For a blog that has been dormant for months, I received a surprising number of questions. So let’s get on with it:

At the risk of asking something too obvious: You were pro-Big East, back when you felt the basketball schools were unlikely to leave. Are you still pro-American Athletic? How does this compare to Army’s ill-fated decision to join Conference USA?

There’s no doubt that the Big East isn’t the conference I thought (hoped) it would be when Navy signed on. It isn’t even the “Big East.” A lot has changed with the conference now known as the American. What hasn’t changed, though, is why Navy decided to join a conference in the first place. I’ve written more than once about how much I valued Navy’s independence. My argument was based on several factors, but primarily scheduling flexibility, bowl availability, and financial sustainability. Unfortunately, these advantages are quickly disappearing.

Continue reading “The Mailbag (7/18)” →

…other than my usual laziness, is that I’ve missed so much over the last several months that I don’t even know where to start. I did do a Q&A with One Foot Down, which you can read here. Writing that got me thinking that maybe a Q&A is the best way to get back into the swing of things. So I’ll let you decide what I should write about in my first (real) post back after my hiatus. Let’s do “Ask a Birddog Anything.” Send a note, leave a comment, or shoot me an e-mail at thebirddog99@gmail.com. Let’s do a Q&A and get the blog started up again.

Update: Closing off questions for now. Answers on the way.

So, did I miss anything? Anything going on?

That was unpleasant
Sometimes you just have to laugh
It’s one of those days

A lot like last year
Army left it all out there
This is why we watch

We’re about 30 hours away from finding out all the BCS bowls, so we’re even closer to finding out who Navy plays in San Francisco in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl. The PAC-12 title has been decided – Stanford edged out UCLA by scoring the game’s final 10 points, sending the Cardinal to the Rose Bowl. For our final look, we’re just going to run down all the bowl eligible teams and I’ll give you my best guess where they go.

Spoiler Alert: I’m picking Arizona State

Continue reading “Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl Possible Opponents – Final Update” →

Well here go hell come. It is actually possible that USC could fall all the way to the 6th bowl in the PAC-12. I believe that, given their cache, it probably won’t happen. Can you really see someone like the Las Vegas bowl passing up having a good portion of LA roll up I-15 for a football game the weekend before Christmas?

But right now there are 5 teams with better conference records than USC (by BCS ranking: #5 Oregon, #8 Stanford, #15 Oregon State, #17 UCLA, #25 Washington) and a 6th with a higher ranking (#24 Arizona). So even if the PAC-12 lands a second BCS bowl game, Navy is going to either face a team that was ranked at the end of Week 12 or USC. There really is no bad matchup for exposure’s sake.

The other big news for the watch list is that Arizona eliminated Utah from bowl contention thanks to a 34-24 win last weekend. The Utes were up 24-17 going into the 4th quarter, but gave up 17 unanswered points. So bon voyage to that opponent. Frankly, it was the least attractive matchup. We’ve played them before, they’re not a traditional PAC team, and I don’t need another stinking referee blowing a touchback call again.

Click on through for our update of Washington, Arizona, and Arizona State.

Continue reading “Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl Possible Opponents – Week 12 Update” →