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The Athletic has Army ranked #50 and on their 1-134 ranking. Navy is at #23. That gap seem huge given that the 2 national polls have Army ahead of Navy. CBS Sports’ 1-134 has Army at 21 and Navy at 25, similar to what the national polls show.

https://apple.news/ADguwHBL-Rqi4fYlwAwTBUA

Probably good to have some humility. We've only played the current bottom half of the AAC. Gonna need to perform just as well on the back half of the season to get consistent credibility from folks. And rightfully so. This is a team that was horrendous last year and lucky to get to 6-6 and also 6-6 the year before that so we weren't carrying good will from prior seasons either.

Need to make another statement with ECU this week. Then AFA. And I wouldn't expect any real credibility until a win vs North Texas and hopefully against ND.

But you don't get to pick your opponents. Just have to go out and dominate one game at a time.

This schedule is probably a blessing and a curse.

PD

The crazy thing is if Navy was to beat ND (they play next week), it totally
changes the expectations of the Army / ND game.

WrekDivr wrote: ↑Mon Oct 14, 2024 7:28 am The Athletic has Army ranked #50 and on their 1-134 ranking. Navy is at #23. That gap seem huge given that the 2 national polls have Army ahead of Navy. CBS Sports’ 1-134 has Army at 21 and Navy at 25, similar to what the national polls show.

https://apple.news/ADguwHBL-Rqi4fYlwAwTBUA

Who has Navy played, other than Memphis, to justify such a disparity?

Oh well, The Athletic rankings don't decide anything. Mere fodder.

While I am thrilled that we are ranked 23 and 24th in the polls, I don't think we are the 23rd best team in the country by any stretch of the imagination. The nice thing about this schedule is we get our shot. If we want to be special, then be 9-0 and go beat Notre Dame which is currently 14th in that athletic ranking. Because last time we played notre dame, I was there, the ND guy basically ran into me on opening kickoff returning the TD, and we lost 44-6 and it could have been double that score.

We've had some great wins. I've been at alot of them. We blew out houston, mizzou was 6-6 but thats still an SEC win, SD state was a legit team when we beat them (26th in polls), etc. but when is the last time Army football has beaten a truly good, legit, big-name team? (serious question)

Do that....and then we can state we should be 20 in all polls.

To me, this is the one blemish on Monken's legacy. Navy has beaten some legit teams over the last 20 years. They beat Number 6 team, number 16, won 5 of 10 versus notre dame, etc. We haven't done that.

wpgrad wrote: ↑Mon Oct 14, 2024 12:37 pm We've had some great wins. I've been at alot of them. We blew out houston, mizzou was 6-6 but thats still an SEC win, SD state was a legit team when we beat them (26th in polls), etc. but when is the last time Army football has beaten a truly good, legit, big-name team? (serious question)

Unfortunately, we've had a lot of moral victories over the past 40 years ... in some cases, 1 play away (like the false start against Michigan) from the big W.

Would love to see one of these converted to a real W.

ArmorDude wrote: ↑Tue Oct 15, 2024 8:03 am

wpgrad wrote: ↑Mon Oct 14, 2024 12:37 pm We've had some great wins. I've been at alot of them. We blew out houston, mizzou was 6-6 but thats still an SEC win, SD state was a legit team when we beat them (26th in polls), etc. but when is the last time Army football has beaten a truly good, legit, big-name team? (serious question)

Unfortunately, we've had a lot of moral victories over the past 40 years ... in some cases, 1 play away (like the false start against Michigan) from the big W.

Would love to see one of these converted to a real W.

I'm not enough of a historian but its a real question--when was our last truly legit win versus a named opponent (no offense to beating Air Force but I'm talking big 10/Sec type of legit win that would have name recognition to the average army fan?). Are we really going to have to go back to the 60's?

The second half of this season will show what this team is really made of. It starts this Saturday against ECU.