🏈 The Academies: Winning the Old Way

To win in college football is hard, it’s really hard. But to do it when you are already at a massive disadvantage, that’s downright impossible…except two teams in the college football world are proving that they can do the impossible. Who else but Army West Point and the Naval Academy to turn the CFB world on its head!

Logically, it makes very little sense that Navy and Army are having such impressive seasons. Both are 6-0, and both are now ranked, Army came in at No. 23 in yesterday’s AP Poll, and Navy at No. 25. This is the first time that both programs have been ranked since 1960, and the first time both programs have started the season 6-0 since 1945, a year in which Army won the National Championship.

While the college football world has changed dramatically in the last couple of years, the academies have stayed the same. They are not allowed to participate in NIL, they still have extremely high admissions standards, and both programs maintain their height and weight limitations, courtesy of the United States Government.

No students can transfer in, only out. So if a portion of the team decides to move on to the new world of the transfer portal, the schools have to reload the old-fashioned way: with their freshman class. With all of the big NIL contracts and huge transfer portal classes that dominate college athletics right now, there are still ways to win without it.

The service academies obviously attract a pretty specific recruit, but it goes to show that with the right players, the right system, and the right coaches, it doesn’t take big-time money to put up big-time wins on the schedule. Student athletes attend these schools for their traditions, what they offer in life after college athletics, and to be part of something bigger than just a contract.

The most interesting piece about this is that both programs are a part of the American Athletic Conference now. If they both finish 12-0, they’ll play in the conference championship game on December 6th, and then the following week they would play in the annual Navy-Army game. How nuts would that be? Army-Navy two weeks in a row? Sign me up!

Both programs still run the triple option, which is undoubtedly past its prime, but it’s so damn hard to stop when run correctly. Both these programs have 11 guys on the field who are completely bought in at all times. Even more, these guys care about each other. It is a refreshingly wonderful way to look at college athletics, and I hope that both these schools keep winning.

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