THE STATE OF SERVICE ACADEMY FOOTBALL: ARMY

On By MikeIn army, football24 Comments

During the offseason, 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.

The Navy is a complicated profession. There are so many different elements one must master in order to succeed, from understanding the different culture, to leading people, to the finer points of individual warfare specialties. After all, it is by no means enough that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. Or so I’ve been told. With so much to remember, sailors have passed down various sayings and mnemonic devices to guide them through the years. There’s “choose your rate, choose your fate”– sage advice for the junior enlisted sailor to be educated about what exactly his chosen career path entails. Conning officers across the Fleet depend on “red right returning” to keep their ships in the channel (if you’re about to leave a comment about IALA-A, you’re a nerd). Even cynics have their reminder to Never Again Volunteer Yourself. There are no cynics in Annapolis, obviously, and “IHTFP” has helped generations of midshipmen express their boundless joy.

Not all of these memory aids are unique to the Navy, or even to nautical life. A more common expression that’s a favorite among officers–and one that I’ve always hated– is “perception is reality.” It’s not that it’s bad advice. The problem is that some people become so attached to these little one-liners that they won’t listen to anything else. While it’s helpful to remember the importance of image consciousness, most issues are far more complex than the way they appear to the outside world. It’s one thing to acknowledge the old “perception is reality” axiom, but to end the conversation there would be to defer to the knee-jerk reactions of the uninformed on any matter of importance. Perception is truly reality only to those who don’t care enough about something to take the time to dig any deeper.

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THE GB&U, 7/21

On By MikeIn Garbage, those lousy set-asides6 Comments

The Good: Blatant Homerism’s excellent Dobbs for Heisman campaign continues with a pair of podcasts. First, he talks to Heisman Pundit writer Chris Huston about the award in general, including Ricky’s chances. In the second podcast, he interviews the man himself.

Adam Nettina conducted his own interview of Huston here.

Speaking of notorious set-asides like Ricky Dobbs, he’s been nominated for the American Football Coaches’ Association Good Works Team. One more black eye for Canoe U.

The Bad: The new NCAA Tournament format, if you ask Billy Lange. And if you were a head coach in the Patriot League looking at a tournament with four auto-bid teams going to play-in games, you’d probably say the same thing. John Feinstein says that while the new 68-team tournament could have been worse, that’s a far cry from saying that it’s better.

The Good Again: Since we’re on the topic of basketball… The Naval Academy doesn’t announce its new class of athletic recruits until after I-Day, since incoming athletes don’t sign LOIs and therefore have nothing binding them to the school until they’re actually enrolled. That means that even though we’re gearing up for football season, we also get our first official look at the new class in every other sport at the same time. Billy Lange talked with the Sun’s Matt Bracken in pretty good detail about Navy’s incoming basketball class and how they’ll fit into the big picture.

The Ugly: This week has served as a reminder as to why athletic departments have compliance directors. It can be really, really easy to commit a violation. Florida and Ole Miss coaches also got a slap on the wrist for writing on recruits’ Facebook walls. Far more serious for Florida, though, are the allegations that Maurkice Pouncey was paid $100K by an agent prior to the Gators’ Sugar Bowl appearance. The NCAA is apparently cracking down in the wake of the USC/Reggie Bush investigation, because Florida isn’t alone; similar stories are coming out of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Alabama. For the record, Pouncey says that he received no such payment.

I usually have no problem reveling in the DAMN DIRTY CHEATING SEC talk that usually follows such stories, but it’s hard to point fingers at these schools when agents are essentially predators hunting their players. You can educate your players, but those lessons can be hard for them to remember when someone is waving thousands of dollars in their faces.

The Case Study: Vanderbilt head coach Bobby Johnson stepped down after 8 years in Nashville. For spread option fans, Johnson is an interesting case study. No coach has faced Paul Johnson’s offense more. Not only is Bobby the only head coach to have faced Paul at Georgia Southern, Navy, and Georgia Tech, but they also squared off as coordinators in the 1985 I-AA title game. There will probably be a blog post on this in the future.

The Poetry: You all know of my fondness for haiku.

The Industry: I’m fascinated by the newspaper industry. I enjoy getting glimpses into how the news world works. Knowing how things operate leads to more educated criticism, which helps if you want your lousy blogger opinion to be taken serously by anyone. HAHA WHO AM I KIDDING WE DON’T CARE IF WE’RE INFORMED THIS IS THE INTERNET. There were a pair of boomshakalaka haymakers thrown this week. First, we have Pete Pelegrin’s parting shot as he left the Miami Herald and the FIU sports beat. Then there was Jason Whitlock’s piledriver on Mitch Albom and the newspaper industry in general, which I hesitate to link because I’m pretty sure half my readers like Mitch Albom. My willingness to alienate all of you is second only to my work ethic when it comes to reasons why I will never be paid to write this blog.

The Air Farce: Pre-Snap Read looks at Team Jesus Christ in his countdown.

The Chargers: As much as I want to believe this study on Petco Park’s economic benefits, the critics make some good points.

The iPod: Liz Phair– May Queen

The Padres: Having swept them to start the second half of the season, the Arizona Diamondbacks are the cure for what ails you. Unless you sneeze.

WON’T SOMEONE SAVE US FROM THE SET-ASIDES???

On By MikeIn navy football, those lousy set-asides8 Comments

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?

G.O.A.T. GOATS

On By MikeIn navy football57 Comments

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:

Continue reading “G.O.A.T. GOATS” →

THE GB&U, 7/12

On By MikeIn Garbage4 Comments

The Good: The Kia Soul hamsters:

Two hamsters driving a toaster to the sound of Black Sheep’s The Choice Is Yours. Ninety years of television history have led to this moment. Embrace it.

The Bad: Bob Sheppard, who was the Yankee Stadium public address announcer for more than half a century, passed away yesterday at 99. His long list of credits outside of Yankee Stadium included PA duties at West Point and five Army-Navy games.

The Ugly: Remember David Graham? The Air Force half of LOVE’S DEADLY TRIANGLE? The inspiration for the greatest USNA wardroom movie ever (and murderer, probably should mention that too) is raising the esteem of bloggers everywhere by starting a blog of his own!

Graham and another inmate, Aaron Flaherty, plan to debate prison issues on line for people looking for insight into the corrections system. Their first topic: a story on rape in Texas prisons.

Well way to ease your way into it.

The Dumb: I understand the whole civiliter mortuus angle of punishing USC, but isn’t it a little dumb to automatically leave them out of the coaches’ poll? It’s just an opinion poll. If I beat USC, I would certainly like to get credit for beating a ranked team, assuming that the Trojans would be good enough to make the top 25. If they’re going to field a team, it’s stupid to forbid the coaches from opining as to where that team stacks up with all the others. They did the same thing to Auburn when they were on probation in 1993 & 1994, but who were they kidding? Like an SEC team that goes 11-0 and 9-1-1 in consecutive seasons isn’t one of the top 25 in the country.

The New Deal: ESPN has planted its flag on the ACC, grabbing the conference’s broadcast rights in a 12-year $1.86 billion deal. Patrick Stevens discusses the details here. Strangely, Navy doesn’t have any ACC teams on future schedules, although that can easily change (and might have already). On the other hand, with Georgia Tech helping the rest of the ACC grow spread-option calluses, maybe that’s by design.

The Eye Strain: Football scheduling conflicts are almost as difficult to manage as reading gray type on a maroon background.

The iPod: Arcade Fire– Broken Window

The Padres: The offense has picked up over the last 6 games before the All-Star break: .311 BA, 9 HRs, and 6.2 runs per game. Naturally, they were 2-4 in those 6 games.

THE GB&U, POST-INDEPENDENCE DAY (OBSERVED) EDITION

On By MikeIn Garbage, those lousy set-asides5 Comments

A snapshot of the random crap that’s on my mind…

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was supposed to be a Wednesday thing, but last Wednesday I was busy driving a 1999 Buick Park Avenue with 3 hubcaps, a cracked windshield, and no A/C from Jacksonville to my parents’ house in Virginia Beach. I know what you’re thinking; how can a baller who makes it rain with his mad blogger cash be rollin’ in a decade-old Buick? Because the paparazzi gets all up in my business when I drive the Bentley, that’s how. I like to take the Buick when I want to travel on the DL.

The Good: While I’m pretty sure that this is the only Navy football blog out there, most of you know that it wasn’t the first. That was Pitch Right, written by Adam Nettina. Despite the fame, fortune, and respect that come from being a blogger, Adam gave up this glorious life to concentrate on frivolous details like “college.” He still writes though, both for the Utah State Statesman, and by doing the bulk of the original content– player interviews, recruit profiles, and all the other things people expect from a Scout.com site– for GoMids.com. Adam recently wrote an excellent piece on Eric Douglass that you need to read if you haven’t already.

I’m sure that my my rather low opinion of GoMids.com is no secret. Their handling of whole Fleming thing is a great example of why. To interview Bruce Fleming is to put a microphone on a human vuvuzela. What’s the point? Is anyone unaware of his opinion? Is he going to reveal anything that he hasn’t already said in a dozen other media outlets? And at this point, do you even care if he does? Yet here’s GoMids, stretching Fleming’s 15 minutes into 15 weeks by keeping him front and center while the rest of the world has (rightfully) moved on. While the “countdown to the special sneak peek at part two of the preview to the video of the interview” is downright spine-tingling, one would hope that if GoMids insists on dwelling on this “story,” they could at least take a different angle on it. While probably not his intention, that’s exactly what Adam did– detailing one football player’s academic struggles, how he’s overcoming them, and how the coaches played a role in his academic development. In an issue that deals primarily in high-falutin’ theoretical arguments, Adam wrote a story about real life, and lets us be the judge on how well the situation was handled. It’s a fine piece of reporting. Douglass also deserves credit for being as candid as he was.

The Bad: Don Coryell, offensive mastermind and one of the two greatest coaches in Chargers history (along with Sid Gillman), passed away last week at 85. Anything I could possibly say about Don Coryell would fail to do the man justice. He is the embodiment of the two things I value most in a coach: innovation, and winning in San Diego. Howard Balzer wrote a fine column for USA Today lamenting that Coryell won’t be around to see his overdue Hall of Fame induction. His piece includes some great quotes from Dan Fouts and Charlie Joiner.

Coryell isn’t in the Pro Football Hall of Fame yet, but he is in the College Football Hall of Fame. While more famous for the Air Coryell Chargers, college fans will also remember that he was the architect of the best stretch in San Diego State football history. From 1961-1972, Coryell was 104-19-2 on Montezuma Mesa, including three undefeated seasons and two NCAA College Division national championships. His success was the primary motivator for San Diego State making the move up to the University Division (the predecessor to what is now known as Division I) in 1969. The Aztecs’ success didn’t end with the move; from 1969 until Coryell’s last season in 1972, SDSU won three Big West Conference titles, won the Pasadena Bowl, and claimed victories over Arizona, Oregon State, BYU, and Iowa State. I doubt that Coryell will ever get the kind of credit he deserves outside of San Diego County.

The Ugly: We’re all tired of conference expansion talk, but it isn’t going to go away just because you want it to. Somewhat lost in the Big 12- Pac 10 brouhaha is the WAC, which lost Boise State to the Mountain West. Does that mean that more dominoes will fall as that conference looks to make up for what it lost? Probably not. It seems that– for now, anyway— the college football version of Hungry Hungry Hippos is done, and all the little white marbles have been consumed. That is, unless you believe BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe.

“Things may settle for a little bit,” Holmoe said, “but there’s opportunities — great opportunities for BYU that did not exist last week.”

Opportunities that didn’t exist last week? Holmoe wouldn’t get specific, but by being vague he is obviously trying to imply that some other conference wants BYU. Maybe it’s true. Or maybe he’s just trying to save face after their biggest rival was invited to the BCS party while BYU was left behind. For all we know, this “great opportunity” might be the women’s golf team taking a summer trip to Scotland.

The Animating Contest of Freedom: As long as nobody else leaves the WAC, Hawaii probably won’t have to consider anything drastic like going independent. It’s an interesting idea, but good luck filling THAT schedule. The most interesting part of that article, other than the quotes from Niumat, is this stroke of genius from Birddog-endorsed coach June Jones:

When June Jones was the UH coach, he floated the idea of selling ESPN on a last-game-of-the-night package for UH home games, a concept that has long had appeal at UH but is currently prevented by the school’s rights being tied to the WAC agreement with ESPN.

What a fantastic idea.

The Schedule: Speaking of June Jones, when he was coaching Hawaii he made a point to mention that he’d like more games against service academies. He said that they were good games to expose Hawaii to a national audience that would otherwise never see them. If the creation of the Gansz Trophy and an ongoing rivalry with Navy is any indication, Jones still feels that way at SMU. Meanwhile, Navy played in Honolulu last year, and the ‘Bows are starting a series with Army this season. And it might not be ending there.

The Benefit Of The Doubt: We’re going to assume that Ken Niumatalolo wasn’t included on this list because it’s for “non-Big Six” conference coaches and not “non-Big Six conference” coaches. Especially considering that he’s 6-2 against coaches that are on the list.

The Thaw: If you’re in Anne Arundel County and wondering what that joyous sound was coming from College Park last week, it was probably Maryland fans celebrating the news that their athletic director, Debbie Yow, has left to take the same job at North Carolina State. I really have no idea if she was a good AD or not, and don’t really care. If you’re wondering why some Terps fans might be happy, though, John Feinstein sums things up pretty well. In the interest of full disclosure, Feinstein is hardly an impartial observer; he freely admits that he’s good friends with Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams. However, Yow’s relationship with the Naval Academy certainly doesn’t conflict with anything Feinstein wrote. She tried to use the media to pressure Chet into closing the deal for this year’s Navy-Maryland game in Baltimore, and I have heard from two different people that she once made less-than-gracious comments about Chet at a Maryland booster event. If you were hoping for a thaw in relations between the two schools’ athletic departments, Yow’s departure doesn’t hurt.

The More You Know: The secret to football success? Schoolhouse Rock!

LOS LIIIIIIIINKS: Sandlapper Spike, author of the Birddog-endorsed The Citadel blog The Sports Arsenal, twittered a link to this interesting story about West Virginia and the break of the original ACC schools from the Southern Conference. Speaking of the ACC, Pre-Snap Read continues its countdown, including Navy opponents Wake Forest and Duke. Mouse Davis, father of the modern Run & Shoot, is back on the staff at Hawaii. Some hometown loves their set-aside so much that they couldn’t waste any time editing; they just had to get this article out as quickly as possible. I can’t blame them.

The iPod: Lush– Light From a Dead Star

The Padres: How bad have the Padres been in their 42-year existence? This is only the 7th time in franchise history that the Padres have had a lead of 3 or more games in the division.

The team is also trying to push Heath Bell for the final fan vote for the All-Star team. While I think the best pitching staff in the National League should probably have someone representing them in the All-Star Game (even if Bell wouldn’t be my first choice), my vote went to Joey Votto. The fact that Votto’s inclusion has even come down to the last-chance vote is incredibly absurd. A quote I read earlier on Facebook sums it up:

“Leaving Joey Votto off the All-Star Team is like…leaving Joey Votto off the All-Star team. That’s the only thing that’s that stupid.”

THE GBU, 6/23

On By MikeIn Garbage2 Comments

The Good: Some dude talking about some set-aside:

This is basically the first political ad for the 2040 election.

The Bad: He’s got soul but he’s not a soldier… Slowly but surely, the “victims” of Army’s forced reversal of the ASO are matriculating back from whence they came.

The Ugly: For most of my life, every single team that I like has pretty much sucked. It’s an unusual feeling for me to cheer for teams that actually win. Rest assured, though, that Chargers GM A.J. Smith is working hard to get things back to normal.

The Chargers: If the Chargers are doomed to be mediocrity’s standard-bearer, at least baby steps have been taken toward making sure that they do it in San Diego. With the buyout in their Qualcomm Stadium lease being cut in half in 2011, though, I’m still convinced that they’re moving to Los Angeles.

The Lacrosse Schedule: Don’t expect too many changes. Richie Meade was a pioneer among lacrosse coaches when it came to finding talent in areas outside of the traditional lacrosse footprint. Rather than go head-to-head in recruiting against the game’s titans, Coach Meade was able to get the pick of the litter in areas where other schools just didn’t bother to look. When the Mids made the finals of the NCAA tournament in 2004, it was almost a running joke how cosmopolitan their roster was compared to the New York and Maryland-dominated squads they were beating. Navy’s schedule reflected that recruiting effort; the Mids regularly played Ohio State, played Colgate in Orlando, Holy Cross in Dallas, and Bucknell in San Diego. But the Mids are no longer alone in canvassing all corners of the country for lacrosse talent; a quick scan of Johns Hopkins’ roster, for example, yields players from California, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Colorado. Being lacrosse’s travelling roadshow was worth it when you could hit ’em where they ain’t, but the cost-benefit isn’t really there anymore. Now it just makes more sense to play relatively high-profile games against the likes of Loyola and Towson in our own backyard rather than spending money to fly all over the country.

The Vuvuzelas: Like the World Cup, but wish there was a blog that stressed tactical matchups kinda like we do here with Navy games? Meet Intelligent Soccer.

The Blogs: The Pre-Snap Read preview countdown continues, including a look at Maryland. Barking Carnival continues to comment on the inner workings of the Big 12’s realignment turmoil, including this cogent bit on what really matters when confereces look to expand:

If I see another poster offering New Mexico and TCU as potential partners, I’m finding out what industry they’re in and entering it both guns blazing, with confidence that I’ll be a billionaire within a decade. Or at least be their shift manager at Quik E Mart.

He will, too. And finally, One Foot Down ponders the possibilities of Notre Dame’s own network.

The iPod: School of Seven Bells– Half Asleep

The Padres: The Padres beat the Rays 2-1 yesterday because Mat Latos is good at throwing baseballs. Last night, I had a dream that they lost 5-4 with a blown save from Heath Bell. I’m sure my subconscious is just trying to keep my optimism in check.

ON SOUTH CAROLINA

On By MikeIn navy football18 Comments

I was going to wait until Wednesday’s GBU to talk about this, but I think there’s enough rattling around in my brain on the subject for me to give it a post of its own. Navy will be playing at South Carolina in 2011. Initial reaction:

OK, I know I’m usually the one leading the charge with the whole “reasonable schedule” thing, and my initial response to scheduling Ohio State was, shall we say, tepid. Scheduling SEC teams, even of the middle-of-the-pack variety, doesn’t seem like the greatest idea when the next 6 games (for now, at least) are TCU, Air Force, at Rutgers, East Carolina, at Notre Dame, and at SMU. That said, as someone who finds the best part of football to be the coaching duel, Navy-South Carolina is a dream game. The thought of a Niumatalolo-Spurrier showdown makes me all tingly. I mean, this is what makes college football so much fun, right? You’d never see a matchup of contrasting styles like this in the NFL, mainly because the most “contrast” you’ll see in the NFL is between teams who pass 50% of the time and those who pass 55% of the time. Yes, I know that his South Carolina stint hasn’t exactly been the second coming of Spurrier’s fun & gun Florida heyday. And yes, Spurrier might not even be coaching by then. But the possibility is too good to pass up. Getting almost a million dollars out of the deal isn’t so bad, either. At least on the surface.

I’m not about to complain about NAAA being handed a $950,000 check, but having just agreed to a home-and-home series with Ohio State that paid even more, it’s hard not to wonder if NAAA is scheduling these money games because they need to. Consider:

  • The economy is in the crapper. Athletic departments are adjusting however they can, whether it’s by taking the bus instead of flying, or no longer printing media guides, or whatever else they can think of. Cuts might be avoided if you can find new ways to raise money.
  • Without a big-name neutral-site game in Baltimore to drive season ticket sales (Maryland, Notre Dame), and with bad weather pretty much every week, football attendance was down in 2009.
  • NAAA has two new mouths to feed.
  • CBS extended its contract to broadcast the Army-Navy game, but the game had to be moved back a week to make it palatable to them. There really isn’t anywhere else for the game to go now. NAAA will need to find other revenue streams if the Army-Navy golden goose dies.

So are there cashflow problems in Ricketts Hall? No, according to SID Scott Strasemeier:

Strasemeier said the nearly $1 million payout had nothing to do with athletics director Chet Gladchuk’s decision to schedule South Carolina. Rather, recruiting was the primary consideration as the program will receive significant exposure in the south as a result.

“This is a great game against a quality opponent in an area in which we recruit heavily,” Strasemeier said. “We have 13 players from South Carolina and North Carolina on the current roster so clearly those two states are very important in terms of recruiting. This game will pay huge dividends down the road by exposing Navy football to a region of the country that has great high school football.”

The last time I saw Coach Johnson speak in Jacksonville, he stressed how important it was for Navy to schedule games against Florida schools for recruiting purposes. Since then, Navy has scheduled two games with Florida Atlantic. The Carolinas are another important recruiting area for Navy, and while Duke and Wake Forest are regulars on the Midshipmen’s schedules, South Carolina reaches a whole different audience– one that reaches beyond the Carolinas and into Georgia and Florida as well by virtue of the Gamecocks’ SEC membership. I doubt that getting paid for a regular road game like it was the Las Vegas Bowl had nothing to do with the decision, but I do believe that recruiting was the primary motivator. Besides, even in this economy, some athletic departments are raising more money than ever. Conventional wisdom doesn’t always apply.

The addition of South Carolina makes 2011 a pretty challenging schedule, but hopefully it’ll be worth it.