year, with Shea Smith splitting time with a yet-to-be-named player who is likely to become the quarterback of the future. It’s tough for young teams to win. For young service academy teams, with their already undersized and less-hearalded players taking on talented teams with redshirted, 22-year old men… Well, nothing’s impossible I suppose, but some things come pretty damn close.

Without having the kind of talent that Troy Calhoun needs to run the offense he originally envisioned, don’t expect Air Force to change much schematically next year. If there is a ray of hope for the Falcons, it’s in the trenches. Three of the five offensive linemen who started against California will return next season. Air Force won’t have the big-play scoring threat of Chad Hall next year, but they might be able to control the line of scrimmage well enough to put together a few long, clock-eating drives that will help the defense. I doubt it will be enough to get to 9-4, though.

Troy Calhoun’s first year replacing his old coach was a success. A repeat performance might take a little more time.

The State of Service Academy Football: Army

On By MikeIn army, football14 Comments

Well, we’ve reached the end of another college football season, my first as a blogger. And what a season to start blogging about Navy football. We had a new supe, some crazy games, wins over Pitt and Notre Dame, the departure of Paul Johnson, the promotion of Ken Niumatalolo, another CIC Trophy, and a trip to San Diego. Lucky me, I guess; there was never a shortage of stuff to write about. It’s probably going to be a challenge to find the same kind of interesting topics for a while, not that anyone’s confusing this blog with Pulitzer material to begin with. But it has been fun so far. Thanks to those of you who have found it worth reading. There will still be plenty of football items to write about for the next few months, with new coaches joining the staff, recruiting, and spring practice on the way. But before all of that, I thought I’d wrap up the 2007 season with a sort of “state of the union” series. Navy isn’t in a conference, obviously, but their relationship with the other service academies comes pretty close to those of conference members. Because of that, I thought it would be good to look back on each team’s season, take an early glance at next year, and evaluate how well Navy will stack up with the two teams they measure themselves against the most. We’ll start with Army.

I think there’s a point in time when you feel like it’s your time to retire, and I think I’ve reached that time. I think there is an issue of having a certain degree of energy, which I feel is important for anyone leading a college football program. I feel that I was lacking in that area as well. I don’t feel that it would be fair to our administration, our staff or our players, to give less than the full capacity the job requires.

Those were Bobby Ross’ words nearly a year ago as he stepped down as Army’s head football coach. There had been rumors throughout the 2006 season that Ross would retire. As the weeks following the season finale against Navy rolled by without an announcement, though, it appeared likely that the veteran coach would return for a fourth season at the helm of the Black Knights. Speculation ended when Ross retired suddenly on January 29.

The timing of Ross’ decision put Army AD Kevin Anderson in a bind. By that time, most of the hiring and firing in the annual coaching carousel had already taken place. Coaches weren’t looking to move into new jobs; they were looking to settle into the jobs they were just hired for and begin preparations for the next season. Not only that, but it was the home stretch of recruiting season with coaches making their final pitches before signing day. Had Ross made his decision sooner, perhaps Anderson would have looked elsewhere to find his new head coach. But given the circumstances, it wasn’t surprising that he would turn to a coach within the program. Anderson tapped offensive line coach Stan Brock to fill Bobby Ross’ shoes.

Brock’s first act as head coach was to fire offensive coordinator Kevin Ross and hire his own man, Tim Walsh. Walsh was the head coach at Portland State and led the Vikings to a 90-68 record over 14 seasons. Brock said of Walsh at the time,

Tim has the ability and the knowledge to spread things out and open it up a bit on offense. Our offense will still basically be a pro-set, and it will be a 50-50 run-to-pass ratio. But we will also have the ability to see different things from different angles. There will be some new elements, and we’ll also polish some of the things that we’ve worked on here in the past.

Despite the talk of new elements and “different angles,” Army’s offense didn’t look very different from what we saw out of the Black Knights last year. Maybe it was too hard to install a new offense when Walsh was hired so close to the beginning of spring practice. That’s what Anderson told GoMids.com’s David Ausiello in November:

We had thirty days, putting together a coaching staff, going into spring ball.  Instead of having everybody – all the coaches and all the players learn a new system we decided to have Coach Walsh run the system that was already in place.

Whatever the reason was for not changing, Army suffered for it. For the second straight year, Army started the season 3-3 on the shoulders of a very good service academy defense. And for the second straight year again, Army went 0-6 over the second half of their season to finish at 3-9. The defense couldn’t maintain their first-half performance after spending so much time on the field, thanks to an offense that ranked 116th in total offense, 115th in scoring offense, 105th in turnovers lost, and 118th in 3rd down conversion percentage.

It should be no surprise, then, that the focus of Army’s offseason has been change on offense. Anderson told Ausiello in that same interview about the nature of the much-publicized “retreat” that Army’s coaches would be taking after the season:

I can tell you that at the end of the year, the Superintendent, the head football coach and myself will sit down and we’re gonna talk and scrutinize this past season and then the staff is gonna go off and we’re going to devise – offensively and defensively – schemes that will best suit our talent level and put us in the best position to win.

Apparently, the rumor that this meeting has already taken place is untrue. It had been reported on the Army Rivals.com site that a decision had been made to transition to a spread option offense, but according to Stan Brock no decision will be made until after the recruiting season. That’s a rather curious announcement on Brock’s part considering the reason that Anderson gave for not moving to a new offense last year. Army won’t have any more time before spring practice to install a new offense now than they did back then, with recruiting lasting into February. This is either bad news for Army fans or evidence that their coach and AD were blowing smoke when they talked about how much time they needed.

In the end, does it matter what the result of this meeting will be? There seems to be a belief at West Point that the only differences between their football program and Navy’s are scheduling and the right offensive scheme; the talent, in their estimation, is about the same. Paul Johnson made a point about the schedules. And as far as talent goes, I don’t think it’s as close some believe. When Coach Johnson would give his updates to the Foundation, he’d talk a lot about going head-to-head recruiting against Air Force. But when someone would ask him about recruiting against Army, he said that he didn’t really see much of Army out on the recruiting trail. Not that Army wasn’t recruiting, just that they were going after different kids. Bobby Ross went about recruiting in much the same way that Charlie Weatherbie did; he assumed that he wasn’t going to win too many recruiting battles, so he didn’t really try. Instead, he cast a wide net and brought in as many lesser-recruited kids as he could, hoping to develop some diamonds in the rough while making the JV roster bigger. You can see the results on the field; Navy is much, much faster than Army. When one team’s fullbacks can pull away from another team’s defensive backs, you know that there is a big speed difference. This will be Stan Brock’s first real recruiting class, and it will be interesting to see if he changes the recruiting philosophy. Until Army beats Air Force and Navy for the same players, they aren’t going to compete on the same level.

Something else to consider about this “retreat” is whether Tim Walsh will be able to run whatever offense Stan Brock chooses. Walsh had a reputation as an offensive innovator at Portland State, but does that mean he can run any offense? Will he be able to learn the ins & outs of an offense that isn’t his own? How quickly can he learn the finer points of how to adjust to defenses within this new scheme? This isn’t an indictment of Walsh as a coach as much as it is respect for how difficult coaching is. It’s one thing for a coach to tweak his system and watch it evolve over time. It’s something else to dictate to him what offense he must run. I’m sure Coach Walsh will have input, so maybe “dictate” is the wrong word. But if some kind of option is indeed what Army wants to run, one wonders how much option is in Walsh’s arsenal.

Defensively, Army returns a few good players, particularly in the front seven with guys like Ted Bentler, Victor Ugenyi, John Plumstead, and Frank Scappaticci. Scappaticci was the team’s third-leading tackler in 2007, Bentler and Plumstead were 1-2 on the team in sacks, and Ugenyi led the team in tackles for loss. That group should be the foundation for another good service academy defense.

Many Army faithful look at the option as a panacea. I fear the meltdown if that magic elixir fails.