FanHouse Army Football

Promise me this: Once in your life, please try to make it to a football game at one of our service academies. I can't promise you a great game, but I can promise a great experience. Yes, even if Army football is involved.

Army-Navy is one of the sport's oldest rivalries. It hasn't been much of a rivalry lately, though. Navy has had Army's number, winning nine of the last 10 games, including today's contest, which Navy won 34-0. The Black Knights of the Hudson have really hit the skids. The last time they won more than four games in a season was in 1996, when they went 10-2.

Navy dominated today's game, which was basically over after Navy's first possession. The Midshipmen controlled the line-play on both sides of the ball. Paul Johnson may have taken his system to Georgia Tech, but he left behind his top assistant, Ken Niumatalolo, who hasn't missed a beat. Navy's triple-option offense still works beautifully, with both Shun White and Eric Kettani going for well over 100 yards of rushing. The real story is the dominance of Navy's defense, which held Army to seven first downs and 150 yards.

Okay, that's not the real story.

This guy's lived a life ...

I recently stumbled upon a YouTube video of Dawkins delivering an address on terrorism and the current global conflict. That's a bit unusual for an ex-jock, so off to Google-land I went to survey his background and learned the following:

Dawkins was a Rhodes Scholar. He survived polio as a child thanks to some form of aggressive physical therapy. He was accepted to Yale but enrolled at West Point where he graduated as President of his Class, football captain and finished in the top 5% of his class academically.

At army his 1958 senior campaign saw the Cadets finish undefeated and ranked third nationally. His accomplishments netted him All America honors and the Maxwell and Heisman Trophies.

From there he was a career officer in the Army, assuming numerous leadership positions and even taught at the Military Academy. He later ran for (and lost) a New Jersey Senate seat.

After the Army, Dawkins worked for several financial companies and is currently the Vice Chairman of the Citigroup Private Bank. He even has his own website (biography here).

It's an exceptional resume if you look at his entire biography. Video excerpt below of one of his speeches:

That's the rumor, at least.

Army coach Bobby Ross has resigned and will make the announcement at a 3 p.m. news conference, the Times Herald-Record reports. Ross will leave the program after three years and a 9-25 record. He is expected to be replaced by offensive line coach Stan Brock.

Seeing as how these fact-checked newspapers sometimes get things wrong, we're calling this a rumor until we hear otherwise but since it's in print, we're here to let you know about it.

Ross came in with high hopes, having been a successful coach both in NFL and college stops. However, coaching at the low-talent, more rigidly academic service academy proved difficult. It didn't help that Ross went just 1-5 against rivals Navy and the Air Force.

Perhaps he should have been more innovative on offense, following the lead of both Navy and Air Force? It sure works for other low-talent upstars like Boise State and Houston. The whole disciplined approach thing is good, but you gotta find ways to move the ball and score when you don't have the horses.

It has been a down week in Navy football, but things are about to speed up as the Midshipmen brace to take on the Army Black Knights in the 107th Army-Navy Game in Philadelphia this weekend. Navy currently owns a four game winning streak over the Black Knights, thanks in large part to Paul Johnson's triple option offense, which has outscored Army by an average of 30.5 points a game over the past four seasons. At a pregame press conference last week, Army Head Coach Bobby Ross outlined how his defense has to play to be successful against Navy's top ranked rushing offense.

They know what they're doing with it and they do it very well. We're going to have to execute very well and have a good tackling game. I want to make them go a long way with the ball every time. That means that we can't turn the ball over, and our offense has to move the ball some. Our kicking game has to work for us as well. In the past, we've given up big plays to them. We have to try to stop that and keep those out of the game.

Is it just me, or does it sound so easy on paper? I'll be the first to admit Army has a very physical defense which is fundamentally sound, but is nevertheless among the worst in the country (giving up 193 yards per game) against the run. Defensively, Army struggled against Air Force's triple option, giving up 263 yards on the ground. These defensive statistics are only made worse by Army's offensive woes. The Black Knights lead the country in turnovers, and sport an anemic passing attack which hasn't gotten on track all season. Considering the current Navy's defense may be the best in the Paul Johnson era, it's going to be difficult for Army to control the clock and keep Navy's offense off the field. Ross is not only going to need an error free game from his own defense to win this game, he's going to need an offensive implosion by Navy not seen since the Rutgers game. And for as much respect I have for the Army defense, they're nowhere near as good as Rutgers.

It is the finest rivalry in all of sports. More the Ohio State-Michigan, greater the Red Sox Yankees, and more prevalent then Cowboys-Redskins. The Army-Navy game is, undoubtedly, the premier rivalry in all of American sports, and college football's most sacred and storied of events. It is an absolutely American rivalry, a single event which transcends the bonds of records, personnel, and national importance, and embraces a rich historical tradition as patriotic as the Stars and Stripes themselves. It is, as the adage goes, much more then game. Surely I don't need to harp on the meaning of this game to our deployed soldiers, seamen, and marines worldwide, and surely I don't need to remind our readers that the bonds formed on the gridiron often translate to the battlefield. I am sure our readers know of the history of the game as well, as this back-and-forth rivalry has been, well, back-and-forth throughout the 107 years of its existence. This year, Navy (8-3), which won the "First to Fifty" contest of a year ago, will clash with a 3-8 Army squad which has seen better days. But this is not to dissuade the average fan from thinking any less of this game, which, as it does every year, will decide the success or failure of the teams involved. The following is an outstanding video produced by "PhatPhelix" documenting the history of the game as it led up to last year's contest, and an fine place to start the chronicling of the 107th Army-Navy Game.

Over the last three or four weeks, much of the news concerning Syracuse's future out-of-conference schedule has centered on the university's imminent agreement with Boston College. Under that contract, the Orange and Eagles will potentially meet on the gridiron six to eight times starting around the 2010 football season. Bud Poliquin, columnist for the Syracuse Post-Standard, however, believes that Dr. Daryl Gross' focus should shift from the Eagles to arguably the nation's most prestigious institution of higher learning:

Because this new regime at SU is so interested in broadening the Orange's horizons, Washington is bound for the Syracuse schedule. And so is Northwestern. And so is Penn State. And so is, if recent reports are true, Boston College. And both the Fighting Irish and Fighting Illini will return, as well. And unlike the SU basketball bunch, the football people will actually go on the road - leave the state, even . . . and imagine such fortitude - for a fair amount of these non-league contests to come.

But there is a team that is missing, so far, from this mix. A team that may not be so very good anymore and will likely never participate in a BCS bowl and sits right here in the state with us and plays in an 82-year-old stadium with a seating capacity under 40,000.

That team is Army, the only other Division I-A football school that matters in all of New York. And, despite the contents of that preceding paragraph, Syracuse should absolutely take on Army each and every autumn, home and away, from now until the cows are mooing at your back door.

"You're singing to the choir," said SU athletic director Daryl Gross. "I don't know why these two schools haven't been playing regularly, but I know we're looking at it, big time, for the future. It's a natural. There is so much pageantry there. It just makes so much sense."

Placing Army back on the Orange's schedule makes an incredible amount of sense from three symbiotic points of perspective.

The first, of course, is from a financial standpoint. West Point is a mere three hours and 42 minutes from the center of Syracuse and closer yet to much of Syracuse's densest alumni area (the Boston-Philadelphia corridor). As such, weekend football tilts between the Cadets and the Orange allow each fanbase to experience an easy travel opportunity. Residually, this will result in more people in the bleachers and more business for the local economy.

The next perspective is historical in nature. According to James Howell and Chris Stassen, Syracuse and Army have met 20 times since 1869. Over that period of time, Syracuse has compiled only an 11-9 record against the Cadets, with only five of those victories coming at either the Carrier Dome or Archbold Stadium. Obviously, with such competitive balance, there is great incentive from both universities to establish which is more dominant (or, for those that prefer slang, to establish who is whose "Daddy").

Furthermore, every game in the series has taken place in New York state (in 1960 and 1964 the game was played in Bronx, NY; in 1962 the game was played in New York, NY). As these two institutions (and its football rivalry) are so tied to the state of New York, to deny its constituents the pleasure of watching the Cadets and Orange play is to lose one of the great traditions of the Empire State.

Finally, both the United States Military Academy and Syracuse University represent a bygone era of football. Sporting a combined four national titles and four Heisman Trophy winners, a rivalry between the Black Knights and the Orange embodies all the history and tradition that makes college football Saturdays so special.

The third and final perspective is one of athletic integrity. Dr. Gross and others associated with the athletic department have gone on record numerous times in the past stating that Syracuse would not schedule Division 1-AA opponents or low-end Division 1-A opponents in order to generate wins. This institutional philosophy is reflected in the Orange's impressive list of future opponents which includes, but is not limited to, Penn State, Washington, Notre Dame, and Virginia Tech.

Army, not surprisingly, fits nicely into this model of competition. The Black Knights may not vie for a national championship any time soon, but Army will not roll over and hemorrhage yards like Buffalo or Directional State. Army consistently fields a competitive football team and if placed on the schedule, would instantly become a "circle game" on the calendar.

Clearly, a series of this nature makes sense from a Syracuse standpoint and if given the opportunity to pursue it, should do so with great vigor.