The Black Knights and Falcons square off in Colorado Springs while the Midshipmen look to play spoiler on the national college football stage — here are six things you should know before Saturday’s service academy gridiron action kicks off: 1. Rivalry rout? Air Force (5-3, 4-1 Mountain West Conference) enters Saturday’s showdown with Army West Point (2-6) as a 17.5-point favorite and can become bowl-eligible with a victory. The Black Knights would need to win every game left on their regular-season slate to finish .500 and reach the postseason, and they’d have to start on the Falcons’ home turf (3:30 p.m.…
Browsing: American Athletic Conference
Five news bits for academy sports boosters, including a few updates to your fan calendar: 1. Army-PSU to “the U”: Army West Point’s Oct. 3 visit to Happy Valley to battle Penn State now has a time (noon Eastern) and a TV home (ESPNU). It already had a packed house: Penn State announced a sellout for Beaver Stadium, including more than 6,500 seats donated to service members, on Sept. 9. Army has lost its first three games by a combined 10 points and will visit Eastern Michigan this Saturday (6 p.m. Eastern, ESPN3) before heading to Happy Valley. Penn State sits at 2-1…
The Army-Navy game has made some rare offseason headlines in the last few weeks — not for any on-field reasons, but as an inconvenient outlier for college football’s new playoff system. For Army West Point and Navy fans whose college football season begins and ends on the same Saturday in December, here’s a quick primer: The rankings that determine which teams will play in the College Football Playoff, and the four other top-tier bowl games played on or before New Year’s, come out the weekend before the Army-Navy game. Last year, this simply meant the rankings ignored the game, but that…
Army, Navy and Air Force have locked in their season-opening football games, all starting the year at home against teams outside the top-tier Football Bowl Subdivision. Navy announced today that it will host Colgate at noon on Sept. 5 with the game televised on CBS Sports Network. It will be a nonconference opener for the first-ever conference football season at Annapolis; the Midshipmen will play in the American Athletic Conference, which has not released its league schedule for the year. The Mids’ nonconference slate is set, and Colgate is the only team on it that won’t make a yearly appearance. Navy hosts Air…
Navy head football coach Ken Niumatalolo stands one win away from a third-straight postseason bowl appearance, remains unbeaten against Army and is poised to lead the Midshipmen into football conference play for the first time in school history. Can you put a price on that? Yes: $1,574,810. That’s Niumatalolo’s 2014 salary, according to USA Today’s annual college football pay roundup, ranking him 60th out of the 121 Football Bowl Subdivision coaches listed. He easily outpaces Air Force’s Troy Calhoun ($892,750 in total compensation, 74th) and Army first-year coach Jeff Monken ($834,667, 77th). Niumatalolo’s pay would rank fourth among coaches in the American Athletic Conference,…
It’s to be expected that in a recent ESPN interview with the head of the American Athletic Conference, the word “Navy” appears only once. After all, the league begins official operations in just a few days, and commissioner Mike Aresco has 10 current members to worry about. Navy won’t join until 2015, and even then, it’ll be a football-only member. It’s the context of that one mention of the Mids that might make Navy fans shake their heads. When Aresco proposed a few rivalry games that could become cornerstone events for the conference, he led off with South Florida and…
If the Navy’s still seeking help in its motto department, it need look no further than its academy’s future football conference. The American Athletic Conference has officially debuted its new logo — that’s it on the right — along with a new website, which isn’t shy about touting the league’s impending success. Per the site: The league is about to “write a new chapter in the history of college athletics.” It “excels on every college athletic stage in every major sport.” It’s “The American,” for short, not the “AAC.” That’s too close to the ACC, league officials say. Logos with…
Four academy football hits, including an Air Force standout, two Army standouts and Navy’s bipolar 2014 schedule: 1. Garland’s new gig. Star Air Force defensive lineman Ben Garland joined the Broncos in 2010, left for active-duty Air Force service in 2011 and came back in 2012. The first lieutenant returns to Denver in 2013, but on the other side of the football — The Denver Post reported he’ll play offense this time around. He has not reached the active regular-season roster during his short NFL tenure. And he’ll also need to update his Twitter background picture. 2. Black Knight to…
Big East, we hardly new ye. Or, in Navy’s case, we never knew ye. At right, a nice graphic of the 12 schools that will make up the American Athletic Conference in 2015; all but Navy will be in place by 2014 for all sports, the Mids will be football-only members. Leave your take on the new name in the comments section. Here’s five quick hits while you ponder some logo possibilities: 1. Branding 101. The name “suggests a national scope and quality membership,” an ESPN official said in the news release announcing the change. Some might say the name…
