OTHER PEOPLE’S RIVALRIES AND THE FUTILITY OF DEFENDING AGAINST THE WISHBONE

I’m home alone right now, and great googly moogly is it boring around here. My wife is out of town on some urgent family business, so my personal interaction with others has been limited to pushing my cat down every time he climbs up onto my keyboard. That’s not to say that there isn’t any excitement, though. I mean, last week I came home from work one day to discover that the cat had opened the door to the garage, and the dog had learned how to escape from his crate. The two of them proceeded to find the bag of dog food that we keep in the garage, rip it open, engorge themselves, then leave heaping piles of crap all over the carpet. VROOM VROOM DER PARTY STARTER. The thought of an encore makes me feel all tingly.

As exciting as that was, I still look for other, less odorous, ways to entertain myself. Rather than doing anything productive with my free time, my favorite pastime in this situation is watching old games. It’s like my own little ESPN Classic, but without the bowling or world’s strongest man competitions. It’s good to calibrate my memory whenever I get the chance; it’s sort of amazing how the things you think you remember can differ from what actually happened in a game. It’s fun to see players and plays I haven’t thought about in a while, too. The best part about revisiting old games is being able to look at them with a critical eye, but without the inherent emotional bias that you have when watching it live.

Emotional bias really wasn’t a problem for the first game I decided to take a look at– last season’s Georgia Tech-Georgia game. I mean, I wanted Georgia Tech to win, of course, but a loss wouldn’t have had the same marriage-jeopardizing implications for me that most Navy losses do. I know, I know… Georgia Tech again. Blah blah blah. But even if you’re sick of talking about them, there’s still plenty to learn from watching them. They’re like an offensive laboratory for us. It’s not because of what they’re doing themselves, necessarily; I don’t think they’re doing much that we haven’t seen before, although the frequency with which they do a few things is a bit different. It’s really about the opportunity to see how a different group of defenses line up and try to stop the spread option, and to see if there’s any difference in how common opponents (like Duke) try to defend the two teams. I’m kicking myself right now for not having recorded more Tech games this year, but oh well. I’ll be sure to get their games that don’t conflict with Navy’s next year.

Anyway, enough talk of poop and regret. More talk about football. As I was rewatching the game, I took notes on a couple of items that I thought would be of interest to Navy fans. I began this post with the intention of highlighting only those things, but as I got going I figured I might as well break down the whole game like I would any other. In the process of doing so, I was reminded of plays we’ve seen in Navy games past. I decided to go ahead and include that stuff too. It makes for one long, sprawling post. But hey, it just gives us more to talk about in the middle of the summer, right? So off we go.

GEORGIA TECH: FRIEND OR FOE?

Paul Johnson may have left the Naval Academy, but I think it’s safe to say that most of us still root for him. It’s hard not to. His offense gave Navy a singularity in the cosmos of major college football; something above and beyond the usual “they play hard for 60 minutes!” type of chatter that seems to come naturally to casual observers of the service academies. College football reporters and talking heads thst covered this ingenious combination of run & shoot and spread option couldn’t seem to decide if the offense was innovative or archaic. Navy fans didn’t care either way. To us, the offense was just something uniquely ours. Of course, with the wins, bowl games, and service academy domination, Johnson could have run pretty much anything and Navy fans would still be happy. Beyond the offense and results he produced, he was also a great interview– sarcastic, straightforward, and funny to listen to. Most of us just plain liked the guy. So as upset as we were when he moved on to what he felt were greener pastures at Georgia Tech, most of us hope he finds the kind of success in Atlanta that he didn’t think was possible in Annapolis. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). Even those of you who might not be pulling for Coach Johnson still get the enjoyment of seeing skeptics of this offense have to eat their words. (Of course, we knew that would happen all along).

(As a side note, how annoying is it to watch the same “experts” who told you how the option would fail in a BCS conference now try to explain to you how and why it works? Meh, moving on…)

But now, the offense isn’t just ours anymore; our friends at Georgia Tech have joined us in the pleasure of hearing the same cliches every year about how the option won’t work.  As fun as it can be having a second chance to see our favorite offense in action each Saturday, do you ever wonder if Paul Johnson being at another school somehow has an adverse effect on Navy? I mean other than the obvious questions people have whenever a new coach takes over a school; hopefully by now you don’t need any convincing as to Ken Niumatalolo’s ability to lead the Mids. But could it be possible that in rooting for Georgia Tech, you are indirectly rooting for Navy’s demise? That Georgia Tech, in using the same offense that helped catapult Navy to success, might somehow be working against the Mids now?

THIS IS WHY WE HAVE A LINK TO THERE

Dan Steinberg at the Post’s DC Sports Bog is reporting that the Army-Navy Game will be played at Fedex Field in 2011. Initial reaction:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I’m not privvy to the inner machinations of the bidding process, so I fully acknowledge that this could very well be the result of an offer that Army and Navy just couldn’t refuse. And if both sides want to continue getting competitive bids from other cities, it’s probably important to throw a bone to someone outside of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore once in a while. On the surface, though, it kind of stinks. Nobody likes Fedex Field; it’s a soulless, hard-to-access behemoth in the middle of nowhere that looks not unlike the ship that took ET back home. The Navy-Air Force games played there couldn’t get back to Annapolis fast enough.

My biggest concern, though,  is the prospect of 20,000 empty seats at the game. Can Army-Navy really fill 90,000 seats? I hope so. Demand for tickets is probably enough to surpass the 65-70,000 that are available for games in Philadelphia and Baltimore, but 90,000 is a lot. People say that there’s a concentration of alumni and fans in the Washington area, so we’ll see. It didn’t make a difference for the Air Force game. Then again, nobody cares about Air Force.

UPDATE

Navysports.com has the details of the eight-year contract.

PARITY, SCHMARITY (AKA THE STATE OF NAVY LACROSSE)

With a 14-5 dismantling at the hands of Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the Navy lacrosse season came to a rather unceremonious conclusion. That was one painful game to watch, wasn’t it? It was the HBO free preview weekend on DirecTV, and I could’ve changed the channel to Schindler’s List and not have been as depressed as I was watching that debacle. Already a 10-0 blowout by halftime, it was probably the most disheartening Navy performance since the loss to Air Force in 2003. My father, after sending me a text message at the half announcing that he’d switched to the NASCAR race (I can’t blame him), called me after the game saying, “Well, at least we won the second half.” Which to me kind of felt like saying, “Well, I know we’re at the vet to put the dog to sleep, but at least we got a good parking space.” He was right, of course, but at the time I wasn’t really in the mood for silver linings.

With such a lousy ending, it would be easy to forget that there were, in fact, “up” parts in this up-and-down season. Looking at the big picture, there is quite a bit to be happy about. Navy went to the NCAA tournament for the 6th consecutive year after having missed the previous four. The Mids also won their fifth Patriot League tournament in the six years that they’ve been a member of the conference. The regular season included the first win over Georgetown since 2004, an absolute manhandling of Maryland, and a convincing win over Army to erase the memory of last year’s loss. There isn’t a Navy fan out there that wouldn’t have taken these results if they were offered to him at the beginning of the season.