Caleb Campbell Was Drafted

On By MikeIn army, football, going pro22 Comments

So I’m sure that you’ve already heard that the Detroit Lions selected Army’s Caleb Campbell in the 7th round of the NFL Draft. And I’m sure that most of you are checking the site today expecting me to say something about it. I’m not sure what’s left to be said, though. It’s a bad policy on so many levels. But I don’t feel like going through all of that again, at least not right now.

There are still a few related things to talk about, I guess. Supporters of this policy will point to yesterday’s draft coverage on ESPN, with rowdy fans in the balcony chanting Campbell’s name, as an example of the great Army publicity that’s headed our way. If they say so… We’ll get to that. Not that it should be the role of a service* academy to produce graduates for the sake of promoting itself. Duty, Honor, Country, Publicity? Doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Ah, but the talking point that Campbell was clearly instructed to say (since he’s said the exact same thing in more than one interview) was that he is in fact serving, just in a different way. In what way will that be? Well, according to USA Today:

Campbell will still be on active duty. He’ll serve as a recruiter, spending his Tuesday off days from the Lions visiting high schools and working.

Four years and a quarter of a million dollars, people. All to produce someone who’ll only work for the Army on those Tuesdays when the Lions don’t need him. Way to put the “service” in service* academy, West Point. Those people cheering for Campbell at the draft weren’t cheering for this policy. They were cheering for the ideal that the uniform is supposed to represent. The uniform is supposed to represent self-sacrifice undertaken on behalf of the Constitution and the American people. Talking to high schoolers on Tuesdays just isn’t the same, no matter how it gets spun. Is recruiting important work? Absolutely– that’s why the services generally put some of their best performers in those billets. They serve as role models, giving recruits a glimpse of what they might become. They get these positions based on a track record of excellence in service that Campbell won’t have. Of course, this isn’t Campbell’s fault. He’s just following a path that the Army laid out for him. It would be nice, though, if the Army would have the decency to stop using him as their talking point parrot. Sure, Campbell’s a soldier. The same way Kellen Winslow is.

It isn’t going to take long for people to figure all this out. People cheer for service* academies not for what they do as cadets and midshipmen, but for what they’ve committed to do in the future as officers. Campbell received applause for wearing the uniform, but eventually people will start saying, “Hey, wait a minute.” Deadspin seems to be the first to realize that Campbell is being treated like a hero when he hasn’t done anything. They won’t be the last.

In other news, has anyone considered the publicity impact if Campbell doesn’t make the team? Let’s be honest, now– 7th rounders aren’t exactly the stuff that legends are made of. And while Campbell passes the look test, he wasn’t that good. He lost a step after his knee surgery. And although he has a reputation as a hard hitter, I sort of laughed while watching the highlights that ESPN & the NFL Network were showing of Ray Rice and Tulane’s Matt Forte because half of them showed Rice and Forte breaking Campbell tackles. Navy fans will remember his little do-si-do with Lamar Owens at the ’05 Army-Navy game. I’m not going to pretend that I’m some crack NFL talent evaluator, but history would suggest that players drafted in the 7th round are a longshot to make the team. So what does that have to do with publicity? Let’s look at the headline of that USA Today article. It reads, Army’s Campbell drafted by Lions, not headed to Iraq. Later, the article calls the NFL Campbell’s “ticket out of Iraq.” So if Campbell gets cut, how is that story going to be presented? As the end of a dream? How going to the regular Army is such a downer?  But isn’t the point of all this “good PR” to try to generate recruits who are willing to go into the Army? To go to places like Iraq and Afghanistan? I’m sure there are ways to spin these things, and I’m sure that Caleb Campbell will say all the right things in that scenario. But with all the hoopla that’s being pushed about how great this is, it’ll be a hard act to sell.

Anyway, I am confident that the backlash is coming. If the mainstream press wasn’t aware of the policy before, they sure are now. I’ll be standing by.

Thus Endeth the Lacrosse Season

On By MikeIn navy lacrosse5 Comments

Back in January, I said, “I think this might be the year that someone other than Navy finally wins the Patriot League.” Two months later, after Navy ran over Colgate to put themselves at 5-0 in the Patriot League heading into the Army game, I felt like an idiot; it looked like it would be business as usual in Patriot League lacrosse. Oh Lord how I wish I still felt like an idiot. Colgate beat Navy 12-9 in the semifinals of the Patriot League tournament, ending Navy’s season and punctuating a slide that began with a lackluster performance against Army. The Mids ended the season at 9-5.

Navy’s defense this year, except for a couple of slip-ups, was as solid as advertised. Both Matt Coughlin and Tommy Phelan were effective in goal. But what on earth happened to the offense? Talking with some dedicated followers of the program before the season, they all agreed that Richie Meade’s offense this year was going to be conservative. And conservative it was, seemingly placing greater value in posessing the ball than generating scoring opportunities. That was fine when the Mids were playing the first half of their schedule. When the tougher second half came around, it didn’t cut the mustard. The offense only scored 6.7 goals per game in the second half of the season, meaning Navy’s defense would have to play close to perfect in order for the team to have any shot at winning. The defense actually did achieve near-perfection in a few games. But if Navy’s opponent got out to a multi-goal lead, the offense couldn’t make up the difference, resorting to easily-saved desperation shots.

The question now is whether Coach Meade’s offense was conservative because he thought it had to be, or conservative because that’s just the way he does things. Part of the reason why so many people anticipated Navy’s offense would want to slow things down this year was because of how young it would be. With the graduation of Ian Dingman and Billy Looney, Navy lost 53 goals from its biggest inside-outside threats. Nick Mirabito was returning, but his supporting cast of Tim Paul, Patrick Moran, and Basil Daratsos were all sophomores. Seeing this, the Navy gameplan appeared to be to slow the game down and take pressure off of the young offense, with the thinking that in low-scoring games, the team with the best defense has an advantage. Maybe, maybe not. It didn’t work at the end of the year, anyway. But what about next year? Paul and Moran will both be juniors. Daratsos, who was nowhere near 100% recovered from his ACL injury, should be much closer to the form of his freshman campaign in which he scored 17 goals. Bruce Nechanicky should be back to quarterback the offense after his own ACL injury before the season. Is this enough for Coach Meade to decide to open the floodgates a little? We’ll see. Let’s hope so.

Ohio State is going to happen.

On By MikeIn navy football12 Comments

http://navysports.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/042308aaa.html

Neither do I.Well, it’s official. Navy is going to open up the 2009 season against the Buckeyes in Columbus, with a return trip coming in 2014 to either NMCMS (probably unlikely) or a higher capacity venue in the area (pray for Baltimore instead of FedEx). For Ohio State, a game against Navy is a tune-up against a spread option team before they play their season finale against Michigan. For Navy, one can only assume that the appeal of this game comes from tapping into the gate receipts of a 102,000-seat stadium. To my wife’s chagrin, the game replaces a previously scheduled contest at Hawaii that will likely be pushed out away from her birthday to a later date, possibly even that season. I suppose that the flight to Honolulu is now paid for:

Gladchuk declined to discuss financial terms, but admitted this would be the most lucrative home-and-home contract in the history of Navy football. Sources said the deal has the potential to earn the Naval Academy as much as $2 million for each game.

I don’t have a problem with playing Ohio State if it’s at the right time. The problem is that as the schedule stands right now, 2009 is not the right time. Let’s take a look:

Sept. 5 . . . at Ohio State
Sept. 19. . .  at Pittsburgh
Sept. 26 . . . Wake Forest
Oct. 3 . . . Air Force
Oct. 10 . . . at Rutgers
Oct. 17 . . . at SMU
Oct. 24 . . . Bowling Green (Homecoming)
Oct. 31 . . . Georgia Southern
Nov. 7 . . . at Notre Dame
Nov. 14 . . . Delaware
Nov. 21 . . . at Temple Hawaii
Dec. 5 . . . Army (Philadelphia)

Four of our first six games are on the road, and they’re at Ohio State, Pitt, Rutgers, and a revamped SMU. Are you kidding me? What happened to scheduling to give the team a chance to win? Who knows what kind of shape Air Force will be in by then, but the other home game wedged into that road gauntlet is against Wake Forest! It wouldn’t be a shock to anyone if Navy came out of the first half of the season at 1-5. The second half of the season could get dicey too, with Notre Dame, an improving Temple team, and possibly Hawaii.

I have a hard time believing that the Ohio State game would be happening if Paul Johnson was still the head coach. PJ was clear about how the 2002 schedule– which included NC State, Northwestern, Boston College, and Wake Forest in addition to the annual reach game against Notre Dame– set his first Navy team up for failure. The lesson learned was a scheduling philosophy that called for balance, as described by Chet here in a response to a question about scheduling Nebraska:

Being a Division IA football program, there’s always the possibility that we could play anyone. Whether scheduled during the regular season or in a bowl game. As it stands today, we do not have Nebraska on the schedule. My most important objective is to make sure the coach and the team have every opportunity to earn a successful season. Who we schedule is actually a science that, to date, has served us well. When you take a look at some of the programs we have down the road, including Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Wake Forest, Connecticut, East Carolina, and of course Army, Air Force and Notre Dame, I am very careful to ensure that there’s adequate balance throughout the season. We don’t want to put ourselves in a situation that doesn’t provide us with a legitimate shot at post-season consideration. This is one of the key reasons why we remain comfortably as an Independent. Remember, television, tickets, corporate support, alumni giving, facility construction, and other important advancements continue to flourish by virtue of the fact that we’re winning football games, and a balanced schedule is a big part of it.

Wise words from the Navy AD. While everyone has fun with the glitz and hype that comes from playing big names, when it’s all said and done, it’s winning, not hype, that people really want. There’s a group in any fanbase that thinks their team should schedule LSU, the Kansas City Chiefs, a team of mini-Ditkas, and the Nothing every year, but for the most part I think Navy fans understand that as a service* academy, we have to be a little more realistic. Does that mean never scheduling the Ohio States of the world? No, but it might be better off to do it in years where the schedule wasn’t already shaping up to be brutal.

Navy fans like to talk about 4-4-4 scheduling as a way to achieve the balance that Chet describes– 4 games where you’ll be the underdog, 4 games where you’ll be favored, and 4 games where the matchup is about even. While the twists and turns of any given season might alter Navy’s standing relative to their opponents, when everything averages out, those last two categories are pretty hard to come by. Think about it. Who do you think will win more head-to-head recruiting battles between Navy and Bowling Green? How big is Temple’s recruiting pool compared to Navy? Will Navy ever create a sports management major to lighten athletes’ loads like SMU? Of course not (but maybe Army will). There isn’t a team on the schedule outside of the other service academies that would trade their roster for Navy’s. In reality, “balance” is pretty much impossible to achieve. That means that wins over Delaware, Bowling Green, and co. should not be taken for granted. Winning at a service* academy is hard to do. It would be very easy for Navy to bite off more than it can chew, and without a big adjustment in 2009, that would seem to be exactly what has happened. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more changes to the schedule in an attempt to lighten the load. I sure hope it happens.

When I was a mid, West Virginia came to Annapolis, led by Amos Zereoue. That game was a really big deal in Bancroft Hall, and there was a huge buzz about it out in town. We got stomped, but the atmosphere was fun. I can understand the appeal of wanting to schedule a game like that. But when the game is over, there’s still a season to be played and goals to be met. As things stand right now, it’s going to be tough to meet those goals in 2009. Playing Ohio State will be fun. Here’s hoping that the schedule gets a bit of an overhaul to accomodate them.  

March of Dimes Update

On By MikeIn Uncategorized3 Comments

My fundraiser for the March of Dimes is wrapping up this weekend with the annual March for Babies. I set a modest goal to raise $500, and thanks to the generosity of all you guys, I’ve topped that by a comfortable margin. If anyone has been meaning to donate but putting it off, now’s your last chance! To those of you who have already donated, thank you. While the March of Dimes is universally known, it still says a lot about you that you’d be willing to donate to the cause of a stranger. I’m honored that people like you take the time to read my ranting.

More Fallout

On By MikeIn army, football, going proLeave a comment

Thomas Hauser’s piece criticizing West Point’s NFL policy generated quite a stir. Enough that he was compelled to write a follow-up. It’s worth a read, although you’ve already heard most points on both sides of the issue. Some of his readers’ comments make me laugh. Among my favorites:

The decision to offer the alternative service option was made at very senior levels in the Army. Unlike you and I, these general officers are responsible for the accomplishment of the Academy’s mission. Every day, they balance competing priorities and resource constraints to meet the needs of the Army for a new class of West Point graduate lieutenants each May. Inspiring the best and brightest young Americans to seek an appointment to the Academy is part of that mission. If it takes a successful football program to do that, then so be it.

Remember kids, you aren’t responsible for the accomplishment of the Academy’s mission, so keep your opinions to yourself. There are generals making these decisions! And generals never make mistakes!

I also like the strawman about a “successful football program,” as if opposition to this policy equals a desire to see Army lose. Clearly, if a winning program is good, that must mean that anything done in the name of winning must also be good! Don’t argue with me. It’s science.

ESPN will air a piece on this new policy tonight on their E60 show, which is sort of their attempt at a 60 Minutes for sports.

The Weekend That Was

On By MikeIn navy football, navy lacrosse16 Comments

The weekend of the spring football game and the Hopkins lacrosse game is usually when I make my annual pilgrimage to Annapolis from my humble Florida home. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make the trip this year due to some emergency work issues. Bummer for me. Of course, after talking to a few people that did go, I’m not sure that my mood would be any better had I made the trip. Hopkins crushed the Mids, tacking another year onto their mind-boggling streak. The night before, Navy Blue defeated Navy Gold in a snoozer of a spring game. I suppose I’ll tackle the lacrosse game first.

The football team’s losing streak to Notre Dame was more high-profile, but I always thought that that Navy lacrosse’s losing streak to Johns Hopkins was far more perplexing. Navy and Notre Dame are on different planets when it comes to college football, but the delta between Navy and Hopkins lacrosse is much smaller. Sure, Hopkins still has all the advantages when it comes to recruiting against Navy and should win more than they lose against them, but the Mids are still a solid lacrosse program. Hell, if Navy hadn’t lost to Army, they’d have been ranked higher than Hopkins going into the game. You’d think that the law of averages would throw us a bone once in a while. But no, 33 games has now turned into 34, and Navy finds itself in a rather precarious position when it comes to getting an NCAA tournament bid. I wonder if John Feinstein thinks that Navy should stop playing those bullies from Hopkins. Anyway…

The game itself was a suck tsunami. The usually stout Navy defense seemed to have a great deal of difficulty with the Hopkins ride, leading to several turnovers. It probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference even if they were able to get the ball to the offense, though, since that unit continued to struggle. How many games have we watched this year where a graphic pops up on the screen to say “NAVY: NO GOALS SINCE 5:32 IN THE SECOND QUARTER” or “NAVY SCORING DROUGHT- 15:48” or something similar? Our offense just hasn’t cut it since we’ve entered the meat of the schedule. Navy has averaged a little more than 6 goals per game in regulation since the Bucknell game. You’re putting one hell of a load on your defense & goaltender if you’re asking them to hold some of these high-powered offenses to less than that. Being patient and setting up a quality shot is one thing, but what Navy is doing is a whole different ball of wax. The scoring opportunities aren’t developing, and it’s leading to desperation heaves from bad angles or shots from 20 yards away– both of which are easily saved by the opposing goalie.

All of that is easy for me to observe from my La-Z-Boy. Fixing the problem is a different issue. I have no answers. I just hope that the coaches see that there is a problem and can fix it.

Anyway, moving right along…

The spring game wasn’t exactly a suspense-filled drama. The first-teamers who made up the Blue team were for the most part, as Coach Niumat put it, just punching the clock. In contrast, the Gold team seemed to really be playing hard, but just didn’t have the horses to keep up. I’ll give my impressions of what I saw, but it’s important to keep everything in context. People make a big deal out of the spring game, but it really is just one practice out of 15, and nothing more. Anything we see, good or bad, may not be a reflection of reality. That said, it’s the only practice my Floridian ass gets to see, so here’s a bit of stream of consciousness to relay my observations.

– First off, congratulations are in order for next year’s team captains, Jarod Bryant and Clint Sovie. Craig Schaefer also gets a pat on the back for winning the VADM Mack award as the team’s most improved player of the spring. His swift rise up the linebacker depth chart made this one pretty easy to predict.

– The hit of the night came from Joey Taylor, the Gold team safety who stepped up in run support to bounce Greg Shinego to the ground on the sideline. The Gold team in general was hitting hard. Linebackers Trey Grissom and Tyler Simmons were everywhere in the first half. Especially Grissom, who got behind the line of scrimmage to make 3.5 tackles for a loss, including a sack. On the blue side, I thought Ram Vela played well. Corey Johnson made a couple of plays as well.

– It was tough to get a read on the defensive lines, because neither offensive line looked all that great. The Blue d-line spent a lot of time in the Gold backfield. Matt Nechak registered a sack. Nate Frazier only had one tackle, but he seemed to be wreacking havoc on the inside. Andy Lark struggled at center, especially in pass protection. He’s got a ways to go to be ready to back up Ricky Moore, who actually looked pretty good.

– Jarod Bryant looked terrific. He stepped up on the opening drive and marched the first-team offense down the field for an easy touchdown. His passing was clearly improved, as demonstrated by his 25-yard sideline bullet to Shun White that put the ball on the Gold 1-yard line. His running was great, but we already knew that. Most importantly, he also seemed to have pretty good command of the triple option. It was a great showing by next year’s offensive captain.

– Mixed reviews for the other quarterbacks. Greg Zingler and Joe Taylor both looked decent when they weren’t running for their lives– they usually were. Zingler probably had the play of the game, hitting Greg Jones in perfect stride for a 65-yard TD pass that was called back thanks to an illegal shift penalty. As for Ricky Dobbs, whether you feel good about him or feel a little nervous, you got some fuel to support your opinion. For the most part, Dobbs just didn’t look ready for prime time, fumbling twice and looking very tentative on his option reads. But on one busted play, Dobbs unleashed a barrage of moves that will keep Anne Arundel County’s ankle surgeons in business for at least another month. Ricky was able to reverse his direction and turned a doomed play into a 32-yard scamper down the right sideline that led to 1st and goal from the 4-yard line. It’s clear that the athletic ability is there. Now we just need to wait for the learning process.

– Kevin Campbell was the game’s leading rusher, although in all honesty I was a bit underwhelmed by his performance. He ran hard, but usually he ran hard straight into a pile. The difference between 2002 Kyle Eckel and 2003 Kyle Eckel was that while the former tried to move piles, the latter tried to avoid them. The same metamorphosis would work well for Campbell. He did show some good hands and quickness in turning a fullback screen into a 24-yard gain. I was very impressed with Vince Murray, who seemed to have a knack for finding open space. If there was a knock on him, I’d say that didn’t run with his pads low enough. Hopefully one of you more knowledgable readers can correct me if I’m off-base on that one.

– The A-backs didn’t get the ball into their hands very often, but they usually made it count when they did. Shun White led the way with 23 yards on 4 carries, plus that great catch on the pass from Bryant. Greg Shinego looked very quick on a 3rd quarter 12-yard run, and Andre Byrd, while not seemingly as fast as the other two, had a knack for making tacklers miss to gain some extra yards, plus a TD run. I have no idea if these guys were doing the right things without the ball, but in terms of their playmaking ability with the ball, my optimism is unchanged.

– Kyle Delahooke’s missed field goal was a little discouraging, but everyone seemed to punt the ball pretty well.

All in all, it was a typical spring game. Let’s be honest now… None of them are ever that exciting. Huge, huge props go to NAAA for putting it on All-Access. Pete & Omar, despite the audio difficulties, were very entertaining in calling the game. The next step is to wait for the last depth chart of the spring (if there will be one).

Ye Olde Wishbone Returneth

On By MikeIn army, football12 Comments

According to reports, Army is going back to the wishbone.

Despite his double-secret spring practices and a spring game that will only be a “defensive scrimmage,” Stan Brock’s plan to keep his new mystery offense under wraps has failed. Not that we have any details or anything, but at least the Army coaching staff’s renewed acquaintance with Jim Young has been explained.

The general attitude of Army fans at the moment.

To Army fans, the wishbone is roughly analogous to Jesus Christ, Chuck Norris, Winston Churchill, the Emancipation Proclamation, Luke Skywalker, and penicillin all rolled into one. It’s the wonder drug. The messiah. The badass panacea that will cure all that is wrong with the football program. That’s because whatever football success that Army has had in the last 30 years came when the team was running a wishbone (or wishbone-ish) offense. The architect of those teams was Jim Young, the former Arizona and Purdue head coach who relieved Ed Cavanaugh as Army’s top dog in 1983. After losing 9 games in his first year, Young decided he needed to make a change on offense and installed the wishbone. The success was immediate. In 1984, Army went 8-3-1, won the Commander in Chief’s Trophy, stunned Tennessee with a 24-24 tie, and beat Michigan State in the now-defunct Cherry Bowl. Young won 49 games in seven years at Army after installing the wishbone.

The similarities between Young’s experiment and today’s Army team are pretty obvious. Cavanaugh coached Army for three years before Young was hired. Bobby Ross coached Army for 3 years before Stan Brock replaced him. Both Young and Brock used offenses similar to their predecessors’ in their first year. Both ended up with 9 losses that year. And now, Army is apparently switching to the wishbone once again. Optimism is sure to abound.

Hopefully, that optimism is kept in check. I think most Army fans would agree that duplicating the immediate success they saw under Young isn’t a reasonable expectation. But they all expect it to work before too long. It’s their dogma; the wishbone– or at least the triple option– is the path to service* academy football nirvana. After all, Ken Hatfield installed the wishbone at Air Force and resurrected that program after its doldrums of the ’70s. Fisher DeBerry used the basics of the same offense for two decades. Paul Johnson took Navy to 5 straight bowl games with his option offense. But service* academies have lost with the option as much as they’ve won with it. Elliot Uzelac ran the wishbone at Navy and won a whopping 8 games in 3 years. The Mids ran option-heavy offenses under Charlie Weatherbie and gradually deteriorated into a winless team. And while Army fans like to remember Bob Sutton for the 1996 season that saw the Cadets go 10-2, the rest of his tenure wasn’t nearly as good. Outside of that one season, Sutton’s record at West Point was 34-53-1. Suttonites would argue that at least the team was competitive. But 14 of Sutton’s wins at Army came against non-scholarship I-AA programs (Colgate x4, Harvard, Holy Cross x2, Lafayette x4, Lehigh, Bucknell, Yale). Sutton also lost to The Citadel twice, and lost to Boston University (not Boston College) four years before that school dropped football. If Bobby Ross had the luxury of playing those teams, how much better would his record at Army have looked? The truth is that Army football under Sutton wasn’t much different than Army under Bobby Ross and Stan Brock. Sutton just had a much easier schedule.

That means that the option alone wasn’t the answer to all of life’s problems. There had to be another underlying cause of Army’s futility. Whatever those problems are, Army’s answer to them is to imitate Air Force of the 80s; pack the prep school with players, ease service requirements for graduates, and run the option. Shady, but it worked once already. But can you imagine the meltdown if it doesn’t work? The option is supposed to be the final piece of the puzzle. If Army doesn’t win even with the option, one of two things will happen. Either Army will completely give up and seriously consider dropping to I-AA, or they’ll just completely abandon whatever integrity they have left and start cutting even more corners. Relaxed admissions standards, maybe? Athletic dorms? Kinesiology majors? The sky’s the limit.

Meanwhile, assuming that this report is correct and Army is indeed returning to a true wishbone offense, I think it’s a good thing for college football. I like watching wishbone offenses. And ever since Ken Hatfield left Rice, there hasn’t been a decent wishbone playbook for me to use on my Xbox. Don’t talk to me about that generic “option playbook” garbage, either.

Word.

Going off on a bit of a tangent now… Something that annoys me when listening to college football fans– and Army fans are by no means the only ones guilty of this– is how much they overrate the value of individual schemes, both offensive and defensive. “The wishbone” or “the option” do not win games. Coaches win games. I am a firm believer that any scheme can be a winner if the right coach is running it. All it takes is a guy that’s smart enough and experienced enough to know how to adjust within his system to counter whatever the other team is showing him. On the other hand, any brilliant scheme will fail if it’s put into the hands of a coach that doesn’t know how to use it.

Anyway, we’ll see if this report holds up. You never know when stories cite “sources.”

Catching Up

On By MikeIn army, going pro, navy football, navy lacrosse10 Comments

— The big news over the weekend was the lacrosse team’s 5-4 win over Maryland on Friday night. The Mids took a 5-0 lead into halftime and held on at the end. TBO2F sums things up and gives you all the links to game reports here. Between Maryland, Georgetown, and Hopkins, Navy probably needed to win at least one of those three to have a shot at being seeded in the NCAA tournament, assuming they beat Army and win the Patriot League tournament. Of course, that’s no guarantee the way Army and Bucknell have been playing. Navy travels to West Point to take on Army on Saturday at noon.

One more thing on the Maryland game– TBO2F points out that Navy turned the ball over on 14 of its 16 second half posessions. Not good, and not going to cut it if we want to purge the last of the wretched losing streaks that hang over our athletic department.

— Speaking of West Point, the tremendous amount of “good PR” generated by their Alternative Service* Option keeps pouring in. Here we have Thomas Hauser, Muhammad Ali biographer and Pulitzer Prize nominee, taking a break from boxing to write about the new super-awesome West Point policy. Most of his points are things you’ve already read here, but it’s worth a look.

— The other big news from this weekend was the first football scrimmage of the spring. The official report is here. Adam gave a good recap down in the comments of the last post, too. Bill Wagner gave his impressions here. So far the stars on the offensive side look like Bryant, Shinego, and Byrd, with Maurice Cumberland standing out on defense.

— All of next year’s home games (except Notre Dame) will start at 3:30 (ET).

— One Baltimore blogger wonders if the new DC Bowl will keep the proposed Baltimore game from happening.