Recruiting players from other colleges is against NCAA rules. But coaches have their ways of making their interest known.
“Coaches had me on Facebook and what not,” said Tuani, who has 96 tackles — including 14.5 for a loss — five sacks and five forced fumbles in his career.
Well now that the NCAA seems to be getting all ban-happy over such things, perhaps someone could send out the ol’ bat signal.
The football team has wrapped up fall camp and has moved on to game preparation for Maryland, so it’s only natural that I should do the same. Today’s Maryland question:
Should Navy and Maryland play every year?
It seems like such a no-brainer for the Mids and the Terps to face off every year. The two schools are only 20 miles apart, so if nothing else they’d save on travel costs. Both coaches seem to be on board with the idea:
“I think it’s huge – especially for us,” Maryland Head Coach Ralph Friedgen said of a rivalry. “I know Navy is a big rival with Army. But to have an in-state rival, I think it just helps the whole state.
“I think it just brings the whole state together and having it in Baltimore just accentuates that. … I think anybody that went last time will want to come back this year because they know it’s going to be a great show.”
“We need to play more,” Niumatalolo said. “We’ve got two great institutions that are so close together. There’s a history involved. Hopefully we can continue this series going on.”
Coach Niumatalolo is right in that there is a history here, although most of that history revolves around the fact that Navy and Maryland haven’t played each other very much. We all know the story; Jerry Fishman has a couple of late hits that draw boos from the Brigade, the Brigade gets into Fishman’s head, and Fishman gives the Brigade the finger. </series> for the next 40 years. The two teams finally met again in 2005– much to the chagrin of Fishman, who seems to resent being reduced now to a historical footnote (as evidenced by his somewhat pathetic attempt to buy his way onto the field before the game). While Fishman relished being the guy that ended the series, in reality his act was just the last in what was already a contentious relationship between the two schools.
Navy-Maryland wasn’t an annual game even before the series went on hiatus. In the nascent days of Maryland football, the Mids would occasionally use the Aggies (as they were known at the time) as a tune-up for games against the Ivy League powerhouses on their schedule. They would also run up the score, including a 76-0 trouncing in 1913. The games became more competitive in the 1930s as Maryland grew. In 1934, a late Slade Cutter field goal gave Navy a 16-13 win. Maryland protested the game, however, after their coaches watched film and accused Navy of using an illegal play. That led to the first break in the series; this time, it was Maryland that refused to play Navy for 16 years. A last-minute schedule opening brought the teams back together in 1950, and the series continued off and on for a few more games marked by rough play on the field and mischief off of it. Navy’s 19-7 win in 1965 would be the last time the Terps and Mids shared the same football field until coming together in Baltimore in 2005. Now, with a second meeting in six years, it appears that bygones are bygones. Well, sort of. Even this game seemed to be on the verge of falling through after Debbie Yow’s brinkmanship. But Yow is now the athletic director at North Carolina State, and her departure has led to an apparent thaw in the schools’ relationship. The handshakes and smiles make it seem likely that more Navy-Maryland games are in our future. How many is a matter of speculation.
There’s no doubt that playing Maryland is fun. M&T Bank Stadium will be packed, and both schools will reap the financial rewards from ticket sales and television. Navy’s season ticket sales even see a bump when they can add marquee games in Baltimore to the package. I’m not sure that’s enough to justify an annual meeting, though.
Coach Friedgen talks about the appeal of playing an in-state rival, and he’s right. Rivalry games energize fans and get them excited about both programs. Unfortunately for Maryland, they don’t have a natural rival. Virginia and West Virginia sort of fit the bill, but they both have bigger rivalries with other schools. Virginia fans might not like Maryland, but Virginia Tech is the game they circle on their calendar. The same goes for West Virginia and Pitt. Things wouldn’t be any different with Navy, obviously, since Army, Notre Dame, and Air Force will always get top billing on the Mids’ schedule. Perhaps the thinking is that there might be a little added spice due to the schools’ proximity. Other than fitting the geographic criteria, though, Navy and Maryland don’t exactly fit the in-state rival profile. Navy fans come from all over the country, spend four years in Annapolis, then go back out all over the world. This isn’t a situation where both teams’ fans pick a side at birth and spend a lifetime sparring with neighbors who chose the other side. Rivalries that don’t evolve out of that kind of grassroots origin are usually the product of the same kind of bad blood that got this series cancelled to begin with.
Still, even if the Navy-Maryland series doesn’t turn into everything that Coach Friedgen envisions, the financial reasons alone would probably be worth it for Maryland. Navy’s situation, on the other hand, is a little more complicated. The Mids are already locked into annual games against Notre Dame, the other two service academies, and soon, SMU. One could argue that Maryland has more appeal than SMU, but Navy tries to play a Texas team in most years for recruiting purposes anyway. Add the Terps to that list, and nearly half of Navy’s schedule would be set each year. One of the advantages that Navy gets from being independent is scheduling flexibility. They can schedule whatever games they see fit for recruiting, money, and competitive balance. The more games that Navy commits to, the less flexibility they have. That’s especially true when scheduling a BCS team like Maryland that has resources and a recruiting pool that no service academy can match. That doesn’t mean that Navy can’t beat Maryland, but it does mean that in most years, they won’t be favored. Notre Dame is already on the schedule. Does it really make sense to make the schedule any more of an uphill battle than it has to be?
Perhaps there will come a time when Navy doesn’t have a choice. The Army-Navy game has been the program’s golden goose for years, but ratings have been declining. They improved after the game was moved back a week in order to once again have a Saturday to itself, but now there’s nowhere else for it to go. If networks aren’t willing to pay as much for the game’s television rights, Navy will have to find some other way to generate that revenue. This summer’s conference expansion bonanza showed us how much money other schools are making from television. Navy might have to find additional revenue streams just to remain competitive, regardless of what happens to the Army-Navy game. Maybe that’s already happening, with big-money games against Penn State, South Carolina, and Ohio State on the horizon.
We can cross that bridge when we come to it. I like playing Maryland, but it might be best to only schedule them every 3-4 years or so. That way, every class has a chance to square off against the Terps, but the Mids aren’t stuck with a scheduling albatross.
We’ll begin our look at the state of the Navy football program by talking about… Air Force basketball?
Continue reading “THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: NAVY”
Troy Calhoun called this year’s Air Force schedule “the strongest a service academy has played in decades.” With Oklahoma and the Mountain West’s big three, there are definitely some strong teams on there. But the strongest schedule in decades? I don’t think so. I’m not even sure it’s the toughest Air Force schedule in decades, let alone the toughest among all 3 service academies. I doubt Calhoun looked them up before making that comment, anyway. But just to kill time, we will. So which of these was the toughest service academy schedule of the last 3 decades?
1980 Air Force: at Colorado State, at Washington, San Diego State, at Illinois, at Yale, Navy, at Tulane, Boston College, at Army, at Notre Dame, at Hawaii
1982 Air Force: at Tulsa, San Diego State, at Texas Tech, at BYU, New Mexico, Navy, Colorado State, at UTEP, Wyoming, at Army, Notre Dame, at Hawaii
2006 Air Force: at Tennessee, at Wyoming, New Mexico, Navy, Colorado State, at San Diego State, BYU, at Army, Notre Dame, Utah, at UNLV, at TCU
1998 Army: Miami (OH), Cincinnati, at Rutgers, at East Carolina, at Houston, Southern Miss, at Notre Dame, Air Force, Tulane, at Louisville, Navy
2005 Army: at Boston College, Baylor, Iowa State, UConn, Central Michigan, at TCU, at Akron, at Air Force, UMass, Arkansas State, Navy
2007 Army: Akron, Rhode Island, at Wake Forest, at Boston College, Temple, Tulane, at Central Michigan, at Georgia Tech, at Air Force, Rutgers, Tulsa, Navy
1982 Navy: Virginia, at Arkansas, Boston College, at Duke, at Air Force, William & Mary, The Citadel, Notre Dame, at Syracuse, at South Carolina, Army
1984 Navy: at UNC, Virginia, at Arkansas, at Air Force, Lehigh, Princeton, at Pitt, Notre Dame, at Syracuse, South Carolina, Army
2000 Navy: Temple, at Georgia Tech, at Boston College, TCU, at Air Force, Notre Dame, Rutgers, Toledo, at Tulane, Wake Forest, Army
Coach Niumat pulls 7 Gs in the back seat of a Hornet, smiles, and shows us his war face. I do one Immelman in a T-34, whimper, and regret having corn chips* with lunch. This is a splendid illustration of the difference between a DAGGONE PACK OF HYENAS FOOTBALL COACH and the average blogging internet nerd.
*Seriously, corn chip barf has a high viscosity; less like the gazpacho-ish consistency of my usual upchuckings and more like a paste. It burns the nose and smells like acrid dog feet.
Adam Nettina is getting way too high-falutin’ for us, getting interviewed by ESPN’s Bruce Feldman about a story he wrote on Andre Byrd. The story is about yet another football set-aside embarrassing the Naval Academy while he skates through his priviliged set-aside life, if “embarrassing” means “bringing credit to” and “skates through his priviliged set-aside life” means “works his ass off while inspiring others.” Who decided to let this slacker in?
Football Outsiders is a statistics-driven blog whose authors work to bring a Baseball Almanac/sabermetrics type of approach to gridiron research. Using one of their standard ratings systems, they decided to rank the top 100 teams of the last 100 years. Two Navy teams made the list: the Mids of 1943 and 1945, coming in at #52 and #42, respectively. If you think about it, that makes sense. There’s no doubt that these two teams were probably the most talented in Navy history relative to their competition, thanks to relaxed eligibility rules during World War II. Several football stars from schools around the country entered the service, and it wasn’t unusual for someone to play for four years at a civilian school, then step right back onto the field at a service school. Not only did this benefit Army and Navy, but it helped give rise to juggernauts like Iowa Pre-Flight, Bainbridge Naval Training Center, Great Lakes Naval Training Center, and Randolph Field. Some of the players who came to Annapolis after starring elsewhere included All-Americans like Penn’s Skip Minisi and Notre Dame’s Bob Kelly, Don Whitmire (Alabama), Jack Martin (Princeton), Jim Pettit (Stanford), and Bo Coppedge (VMI). It’s hard not to win when you’ve basically assembled an all-star team.
Even so, the Navy teams of World War II are overshadowed by the Army teams of the era, which rode their own cherry-picked squads to national championships. That probably keeps the average Navy fan from thinking of the ’43 and ’45 teams first when naming the best teams in the program’s history, despite the ridiculous amount of talent. Some would say that the 1926 national championship team was the best, since… well, they won a national championship. Many would pick the 1963 team, which played Texas for the national championship and featured Roger Staubach. Some people look at things a bit differently and feel that today’s athletes are bigger, faster, and stronger, and that a more recent team should be considered Navy’s best.
So what do you think is the best team in Navy history? Use whatever criteria you like. Here are your candidates, in addition to the two teams mentioned above:
Anthony Piccioni– hard-hitting special teamer, reserve linebacker, and by extension a taxpayer-robbing, unqualified set-aside from some school where the streets are paved with misery and the tears of the disillusioned– has acquired a new label from ABC News: “counter-insurgency guru.” Be sure to write your congressman in protest.
I was going to wait until Wednesday’s GBU to talk about this, but I think there’s enough rattling around in my brain on the subject for me to give it a post of its own. Navy will be playing at South Carolina in 2011. Initial reaction:
OK, I know I’m usually the one leading the charge with the whole “reasonable schedule” thing, and my initial response to scheduling Ohio State was, shall we say, tepid. Scheduling SEC teams, even of the middle-of-the-pack variety, doesn’t seem like the greatest idea when the next 6 games (for now, at least) are TCU, Air Force, at Rutgers, East Carolina, at Notre Dame, and at SMU. That said, as someone who finds the best part of football to be the coaching duel, Navy-South Carolina is a dream game. The thought of a Niumatalolo-Spurrier showdown makes me all tingly. I mean, this is what makes college football so much fun, right? You’d never see a matchup of contrasting styles like this in the NFL, mainly because the most “contrast” you’ll see in the NFL is between teams who pass 50% of the time and those who pass 55% of the time. Yes, I know that his South Carolina stint hasn’t exactly been the second coming of Spurrier’s fun & gun Florida heyday. And yes, Spurrier might not even be coaching by then. But the possibility is too good to pass up. Getting almost a million dollars out of the deal isn’t so bad, either. At least on the surface.
I’m not about to complain about NAAA being handed a $950,000 check, but having just agreed to a home-and-home series with Ohio State that paid even more, it’s hard not to wonder if NAAA is scheduling these money games because they need to. Consider:
So are there cashflow problems in Ricketts Hall? No, according to SID Scott Strasemeier:
Strasemeier said the nearly $1 million payout had nothing to do with athletics director Chet Gladchuk’s decision to schedule South Carolina. Rather, recruiting was the primary consideration as the program will receive significant exposure in the south as a result.
“This is a great game against a quality opponent in an area in which we recruit heavily,” Strasemeier said. “We have 13 players from South Carolina and North Carolina on the current roster so clearly those two states are very important in terms of recruiting. This game will pay huge dividends down the road by exposing Navy football to a region of the country that has great high school football.”
The last time I saw Coach Johnson speak in Jacksonville, he stressed how important it was for Navy to schedule games against Florida schools for recruiting purposes. Since then, Navy has scheduled two games with Florida Atlantic. The Carolinas are another important recruiting area for Navy, and while Duke and Wake Forest are regulars on the Midshipmen’s schedules, South Carolina reaches a whole different audience– one that reaches beyond the Carolinas and into Georgia and Florida as well by virtue of the Gamecocks’ SEC membership. I doubt that getting paid for a regular road game like it was the Las Vegas Bowl had nothing to do with the decision, but I do believe that recruiting was the primary motivator. Besides, even in this economy, some athletic departments are raising more money than ever. Conventional wisdom doesn’t always apply.
The addition of South Carolina makes 2011 a pretty challenging schedule, but hopefully it’ll be worth it.
You think you went on recons? You think your little trip down the Ho Chi Minh trail dodging Jimmy Legs and grabbing a Slurpee from the Taylor Avenue 7-11 after sneaking around the St. John’s campus makes for a good story?
The Birddog 