As we wonder what lies over the hill, Army seizes it
The Black Knights don't need a playoff to celebrate a season. Beating Navy would help, though.
Gentlemen, start your indignation. Ladies, too, for that matter. We’ll learn the 12-team College Football Playoff field on Sunday, and the forecast for Sunday afternoon is cloudy and dark with a 70 percent chance of tears, along with a wind warning generated by high-pressure systems hovering over South Carolina, Alabama and Miami.
As you’ll recall we had a four-team system until this year, and it was scrapped because some people were unhappy. Now we have 12 teams, at least eight of which have proven conclusively that they aren’t national championship material, and even more people will be unhappy. If only we’d been warned.
That’s why a 29-degree night at Michie Stadium in West Point, N.Y. was so essential. The future intelligence officers, drone operators and artillery supervisors of America were romping up and down a football field in search of a trophy that no one at their school had ever won. Specifically, Army never had won any conference championship before, operating in a universe where independent teams could still make it. Here, the Black Knights of the Hudson won the American Athletic Conference title, 33-14, over Tulane and improved their record to 11-1. They won’t be in the CFP, because Boise State will grab the highest “Group of Five” conference title, but it’s not like they’re done. Next week they’ll play Navy for the Commander-In-Chief trophy. You don’t need a committee to explain that one.
The Army folks aren’t above a little campaigning. They’d like to see Bryson Daily become a Heisman Trophy finalist. The Army-Navy game will be held at Landover, Md., so Daily can’t be at the New York ceremony, after a season in which he ran for 29 touchdowns, which is a conference record and ties Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty for the most in major college football. He got to the end zone four times Friday. He has run for 1,480 yards with Navy still to be dealt with. “How many times is there going to be an academy player who could legitimately go down there (to the Heisman show), and everyone feels like he belongs?” asked Army coach Jeff Monken. “This is that time in history, I think.”
Daily is from Abernathy, Tex., 20 miles north of Lubbock, and both his dad and grand-dad were West Texas high school coaches. He has grown to 6-foot-1 and 221 pounds, and Tulane coach Jon Sumrall said Daily “runs like a linebacker,” but there was no interest from the power leagues, so Daily became an Army man.
But he made one stop before that. Over half of the Army roster has spent a year at the U.S. Military Academy Prep School (USMAPS). Those players might not have been ready physically or academically for the academy itself, but this way they can ease their feet into the water and be ready when called upon. The school is only two miles from the academy itself, and it’s one of the hidden reasons why Army has emerged from the compost heap. Beginning in 2000, the Black Knights were 5-42 over a four-year period. Before Monken showed up in 2014, Army had enjoyed three winning seasons since 1990.
Monken had coached at Georgia Southern and knew how to put together an option offense that could make better athletes, on defense, stop and think just long enough to lose. In 2013 Georgia Southern went to Florida and won without completing a pass. This Army team spends its life looking for the nearest trench. It leads the nation in rushing offense by a margin of 52 yards per game, ranks third in fewest penalties and is first in third-down conversions. It also had 33 touchdowns in 43 red-zone trips going into the Tulane game, and Daily has averaged only 89.2 air yards.
To make it work, Monken has assembled an offensive line that would excel in any league. It helps that tackles Connor Finucane and Lucas Scott, guards Bill Katsigiannis and Paolo Gennarelli and center Brady Small have played every game together this season. Katsigiannis is the midget of the group at 6-foot-1, 290. They’re known, to friend and foe, as the MOB (Malicious O-Line Brotherhood).
Finucane actually thought his playing career was done after four years and had reduced himself to 245 pounds, the better to get through obstacle course training and air assault training. But he wound up taking a medical leave in the spring, meaning that he was eligible to play in the fall as a fifth-year senior. That was a thrill, until Finucane realized he had to become the incredible hulk again. Although he started practice with the fourth-teamers, he got back to 310 and was the fulcrum of an offense that thumped everyone but Notre Dame.
The Navy game is existential, of course, but it could also earn Army the CIC Trophy for the fourth time since Monken arrived. In the 39 years before that, the Cadets had won it only four times.
Meanwhile, the rest of college football gathers breath for Sputtering Sunday. The Big Ten and the SEC figure to make up at least two-thirds of the playoff field, which doesn’t thrill the general population. But then some SEC folks, particularly in Columbia, S.C., think it just means more if they get more spots. South Carolina was dazzling in the second half of the season and capped its 9-3 season with a win at Clemson. Two of its two losses were to Alabama (27-25) and Ole Miss (27-3), both of them 9-3 as well. The other was a 3-pointer at home to LSU.
In last week’s CFP rankings, Alabama is 11th, Ole Miss 13th and South Carolina 14th. Since none of them are playing this week, it’s difficult to imagine the Gamecocks getting into the Diluted Dozen. Behind them, either 15th-ranked Arizona State or 16th-ranked Iowa State will win Saturday’s Big 12 game and nail down a spot.
South Carolina undoubtedly looks like a contender. But the committee is charged with measuring the data, not just relying on their deceptive eyes. We’ve given up the Every Game Counts mantra so we can expand the field, but indisputable video evidence reveals that South Carolina indeed lost to the Crimson Tie and the Rebels. Their other arguments are based on comparative scores, which are misleading at best. For instance, Georgia State beat Vanderbilt which beat Alabama which beat Georgia which beat Texas. Georgia State was 3-9.
It is also true that Alabama and Ole Miss beat Georgia, which is ranked fifth and plays Texas in the SEC Championship game Saturday, which would be a dandy if it had any playoff implications at all. South Carolina didn’t play Georgia which, at one point, looked like an advantage. Now it’s a missed opportunity. That’s the problem with Conference Bloat, and why we’re headed for a 16-team playoff someday and, who knows, maybe 32, at which point a 6-5 team will be rumbling about getting screwed.
The CFP committee promotes all this whining by announcing its standings on a weekly basis, instead of waiting until the end. It obviously thinks noise is good for the game. It should spend more time in Army’s stoic, bottom-line world, where arguments only last 60 minutes.