The college football season opened on a Thursday night, August 28, when five teams of the Mid-American Conference hosted games at Amherst, N.Y., Muncie, Indiana; Miami, Ohio; Mount Pleasant and Ypsilanti in Michigan. Unimportant as to who won or lost.
The next night, at West Point, N.Y., the United States Military Academy entertained the Owls of Temple University and lost, 35-7. It was the first time in its 118 years of football that Army kicked off in the month of August.
So? Grand old Army football is so diminished.
Of the 120 teams in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I-A (aka. Football Bowl Subdivision), Army is ranked at No. 119. That by the reputable Jeff Sagarin for USA Today, Idaho being 120. Temple? 102.
The Army team played poorly. More poignant, the contest was to mark –- celebrate, if you will — the 50th anniversary of the 1958 team, a glorious undefeated one (8-0-1, the tie vs. Pitt). One would wish that few if any of the 1958 players were on hand to watch.
So why, in the last half century, did Army go from the top to the bottom of big-time college football?
The fault lies not within the reservation, the magnificent plains above the Hudson, nor with the striving Cadets. But among those who make the football policy decisions, an unholy amalgam of Pentagon popes and geriatric generals. They are unequipped to appreciate the hypocrisy of present-day major college football, one driven by avarice and greed. Or to ask Bobby Ross, their last coach (and a military man) why he failed too (2004-2006, 9-25).
Another fault is the cling to the annual Army-Navy game. Its history (dimming) and continuing TV cash flow disengage sensible thinking about what’s best for the Cadets, the principles.
The 1958 season was the last of 18 for the famous head coach of Army, Colonel Earl (Red) Blaik. West Point trounced, among others, South Carolina, 45-8; Penn State, 28-0; Notre Dame, 14-2; Virginia, 35-6, and Navy, 22-6. The team was No. 3 in the final Associated Press poll and halfback Pete Dawkins won the Heisman Trophy.
By 1998 college football had become semi-professional. The recruiting thrust was into areas where academics played less role than speed, size and strength. And the eventual, hopeful lure of the NFL. The Military Academy, essentially an engineering school with stringent rules covering all aspects of the 24-hour day, could no longer compete with South Carolina, Penn State, Notre Dame, Virginia and all the others. Or with Navy and Air Force, as it has turned out.
Army last had a winning season in 1996. For seven dismal seasons, 1998-2004, it was a member of Conference USA, an amalgam of second-tier teams like Alabama-Birmingham, Houston, Memphis, Southern Mississippi. The Cadets lost 41 of their 50 games. The Iraq war commenced.
Attendance has wilted at Michie Stadium (40,000 seats), one of college football’s most attractive amphitheatres … amid the autumnal splendor of the Hudson Valley.
Dawkins, who retired as a Brigadier General, was a member of a committee in 2004 which made “a study” of Army football and foolishly resolved to keep going, to bottom feed in Division I-A scheduling as best it could.
There was an attractive alternative that the committee spurned. In most of its other intercollegiate sports, for men and women, Army teams compete successfully, comfortably, in the Patriot League, the latter a classy academic assembly: Bucknell, Colgate, Fordham, Georgetown, Holy Cross, Lafayette and Lehigh — plus Navy (but not in football).
Would it not make more sense for a Cadet football player to enjoy the game, with a chance to win it, against Colgate than, say, against Texas A&M? The Cadets play the Aggies at College Station on September 27 and stand no chance whatsoever.
The problem is the Army-Navy game. Although ratings continue to sink the event on first Saturday of each December remains a habit for CBS television. Thus a pretense of “major” college football must be sustained. The handsome rights fees go to the academies and the two claim that the funds finance their varsity sports budgets that the Congress does not. No one to my knowledge has ever seen the books.
That presumption — and the gaudy Army-Navy TV scene in Philadelphia — make up an ever-weaker excuse for sending 80 Cadets each season into battles they stand small chance of ever winning.
How come Air Force and Navy seem to get along better? Their teams even go to bowl games once in awhile.
I posed this question often as a sports reporter to a variety of sensible sources in the years preceding the Iraq war. The consensus came down to “better coaching” (as exemplified by the retired Fisher DeBerry at Air Force and Paul Johnson while at Navy), and “better recruiting.” With each of the three academies offering a free education why would so few candidates — smart football players out of an ever-shrinking pool — choose Army over the Air Force or the Naval Academy? Well, flyers fly, sailors sail, soldiers get shot at.
There is a comfortable compromise available for Army football. That would be to join the respectable Mid-American Conference of moderate ambition. It has 13 teams: six in Ohio, three in Michigan, one each in Illinois, Indiana, New York and Pennsylvania. The Cadets have scheduled four for this season: Akron, Buffalo, Eastern Michigan and Temple.
The Temple Owls, thrown out of the Big East Conference because they won few games and drew few spectators, joined the MAC two seasons back. They found a home. £££