(09-15-2021 07:00 AM)MWC Tex Wrote:  I had expected better numbers for Air Force/Navy and Utah/BYU with these so called “national fan bases” they keep trumpeting about.

The service academies are IMO massively overrated on these forums in terms of appeal. Maybe I'm biased, but I grew up during a time - the 70s and 80s - when the service academies were regarded, in strictly athletic terms, as the weakest of weak sisters in division I football. The fastest way for a major power to get accused of padding its schedule was to play a service academy, and these games had no appeal at all (I was then and still am also aware that in the distant past, before the 1960s, the situation was very different, with Army and Navy sometimes being national powers, but that was way before my time).

So it continues to surprise me when folks say things like "the AAC must do whatever Navy wants to keep them from leaving", as if Navy is the Texas of the AAC or something. Or say that any conference would want to add Army, because of their putative national appeal and the like.

I love and respect the service academies as institutions, but as athletic entities, I see nowhere near the value that some/many around here seem to. Obviously the Army-Navy game has large, and unique, appeal. But after that?