slhNavy91
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RE: Could the ACC be looking at Army/Navy/Air Force?
(04-19-2024 08:38 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (04-15-2024 04:46 PM)slhNavy91 Wrote: (04-15-2024 01:12 PM)CoastalJuan Wrote: (04-07-2024 04:33 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote: I think the academies are aware of the sizable talent gap between them and even the brainy ACC programs. Just look at him may good teams had to leave the AAC before Army would join. The academies would do very poorly even in a reduced ACC.
I don't know. There are 3ish ACC teams who would be expected to regularly beat Army/Navy/AFA. Outside of those 3, the ACC is pretty much the MAC.
The first major fact to bring to people's attention is that in 2011-12, Navy said "yes" to a BCS Auto-Qual conference. The Big East's "power" status didn't last long past that as the CFP structure excluded it, but when Navy was asked (and took a few months to get to yes) it still was. There was a lot of hand wringing around Annapolis about stepping up in weight class, but the decision was taken for the strategic objective of staying at the highest level of D1 football. "In college sports there is a storm getting ready to come, a hurricane getting ready to come, and those that are in homes don't really worry about it. But it's the people that are on the outside looking in that need to find a place of refuge."
Pitt, Syracuse, and West Virginia were already on their way out, but the Big East that Navy joined still included Louisville, Rutgers, Cincinnati, South Florida, etc in terms of relative football strength. It was somewhere between a power conference of today and any hypothetical zombie-ACC of brainy schools.
I looked at Navy's independent conference schedule from 2003-2014. Navy played Duke, Stanford, BC, Pitt, Wake, and SMU a total of 23 times with a record of 14-9. As I said in post #25, smaller versions of the GOR jailbreak might leave members that are less of an institutional / strength of schedule fit. But those six? Add Cal and GT? Yeah, Navy football only is just fine with the "brainy ACC programs" / "reduced ACC"
FWIW, I don't think Navy ever has to really worry about its status. Navy is never going to be a major football player like it was many decades ago, but the powers that be will never boot it out of the highest level of football either, whatever that is called. Navy athletics is ultimately backed by the federal government, and the powers in CFB, for political reasons, will always IMO have a home for it in their ranks.
So to me, what Navy does should be driven more by tactical concerns than strategic concerns. That means looking at conference configurations that provide the most visibility for Navy, in terms of geographic dispersion and prominence of opponent brands. In that regard, I think Navy is fine whether it remains in the current AAC, joins a trans-continental 2PAC MW-AAC hybrid of some kind, or somehow falls in to the lap of a reduced brainy ACC league. Navy, IMO, just doesn't have the same existential concerns for its athletic department that state and private schools have.
Just MO.
I have never subscribed to the idea that just being a service academy ensured the desired inclusion at the top level if college football.
If the powers that be at Navy felt in 2011 that just being star-spangled studs, riding eight straight winning/bowl seasons going into that season was enough, we might not have said "yes" to the Big East.
If the powers that be at Army West Point felt that way just six months ago, they would have stayed independent.
The evidence suggests that the accelerated systemic change in college football has academy decision makers more convinced that they need to continue working to position themselves on the right side of the future schism (up to the point where that schism is defined primarily by amateurism vs employer/employee).
The hand wave of political backing is misguided. There are voices and drivers and opportunism on both sides of the aisle that would be against the service academies being perceived as football factories.
And finally, maybe diving into semantics, but it seems to me that conference configuration IS the strategic not the tactical level. Tactical is deciding on the cities bidding to host the Notre Dame game, or schmoozing boosters at the Rugby national championship match, or picking the home game opponent for that twelfth football game, or maintaining relationships with those mid-tier bowl executives.
Likewise, that's just my opinion.
(This post was last modified: 04-23-2024 01:13 PM by slhNavy91.)
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