For the first time this season, all three Commander in Chief’s Trophy contenders will play home games on the same day: Army West Point hosting Tulane at Michie Stadium, Air Force battling Utah State in Colorado Springs, and Navy facing Southern Methodist in Annapolis, the newly minted hip-hop capital of Maryland. Six things you should know about a home-cooked Saturday afternoon: 1. Navy and the CFP. After the Mids’ 45-20 upset win over Memphis last weekend, Navy found itself 20th in the College Football Playoff rankings, which will determine the four semifinalists that compete for the national championship and will set…
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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…
After Action broke the big news last year that set the sports world on fire: The Army-Navy game would be the only top-tier college football contest that would not at all influence the College Football Playoff selection process. Sure, neither the Midshipmen nor the Black Knights were on anybody’s national-championship radar. And yes, that radar hasn’t covered Annapolis or West Point since the 1960s. Still, the fact that the contest takes place with the CFP field already locked in creates the possibility of a highly regarded service academy team earning a chance to play for the national title … then getting demolished…
Could a team lose the Commander in Chief’s Trophy and win that shiny trophy on the right in the same year? Yes, it could. But wagering on it might be a bad idea. The College Football Playoff begins this season, with four teams from the NCAA’s top tier selected to face off in a single-elimination tournament to crown a champion. It’s a history-making innovation … unless you count the postseason for nearly every other team sporting event on the planet. Regardless, the group said Monday that it will make its semifinalist selections public on Dec. 7, live on ESPN before…
Three quick hits for a Wednesday morning, from Belgrade to Brian Stann to Big East football: 1. Pre-Olympic trip. Three Olympics-bound soldiers are among the seven elite U.S. Greco-Roman wrestlers headed to Europe later this week for the Gedza International tournament in Belgrade, Serbia, according to TheMat.com. Sgt. 1st Class Dremiel Byers (120 kilograms), Sgt. Spenser Mango (55 kg) and Spc. Justin Lester (66 kg), all members of the Army’s World Class Athlete Program, will make the trip; Mango and Lester will wrestle Friday, with Byers hitting the mat Saturday. At stake: A chance to fine-tune their mat game as…
