Navy goes west, Air Force goes blue and Army West Point goes … well, goes to West Point … as the college gridiron season enters the home stretch. What service academy football fans need to know this week: 1. The basics. Before launching into conference tiebreaker procedures, national rankings and a handful of what-if scenarios, here’s the slate for the coming weekend: Air Force (7-3, 5-1 Mountain West Conference) visits the blue field of Boise State (7-3, 4-2 MWC) on Friday night for an MWC Mountain Division showdown (9:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPN2). Army West Point (2-8) concludes its home schedule Saturday (noon…
Browsing: Boise State
Navy football fans line up on both sides of the should-we-have-joined-a-conference debate. One side just got a bunch more ammunition. The Big East, which will be the home of the Mids come 2015, reportedly has been offered a deal by the NBC Sports Network that would be worth between $20 and $23 million a season. That works out to less than $2 million per school, and likely would be even less for the football-only Naval Academy. But it will be much, much less than previous estimates. In December, before seven of the league’s nonfootball members took their legacy basketball programs…
The Big East has had better Decembers. First, Big Ten-bound Rutgers sued the conference in an attempt to avoid paying its exit fee. Then, the “Catholic 7” — the conference’s legacy basketball programs — broke ranks. And just before the ball dropped on 2013, Boise State announced its football program would remain in the Mountain West Conference; the Broncos join Texas Christian on the list of football programs with a national presence to bail on the conference before playing a single game. What does this mean for Navy football, which is scheduled to join the Big East in 2015 and…
Seven holiday hits for your Friday military-sports-reading pleasure (click through for the non-service-academy-football notes): 1. Everybody’s bowl bound. Blogging at The (Colorado Springs, Colo.) Gazette, Frank Schwab points us to football expert Phil Steele’s preseason bowl picks, which include all three service academies. Steele slots Air Force into the first bowl game of the season, playing Washington in the New Mexico Bowl on Dec. 15. Army punches its ticket to the Dec. 27 Military Bowl in Washington, D.C., to face Boston College, and two days later, Navy heads to San Francisco to face California in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.…
A half-dozen quick hits for a Monday morning (non-wrestling news after the jump): 1. Big time for the little guy. Army Sgt. Spenser Mango recently had his turn as the feature subject of “100 Olympic Hopefuls in 100 Days,” a series put together by our good friends at USA Today. Click over to read about the Greco-Roman Olympian’s path into the Army World Class Athlete Program, his Army duties when he’s not wrestling or training, and how much weight he has to cut to make the 55-kilogram (121-pound) limit. 2. Lester’s homecoming. Mango may have received the national press, but…
A few service academy-related football notes to start off your week: 1. Praise from high places: We promised you updates on Air Force 2nd Lt. Ben Garland’s quest for an NFL job with the Denver Broncos, so we pass this along from Frank Schwab at The (Colorado Springs, Colo.) Gazette. Denver head coach John Fox offered some short remarks on Garland’s stellar work ethic during a post-rookie workout news conference late last week. Judging from the picture in that first link, the Air Force Academy grad’s strength and conditioning won’t be an issue. 2. Conference calamity: Speaking of early outs,…
