Big Picture Focus: Taking Down the Pirates and Preparing for Army

Welcome to Navy Sports Central, the official podcast of the Navy Sports Nation!

It is December, and that means Army week is right around the corner. Join me, Karl Darden and Navy Sports superfan Doug Conkey, as we break down the Mids solid win over East Carolina, and discuss the impact of the transfer portal and name, image and licensing  (NIL) deals on college football. 

We'll also get you caught up on the Women's Basketball team. Zanai Barnett-Gay, Kate Samson and Kyah Smith have them playing at a high level, while freshman Mary Gibbons has made an immediate impact with her long range shooting.

Both Navy Swimming & Diving teams head to West Point for an absolutely crucial dual meet. We'll tell you who to look out for as the Mids play catch up in the annual Army - Navy Star series.

We've got all that plus our Question of the Day and Mid Watch segments, so please stay with us for what promises to be a great conversation. 

Related Links:

• Navy - ECU Game Highlights
• Five Navy Defensive Players Recognized Among AAC's Best

We want your answer to our Question of the Day. Here is the one for this episode:
Navy's record in bowl games is 12-11-1. What is their longest winning streak? Is it

A. 2
B. 3
C. 4
D. None of the above

You can answer by sending us a text message using the link at the top of the show notes. I'll also post the question on our group Facebook Page.

Follow Navy Sports Central wherever you get your podcasts:

Check out the Navy Sports Nation group page on Facebook!

Music is provided courtesy of Audio Jungle. Artists featured in order:

• Seven In Music (Intro)
• Alexiaction (Deep Dive)
• Loka Music (Deep Dive Pt. 2 Lead In)
• Artlss (Question of the Day Lead In)
• Cinematic Alex (Closeout Music)

Chapters

• 0:14 Intro & Episode Description
• 1:00 Sports Update
• 6:05 Deep Dive Segment (Pt. 1): Navy - ECU Breakdown
• 31:21 Deep Dive Segment (Pt. 2) Impact of NIL and the Transfer Portal
• 53:02 Question of the Day & Mid Watch Segments
• 57:38 Sign off & Show Credits

Transcript

Karl: 0:14

Hi everybody, my name is Karl Darden and I'd like to welcome and thank all of you for joining us today on Navy Sports Central. I'm your host and this is the official podcast of the Navy Sports Nation where we take a deeper dive into Navy sports. It is December and that means the Army-Navy game is right around the corner. This year's contest should be especially interesting, with both teams headed for bowl games. Let's just hope the Mids can wind up singing second when they score off against the Black Knights on December 14th. We'll talk a little bit about the run-up to that game in our Deep Dive segment with today's guest. We've also got our sports update question of the day and mid-watch segments, and I also have an exciting announcement about a new feature to the show coming in 2025. So please stick around because we are just getting started. All right, it's great to have you guys with us. Thanks so much for dropping in. I really appreciate you taking the time Before we get into the sports update's great to have you guys with us. Thanks so much for dropping in. I really appreciate you taking the time Before we get into the sports update. I wanted to bring you all up to speed on some additions I'm looking at making to the show during the upcoming year, and this is being done with the idea of getting more of the Navy Sports Nation involved in the podcast. The only thing that won't change is the audio-only format being just a one-person operation. Adding video editing to the workflow isn't really what I'm looking for, but I think it could be very interesting to host a live stream every so often. It would be pretty much like a roundtable format that includes two or three panelists. The idea would be to discuss what is relevant to Navy sports at the time, and I would make an announcement well in advance letting everyone know when it is, so they would have the opportunity to engage with the panel. The live stream would also be recorded and I would later edit the audio so that it could be released later as a podcast episode. I floated the idea about a week ago on the group Facebook page as well as my class page, and the response was pretty positive. So I've decided to move forward with the planning of the first live stream, and that will likely take place after the holidays. Please stay tuned for more info as those plans begin to fall into place.

Karl: 2:02

Now let's go ahead and jump into our sports update, and we'll start with the women's basketball team. They got out of the gates quickly and currently have a 6-2 record. There are a handful of non-conference games left before they start their Patriot League schedule right after the new year, and that's when things are really going to get cranked up Now. I want to remind you that there are no seniors on this year's squad, but the group they do have has been pretty battle-tested. Point guard Zanai Barnett-Gay is picking up right where she left off. As the mid's number one scorer, she's averaging nearly 18 points per game and also leads the team in rebounds and assists. Meanwhile, junior center Kate Samson is making nearly 50% of her shots from the field. One newcomer that has contributed early is freshman Mary Gibbons. She had a breakout game against Wagner a couple of weeks ago, putting up 17 points on 7 of 11 shooting, and she also connected three times from long range. And finally, sophomore Kyah Smith continues to be a factor, just like she was last season. Smith is third on the team in scoring at just about 10 points per game, and she was the other half of a very productive backcourt last year, along with her classmate Barnett- Gay. So I'm really looking forward to watching them this year to see what they can do. We're going to find out a lot more about this team when conference play begins, but I've watched the highlights from most of their games and so far I can tell you that they play some really tough defense and are very smooth in transition. The Mids were 9-9 in the Patriot League last year and I think they've got a really good chance on improving on that record, despite being such a young squad.

Karl: 3:24

Next up we've got Navy Swimming and Diving, where both the men's and the women's teams have been preparing for their star meet against Army. This meet will be carried on ESPN Plus as usual, so if you happen to subscribe, be sure to check it out. If you do, you're going to want to keep an eye out for sophomore Ben Irwin. He had a monster year as a freshman and hasn't shown any sign of slowing down. Irwin swims the 100 and 200 backstroke and he won both of those events a couple weeks ago at the West Virginia Invite, leading the mids to a first place finish. The women came in third. In that same event, sophomore Ella Habjan and junior Lauren Walsh posted a couple of wins. Habian got to the wall first in the 100 backstroke, while Walsh took the 100 breaststroke.

Karl: 4:04

The West Virginia Invite was the mids' final competition before they take on Army this weekend, and I've got to say that if the mids don't take both stars, their chances of winning the series this year become very slim. Right now the Black Knights have a 7-2 lead and that means they're halfway to the magic number 14 to clinch the competition. If they pick up two more wins before we really get into the winter sports schedule, they only need to come up with five more out of the remaining 15 contests to seal the deal. And no matter how much of an optimist I am, there's no denying that if Army gets to that point, the math looks way better for them than it does for the mids. But I will say that if there are two teams who have shown that they can deliver when it matters most, it's Navy swimming and diving, and I feel pretty good about them being able to come through again. Okay, there are two more things I want to leave you all with before we get to our deep dive segment.

Karl: 4:50

First, the Navy water polo team just completed another solid season. They got to the Mid-Atlantic Conference Championship game for the second straight year, but the only problem was that number one seeded and undefeated F ordham University was standing in their way of a league title. The Mids battled all the way but eventually fell short 11-6. Still, it was an outstanding year for the team. Sophomore Kiefer Black and freshman Ryan Irwin were named first team all-conference and sophomore Billy Zech picked up second team honors, while freshman goalkeeper Ryan Munch was named rookie of the tournament. So congratulations to the Navy water polo team and another great season.

Karl: 5:28

And finally, we're going to go ahead and finish up with the wrestling team. Cary Kolat had some gaps to fill after last year's seniors graduated and one wrestler who has stepped up immediately has been sophomore Danny Wask. At the Navy Classic a couple weeks ago he upset the number six ranked wrestler at 174 pounds from Nebraska, scoring a 10-5 decision that got him the top spot on the podium. It was also the second consecutive Navy Classic title for Wask, who was named the EIWA Wrestler of the Week. Next up for the mids is the Las Vegas Invitational and that gets started on Friday. So there you go.

Karl: 5:57

This edition of the Sports Update is now complete. Next up is our Deep Dive segment. So, in the words of the late great Stuart Scott, please stick and stay. Okay, welcome back to Navy Sports Central. And joining me today is a really good friend and classmate, Doug Conkey, and I wanted to give you his bio really quickly before we bring him on. Doug was a member of the golf team while we were at the academy and after graduation he became a Navy pilot and flew the A-7 Corsair and the F-A-18 Hornet. Following a successful Navy career, doug moved on to local politics, serving as a two-time county commissioner for Clay County which, by the way, is just south of Jacksonville, florida and now he's serving as the intergovernmental coordinator for the St Johns River Water Management District. Okay, so that basically gets you up to speed. Now, doug is what I would call a Navy sports super fan. I mean, we've talked on the phone several times about not just a football program but quite a few of the other Navy sports. So, doug, welcome to the show. It's great to have you on.

Doug: 7:06

Karl, thanks for allowing me to be on. You're a great show. That's really helped the class and the sports fanatics like myself get in touch with what's going on, and so just a pleasure to be here today.

Karl: 7:18

Yeah, and this is going to be and, by the way, for those of you guys out there listening, this is what I'm looking to do, that's a little bit new for 2025 is pull in a lot more folks that are part of the Navy Sports Nation Facebook group.

Karl: 7:34

So I think it'll be kind of fun to have some fans like Doug on the show, in addition to our standard format where we just have a guest, and my goal today was actually to pull in a couple more folks, but unfortunately, being the Thanksgiving holiday, we were not able to get them on, so this will just be a standard guest format today. But we do have several questions from the group itself that we can answer as well. So, Doug, what I'd like to do today is talk a little bit about the game yesterday against East Carolina and get your take on that. But first let me ask you when we were talking on the phone a couple of weeks ago as the midids were getting ready to play the Pirates, we covered a couple of different things, so I was wondering if you could recap some of the parts of the conversation we had for everyone out there.

Doug: 8:17

I was thinking in the big picture, we always want to win, but also in this picture, army-navy is the preeminent goal of the year and especially this year. Also, the winner is going to get the CIC. So this game was a game that you wanted to win so we could get our mojo. We've had a rough month against some really tough opponents probably the some of the toughest opponents, uh, during the course of the year and it. So we're at a time going into the biggest game. You really want the team to get a level of mojo back and sense of confidence, but also having your starting quarterback healed. So if he's not 100, there was no reason to put him in. And in the big picture was build a game plan right from scratch, knowing Braxton was going to be the starter and Chronic is very good at building a game plan around the talent level he's got on the field and they did that. And as Braxton shows his talents that they always speak highly of and he's a different level of player strong arm with those long legs, you know he can be pretty quick, as we saw and they just wanted to make them one dimensional, which they were able to do, which allowed them to kind of focus on how to keep them in a box, which they did and, as we've seen, making mistakes and their coach kind of talked about it afterwards. You know we made a couple of mistakes in our first two drives. That totally changed the complexion for us, because now we allowed them to get comfortable and implement their game plan.

Doug: 10:09

They came out of halftime, they hit all cylinders, braxton, got comfortable, they started scoring and then they made us get out of our game plan for everybody to kind of rally around one another, show what they can do and also keep the starting quarterback on a healing process. And the head coach made it quite clear that he will be ready to go for the Army game. It's just they just didn't want to risk bringing him back prematurely. Ecu is a physical team we know that from past years playing them and so they had a plan. It was able to be executed to perfection, almost, you could say Stats really showed how many times does Navy come out of the half down zero to three and then put 34 points on the board in the second half.

Doug: 11:09

So that was very good, right, right, and I think we came out of it in good health. And it was interesting too, because you're seeing some players that we're not used to seeing, who have risen up during the course of the season. Willis is a good example. He was a beast on the line, that freshman linebacker who blitzed and tackled.

Karl: 11:32

Yeah, yeah.

Doug: 11:33

So I mean you're like, okay, that was early in the game and they're putting a freshman linebacker in. So their game plan for us is to play as many folks as possible, that in a tough game they can keep people fresh Right right.

Doug: 11:51

And it's good that he's really developing that kind of depth to be able to have the confidence to do that. So it was very good. And now, as you heard Jacob say during his interview, we'll celebrate for 24 hours. But make no mistake, and these two senior captains, if you ever watch them interview after a game, they're about as focused as I've ever seen and they said we're going to eat, sleep and breathe Army for the next two weeks. Right, right.

Karl: 12:24

Yeah, that's so true.

Karl: 12:26

And just to kind of speak to your point around how that game evolved, I was kind of looking back at some of the ESPN stats and one thing I was going to kind of look at is how the flow of the possessions goes. So in the first half Navy's possessions went like this Downs, punt, punt, fumble, punt, downs, missed field goal. And, by the way, that missed field goal obviously was like inside of extra point range. So that was really disheartening. And then you turn around and look at the second half and it was TD, punt, td, td, td, td and then end of game. So there's a pretty clear turnaround there in terms of, just to your point, they were moving the ball fine in the first half, but just making the right play at the right time and just executing all the way until they crossed the goal line. That was a clear difference maker.

Karl: 13:17

And speaking to your point about getting shut out and then coming back and scoring all those points, I was thinking about that yesterday as well. I'm thinking, man, when was the last time they got shut out and they came back and scored over 30? And I said, well, I still have to look that up, but I do know the last time they came back and scored 27. And that was four years ago against Tulane, because that was in the COVID year and I remember they were down 24 zip and ended up winning on a last minute, on the last second field goal by Bijan Nichols that he kicked through right as time expired. So that's the last time they put up at least 27 points.

Doug: 13:51

So you bring up an excellent point is that even even the announcers were stunned when Reithman, who is one of the best punters in the country, didn't hit such a good punt. But the missing, the field goal, that's been kind of an issue for us this year. Yeah, and if so, if I had an achilles, if I had an achilles heel right now at that point for navy armenian navy football games. As much as we would like to blow them out like we did when johnson's first year, they typically come down to close games, right. That close game typically means the field goal kicker is going to have tremendous responsibilities and pressure if it's a game-winning opportunity, and obviously he had an injury earlier in the year. But I don't know if there's competition that's to be had on who's going to be the starting, because field goals do make a difference in the Army-Navy game. Yeah for sure.

Karl: 14:45

Now looking at Kirkwood's numbers, that missed field goal was his first from that close. He was 2 of 2 this season from 20 to 29 yards before that kick, and he's made 2 of 4 from 40 to 49 yards with a long of 46. So that comes to only seven attempts all year, and the main reason for that is because the mids have been pretty consistent once they get inside the red zone. The one thing I will say is that you don't see too many field goal tries from the right hash mark from that close in. That's a pretty sharp angle but nevertheless, I'm sure it's one that even Kirkwood will tell you that he needs to be ready for, no matter what. By the way, L ance Gossett is the only other kicker on the roster besides the punters and and he handles the kickoffs.

Karl: 15:23

Um, maybe the coaches go with the competition these next two weeks, or maybe not uh. Either way, there's going to be a lot of attention paid to sharpening up the field goal efficiency between now and uh December 14th. All right, so we did talk about uh braxton woodson's uh play and and, like you were saying, I mean clearly a different uh quarterback in terms of just his build. You know how he moves on the field. Compared to Horvath, I would say that you know you're looking at the two of them. Horvath is probably the quicker and the more elusive of the two, but I would say in terms of straight line speed they're probably about the same. I might even give the edge to Woodson because of his legs and how long they are, because when he broke that 38 yarder up the middle once he got past that first line there, was nobody going to catch him, yeah, I mean.

Doug: 16:08

So that was good for him, because you think about it, when he's put in, uh, as the second, because blake's got to come out for an injury or whatever he's trying, he has to implement a plan that was put in for Blake and that's what everybody's used to, whereas in this case he has shown that if they have a backup plan and this is going to be the if we have to put him in as the backup, we can flex to this plan and we know he's comfortable running it Right. You know that's always tough coming in the middle of the game where he where he's had to do it, and it's kind of tough, whereas now chronic now knows. Okay, here are the plays I want to use if he's in.

Karl: 16:53

Yep, right, okay. So the other thing I wanted to mention very briefly is a little bit about this run up to the, the army Navy game. I mean obviously the, the. The preparation is going to be there in terms of the coaching staff and so forth, and and the players are going to do what they need to do to get ready. You've seen Army play a little bit more than me. I mean, I watched a fair amount of the Notre Dame game, but I've not really sat down and broken that team down, besides the fact that I know that they have a new OC and he is still using the triple option. It's a slightly different version. I think it's probably closer to their base than what we've base, than what Navy has been doing. But give me your take on what you see from that team. I know they are heavily quarterback-driven as well. So what are your thoughts on the Black Knights?

Doug: 17:39

Well, obviously, taking nothing away being 9-0, going into the Notre Dame game is impressive, I mean, it speaks volumes. So you know, they did at the beginning try some of that. Like, what we've done is gone to the wing tee, which is modified, a hybrid of the triple option, but they got frustrated, I believe. So Munkin just went. We're just going right back to the base, we're just and he's done very good building that foundation. I mean, you watch that offensive line, uh, the quarterbacks, 220, and they just march and push people down the field three, four, five yards at a clip and they take, they just wear you out, keep the the keep the ball in their hands.

Doug: 18:25

I've just watched them and that's what kind of worries me, you know, because notre dame has the power. They said, okay, army's pretty much against us, is going to be one-dimensional, and and they just, and they just line up some bruisers that we are. Ultimately, we know all tooty too well. Every time the quarterback was running he didn't get hit by one, but he got hit by three guys. He's a beast that offensive line is.

Doug: 18:54

My worry is and I'm sure they will come up with a game plan is how do we line up with the expectation that they're not just going to push their way down the field three and four yards down there. How do we stop that? And then at the same time, have enough guys, because you know they'll throw that wrinkle play in there. You don't want to get burned, uh, by that. So I'll be curious to see how we line up against them to kind of just not get them comfortable with, enforce them much like they did with east carolina. If, if we know, army is going to be kind of one-dimensional, how do we? We're good at stopping the run, but that offensive line they got is you know they're, they're bruisers, uh, and that's what. And then in the quarterback, mean, he's like the quarterback we had what five, six years ago? The kid, the local kid out of Annapolis, that you know, runs through you as opposed to around you, but you know that does wear you out.

Doug: 19:58

So, leading up to it, they got Notre Dame, they got UTSA today, uh, and they got tulane, which I'm sure is going to have a chip on their shoulder after losing at home to memphis in the aec. Now, if they have to go to army, that could change things too, because army is used to playing in the cold. I bet you they're not used to down in new orleans playing in potentially snow and 20 degrees, right, and it forces you to be one dimensional.

Karl: 20:27

Yeah, that will be interesting. And the one thing that I was thinking about as it relates to that army game is, you know, looking at the offense, maybe kind of going back to their roots with the triple and everything. My thinking is that Coach Volker has done a really good job, even with programs that have, I mean, where we've been overmatched on the offensive line versus defensive line. I mean, this past game was a good example. You look at Memphis, that's another good example, but he's figured out well. The Memphis game might not be the best example because they scored 44 points, but still he did enough. So my biggest thing is all right.

Karl: 21:12

I think that Coach Volker can put together a plan that at least minimizes the impact of Army's quarterback Bryson Daily, and that scheme will undoubtedly target the offensive line too. I mean, it's got to be something that keeps them off balance. Now, whether or not they can do that for every single play remains to be seen. So that's why the onus comes back to the offense and then just being able to execute at every possible opportunity. Because, like you said, I mean every possession is gold and it's going to be said. I mean every possession is gold and, uh, it's going to be uh, I think it's just going to be a really, really tough battle from start to finish. Um come a couple of weeks from now in um in Washington DC.

Doug: 21:50

And it's. You know, it's easy for us to sit here and say, well, you know, navy should just keep the playbook wide open, uh. But as we've known that, the pressure in anything Army, Army- Navy I don't care if it's tiddly, winks or the A rmy - Navy game, uh is so high the coach is always reticent to get out of a game plan or do something that if it didn't go right, what were you thinking, you know? But I think Cronic's got a pretty wide open opportunity to kind of keep them off, like I was thinking, just send Kent deep every play that's going to pull two defenders with him. There's two defenders going downfield. Now you get. Maybe you can spread it out with others Because I guarantee you, with him they're going to say we cannot let Kent get behind us or it could be a tough day.

Karl: 22:42

Right, right, and the nice thing is this year as well. I mean, the team has got so many other weapons that they can kind of spread it around, and they did a really good job of that on Saturday. Okay, before we move on, I'd like to get to a few questions that some of you sent in through our group Facebook page. The first one comes from Michael Reed, and he was asking about this whole shoulder shrug touchdown celebration. He says, hey, give me the backstory on that. I want a full explanation. So, mike, here's what I found out, and in fact, it was tough for me to go back and find the interview.

Karl: 23:17

Okay, but I do remember watching one of the games and I was watching the postgame and I believe it was Luke Slabaugh, who works for Navy Sports Information.

Karl: 23:23

He was interviewing either Eli Heidenreich or Alex Tecza, and whichever player he was talking to said hey, that's just our way of saying hey, no big deal, this is what we're supposed to be doing, you know and I thought that was really funny because the original shoulder shrug for those of you who who follow NBA basketball and did 30 years ago.

Karl: 23:45

You know, the first time I ever saw somebody do that was Michael Jordan, and one of the playoff games against and it was an NBA finals, I think it was in 92 against Portland, but he was just going off. I mean, not that that's unusual for MJ, but there's just a couple of ridiculous shots. He was hitting in a row and at one point he looked over at the guys calling the game and just shrugged his shoulders as finishing third and for a while they were undefeated. I think that that's their way of saying look, this is not a big deal for us. We should be doing this all the time. So, mike, I hope that answers your question. That's just what I remember from the interview when Luke Slabaugh was talking to either Eli Heidenreich or Alex Tecza.

Doug: 24:43

Tecza does it all the time. I saw eli do it. Tecza, if you noticed, he's got that swagger when he goes in the end zone. It's just like what I call. He's very, it's a showman. And he, and he starts it with the, you know, the shoulder shrug right, right, uh, because you always see the riffs are kind of watching him, you know, so he doesn't cross the line in the celebration. And then Eli did it yesterday. So I was like okay, just interesting.

Karl: 25:05

Okay, the next question we have comes from Maura Kent, who's Nathan Kent's mom, and she's been on the show a couple of times. So Maura, thanks for sending this question in. She wants to know a little bit more about Jackson Gutierrez, who was the Navy third string quarterback who came in when Braxton had to step out for a little bit after he got hit late out of bounds. So here's the info on him. He is obviously a freshman and he's from San Antonio, texas. So those of you who remember Ram Vela from all those years back with the game against Notre Dame, he was from San Antonio as well, but he went to John Jay High School and actually played four sports, not just three. Normally you hear about high school athletes playing a sport in the fall, winter and spring. Gutierrez lettered in football, basketball, baseball and track. So I'm trying to figure out how that worked. Apparently, you know they probably played baseball and track during the same season and he had some sort of deal worked out with the coaches of both teams. But anyway, he was also recruited to Army and in a second you're going to see why he's a very, very good dual threat quarterback. In high school, his senior year, he was the conference MVP and he threw for 1,722 yards and 15 touchdowns and at the same time he rushed for over 1,000, 1,089 to be exact and he scored 19 times. So, interestingly, he came from a system that basically did not take snaps under center, and I think I remember hearing Blake talk a little bit about that when he was being interviewed pregame I think it was a couple of days ago and as they were talking about getting Jackson Gutierrez ready, they were saying that yeah, he's never taken a snap under center until he showed up here. So a lot of times you know, people kind of discount that, but it is kind of a big deal, especially when you're not used to that. I mean, you got your hands under center there and that ball comes back. It just gets fired back by the center and if your fingers and hands aren't in the right position, you could get jammed fingers and so forth and that just doesn't feel too good. So when I look at how Gutierrez performed yesterday, obviously he did have the fumble, so that was kind of a drag, but he ran the ball fairly well five carries for 20 yards and got him right down to the goal line until they just couldn't quite punch it in there, but again, he's a freshman, he's got plenty of time. Punch it in there, but again he's a freshman, he's got plenty of time. But he definitely has the skill sets and clearly Army thought so too, because they heavily recruited him and luckily we were able to have him come to Annapolis. So, maura, that's the info I could find out on Jackson Gutierrez.

Karl: 27:31

And that brings us to our last question, which is one that is probably top of mind for most Navy fans right now, and that is how is Blake Horvath doing physically? I would say that, based on Coach Newberry's response yesterday, I feel pretty good about him being ready to go in two weeks. He's undergoing treatment every single day and they're just going to be really smart with him, and luckily he's not the kind of guy who necessarily needs constant reps and so forth to stay fresh. I mean, he's got a football IQ that's off the charts and I think as long as he can, you know, get right on Saturday, we've got a really good shot. So your thoughts, doug?

Doug: 28:10

Yes, I mean and and coach called it and think also think of it as you know, Navy or service Academy, but maybe, from our experience, is a little bit different than I think maybe some other of the civilian colleges, in that when there's an injury, the doctors are not only worried about the kid and his being able to play, but they're protecting an asset that is, eventually, they have to make sure he is able to graduate and function in the fleet. So, if they see things that no, we need to protect this, and a lot of the guys who've had to retire because of concussions, that's the doc saying you're done, at this point in time, we're going to save your assets, your body, to make sure you can be a qualified officer. So, in this case, your assets, your body, to make sure you can be a, you know, a qualified officer. So in this case though, you know, at the army Navy game, big one, and he just wasn't a hundred percent, and and they just they didn't want to aggravate it in any way, and if it, what was going to be touted as a very physical game against ECU, as they have been in the past, and they said, well, like we said, yes, you want to win. But it's more important, we gel, let's build a game plan. And you showed because all year they've been touting in their post-game comments and during the week interviews, the talents of Braxton, which we saw flashes of when he was a freshman and we saw yesterday you can, you get them comfortable and you have the right play sets, it's good.

Doug: 29:49

And so I think they just say well, you got to be prepared, because you know what happens with a service academy they're running their quarterbacks take probably more hits than the average quarterback out there because of the systems they run. Uh, and fortunately with blake it's not like, like with ty. You know you had some knee injuries. He was dealing with back spasms, all right. So it just it. Just, it just gives them a chance to get, like you say, treatment. He can talk them up, you know, and I bet you, if they were in a pinch, he could have I mean, he could have gone out there. They had gone through the two quarterbacks, for you know some ungodly reason you would even want to talk about. Right now our focus is on our two top goals and that's having everybody that's critical asset to the team be ready, right, right.

Karl: 30:40

Okay, we're going to go ahead and take a short break now, but before we do that, I did want to give you all a couple of ways to stay up to date on Navy sports. The first is to join the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page. I've got a link to that in the show notes. Just click on it, answer a couple of questions and you'll be good to go. The second way takes even less time. Just hit the follow button on whichever platform you're listening to this podcast right now. It can be Apple Podcasts, spotify, iheartradio, it doesn't matter. Once you do that, every episode will be downloaded to your directory when it's released and you can listen to it whenever you're ready. So please consider becoming a member of our group and you can actually tap that follow button right now to show your support for the podcast. I'm looking forward to having you join us. We'll be right back.

Karl: 31:39

Thanks for staying with us on Navy Sports Central, Karl Darden here with you, and we are joined by my classmate and Navy superfan, doug Conkey, talking a little Navy football. So, doug, now I'd like to transition to a discussion on name, image and licensing, which has really stood college football on its collective ear. And just so you guys know, doug and I have spoken about this on a couple of occasions in the past, just on the phone or whatever, but it has to do with where college football is right now and how this landscape continues to change almost daily, and one of the things that I picked up on earlier this week was that, well, actually it was a while ago that Temple fired their coach about a little over a week ago and then just about four days ago, the beginning of this week, the president at Temple was talking about the fact that they were reassessing their college football program, which, to me, reads okay. Kind of a shock to me when especially when you consider that when the American conference was formed in 2015, that was Navy's first year Well, actually they were formed in 2013. Navy's first year was 2015 and they played Temple for the conference championship in 2016 and Temple won that game. So, um, the Owls were have been conference champions. I mean, so it's not like they've been doormats forever or anything like that. They've had a tough last four or five years, but the fact that you've got a, you know, group of five program seriously considering and this isn't just from the president, this is from boosters to wondering whether or not not not just dropping temple to like division two or whatever, but just getting rid of the program altogether. I found that to be somewhat surprising. But then when I heard them lay out the reasons I thought, okay, maybe that is worth taking a look at.

Karl: 33:29

And the main point of the discussion was Temple is not in a position to compete with these other programs who can just throw massive amounts of NIL dollars at these athletes for recruiting purposes and so forth.

Karl: 33:40

And I don't disagree, and Doug and I have had conversations around what that means for the service academies. I maintain that to some extent the service academies are somewhat immune because they're not really going after those athletes anyway. I mean, you're talking about these four and five star athletes. I've seen the service academies recruit two and three star athletes that develop into three and four star athletes, but those were never the ones that could really command a lot of like NIL dollars, so they were never really on the radar and I felt like because of that there would still be a place for service academy football in, you know, among the college ranks. So my mind hasn't really changed all that much, but for the first time I'm recognizing that shoot, the service academies might be in a slightly better position or on slightly more solid ground than some of these middle-tier Division I programs. Doug, what do you think about?

Doug: 34:35

that you are correct and obviously the Temple president couldn't have picked the worst way of phrasing that tactically because he came up back pretty quickly which in previous times, before Transfer Portal and NIL existed, it was all about development. You know there was a clear level of the ultimate performers that could recruit and develop, like Nick Saban programs, just for example. But now you have this NIL and a transfer portal come in and you kind of have seen a level of parity among programs now because players they have a good year and next thing you know they say well, I can go command more money elsewhere. So the group of five teams always are griping. The UTSA coach was one of the most vocal ones last year because he says all we are is getting picked clean by the power of four or it was power of five at the time because of these big NIL, these money foundations they're putting up there.

Doug: 35:43

Also there's, I think, where the service academies can really blossom is we recruit, we develop, we have a mentality, a brotherhood that carries over into what you're going to do the rest of your life. That really is going to recruit the special kids. Everybody knows you play a service academy. It's 60 minutes, you better be playing and it doesn't matter what the score is, you're playing hard. It's just a different game In Temple. They were bitten by it last year. The quarterback they had last year left for ice, yep, and so this president. But now that he has said, that is the worst thing, because now the vultures are going to come in and start calling all of the top Temple players and say, hey, are you willing to stay at a place that may not be playing football?

Karl: 36:40

Here's some money. Come to us.

Doug: 36:42

That's what I'd be doing, and so any coach that is going to get hired now is is like he, he really didn't do any favors but uh. So NIL obviously is going to create winners and losers. Because of that, the transfer portal has just uh, and, and I know it's just down to two transfers. But the other thing is if this kid, uh, that the quarterback at vanderbilt wins his suit, in which your juco time doesn't count against you, that's another, because chronic actually talked about it we're playing teams with nil and transfer that have our fielding teams far senior to us. You know these kids have been playing four, five, six years and so they're bigger and stronger. It just puts us, you know, we really have to bring our A game. Yeah, exactly, service academies in this new world of college sports that we live in, in particular with the revenue producing sports. I think that our pool of athletes has probably gotten a little stronger in the long term because we'll be the last bastions of the true recruits and develop a team, a foundation, and you keep doing this, whereas now you've seen how does one recruit, especially with the higher tier, the power fours and a good chunk of the group fives. How do you recruit a kid on the premise that, oh, you're going to, you're going to play for me, when they know that in a matter of a month, uh, through nil, all of a sudden this new, experienced quarterback comes in and bumps them and then, unless they are getting paid a lot of money like an archie manning which is a whole other story in how it makes kids stay around longer, because if they know they don't have a shot at the pros, but the longer they stay around in the NIL world making money that they never could before, the service academies are going to have a hard time competing against teams that are going to be full of a roster that is two to three years their senior by position, just because these kids are going to hang around and they're going to use all their eligibility, unless, obviously, they have a path to getting drafted or think they have a chance of getting signed as an unrestricted free agent. But what it has done is created this whole new level of parity so that, whereas before you had the top tier schools which had the ability to recruit and develop, and just that, the facilities, which in a way is nil uh, and all the things that made them powerful, has now been dispersed, because now the kids aren't necessarily thinking about facilities, they're thinking about the paycheck.

Doug: 39:53

And a good example is las vegas. You know they they pulled that kid from holy cross. He goes over there and all of a sudden he's not making what they promised him and he just walks out on the team, which leaves a really bad taste. It was Vanderbilt. They had a kid who was a Juco and he has now sued the NCAAs Now. He had a couple of good years at New Mexico State and then now he's at Vanderbilt and he's like I like playing at this power five level and I want more time. And so NIL and Transfer Portal has created a whole new landscape that really is going to create haves and have nots, halves and have-nots, only because money is going to. I mean, why would somebody leave a team when they've had a successful year? That player's had a really good year and yet they go off. A good example Dylan Gabriel. You're at Oklahoma, you're the stud. Obviously Oklahoma's going to the SEC and next thing, you know, he leaves for Oregon and changes the whole complexion.

Doug: 41:03

So Temple had the kid who's now at Rice and definitely had Navy's attention because we saw what he could do when he was at Temple and he did it to us this year. So it's hard to prep, but at the same time, we have the maturity level and one of the things that they made note in the beginning of the year maybe not so much the second half of the year, but in the beginning you have a team that's totally new to each other, so they got to learn the nuances of playing together as a unit and that first six games half the year could be uh, whereas navy, you know, they clicked, I mean they gelled, they showed they were a unit. Well then, now a lot of schools are getting that experience, playing as a unit and that those intrinsic changes that have made them a little bit stronger, right, uh, are starting to rise to the top. You know that. So it's, it's very interesting, but well, the straw that's going to break the camel's back collegiately is this revenue sharing. I was trying to read up a little bit in our break there and, uh, that is what I think probably the temple president was talking about.

Doug: 42:16

It's like this revenue sharing. Well, we all have to throw this amount of money in this pool and how much gets paid out is has potentially of creating haves and have nots and who gets the money, it could create a legal issues. So the non-revenue sports, I mean you could have whole athletic departments shed programs. So the academies I don't think we're a part of that. We're not going to take money and be putting into this revenue sharing. So the academies I don't think we're part of that. We're not going to take money and be putting into this revenue sharing. So right now we're kind of unique in that we have 36 division one sports and that's not going to change, whereas some of these schools, even like a Stanford, uh, or these programs that create Olympians and NCAA champions, may just go by the wayside because they are not producing the money and those programs have to suck up all that money to be competitive in this new landscape of.

Doug: 43:14

How much notoriety am I getting and how big a check are you going to Flipping recruits nowadays? Nowadays I guarantee it has now gone from. What are you giving me for facilities? Where am I staying with? You know, school, it's all. How big is the check? I mean ohio state's carrying what a 21 million dollar nil load that is. That's probably more than some athletic department budgets for schools, like a temple and that's just money they're throwing at athletes.

Doug: 43:43

So but the academies, I say our pool is still going to be strong. You know, that's where we shine. As we take that one, two and three-star athlete, you put them in a good environment, well-coached, and next thing, you know they're playing as a unit. You know we've always said you're stronger as a unit than you are as an individual and that's where, uh, and maybe it's a good example I mean, you got so many good players out there. Uh, it's not like the old days when we were there we had napoleon mccallum. Geez, what's the play gonna be? I don't know. I'm gonna guess it's going to napoleon, right, so, so, so, uh, it's just hard to say right now, but it's the haves and have-nots are going to jump. Revenue sharing is going to impact programs.

Doug: 44:31

Down here in Jacksonville, where I live, ju had football. They don't do that now and I think Kerwin Bell is one of their better coaches now in another program. He was the Florida quarterback that did well with UNF. Unf doesn't even touch it, but they have a really good basketball program and other sports. So some schools will look at Gonzaga.

Doug: 44:53

Oh for sure, they're a power in basketball, but there's no football there and we're unique because if we were to say you got to take all your sports and play in the same conference. That would be a really a kill the academy if we had to play all of our sports in the american. We go to a league that's very, very comparable to us and that's the patriot. But we take football because the historic, you know, uh, we've, we've always had uh, you know, in our heydays and we have these good years. I mean for us, uh, eight and four and we are in your beat army. That's a really good year. You compete for the AAC fine Commander-in-Chief's trophy and beating the service academies is still premier. 8-4 in the SEC or any of the power fours gets you showing the door. Oh and heck in some of the AAC schools.

Doug: 45:47

Jim Houston at ECU didn't't have a bad record, but he had one off here and bam yeah, you know, the expectations for a coach are so much, and now you look at where a lot of the changes are being made because these coaches, head coaches, make so much money.

Doug: 46:06

If you keep firing them because they're not producing, after only only two years, three years, the payout for the school is huge. So what are they doing now? Let me bring in a bunch of top tier coordinators. And when they dismantled Bobby Bowden in Florida State back in the heyday, how did they do it? They hired off all of his top tier coordinators to be head coaches elsewhere. So there's a new game in town where the coordinator now is going to be king because and that's why some of these head coaches I'm taking some of my money and I'm going to give it to my coordinators to keep them.

Karl: 46:48

Yeah, I think that's probably a fairly sound strategy there, and but I think you're right. I think when it comes to all the different changes that you're seeing, it's, it's probably not going to Well. First of all, I think it's going to probably get a little bit worse before it gets better. And for it to get better, it there probably needs to be people who have the political will to make some changes in terms of just providing more structure around the whole operation, Because until that happens, we're going to keep seeing this. I mean, this kid that's at Vanderbilt right now, you know he's bringing a suit against the NCAA because he doesn't want his junior college time to count. Well, you know, if he wins that, my God, that's just going to change everything.

Karl: 47:29

And I don't really see and that was never an issue until now, and I think that you know once you, college eligibility is college eligibility, regardless of its junior college level, division one, two, three, whatever.

Karl: 47:42

And I think that if, if somebody or enough people finally just put their foot down and say, okay, look, you've got four years of eligibility plus a red shirt year, or maybe even just give them five and just be done with it, you know, as a compromise or whatever that that needs to be where it ends, Because, to your point, when you got kids that are sticking around until they're 22, 20, well, 24, 25 years old, I mean and we saw that during the COVID years and so forth uh, that gets gets to forth, that gets old in a hurry.

Karl: 48:10

I mean, I was talking to my son, Ethan, and he was telling me about this one guy who, between injuries and having the timing of going through college during COVID and so forth, he's going to be coming back for his ninth year. Now, obviously, he didn't play all the games in all nine years. He played, like you know, two year and three year, and so you got to play a certain number of games for it to count as a qualified year. But the fact is he's been sticking around college that long because of these rules, and I think that Ishii had a running back that way because Newberry remembers him in 2019.

Doug: 48:58

Yeah, you know, and it's just, it just gets kind of crazy. But you know we'll see what happens and typically the reaction when these laws are passed to handle what has happened is that they make it too extreme, right, and so it takes time for people to realize that you have to pull it back some. So that's what happened. This is because there was a suit. Athletes didn't feel they were getting you know and probably there was some legitimate that schools were making a lot of money off a lot of young kids, really good talents. But the reaction has been this so much money has polluted the waters. Now that it's muddied.

Doug: 49:43

The NCAAs who's in charge? People are getting you know, the Big Ten, the SEC, these conferences are getting so powerful. So you have this huge swing where it's gone way past what would be what I would consider a nice, mature process. So eventually it's going to get so bad they're going to have to bring it back. But, like you say, it's going to get worse before it gets better, and I feel because a lot of athletes are going to get chewed up and spit out by the process.

Karl: 50:14

Yeah, yeah, and I think that that's one of the reasons why, when you see just all this chaos going on around you in college football, it's almost great to have these schools like Navy Army and Air Force. College football is still college football. They go out there and they play it because they love playing the game. It's not about the money, it's not about you know, I used to say, it's not about the shoe contract, it's going out there and playing for the guy next to you, and I think that that's why, just for that reason alone, I think schools like Navy Army and Air Force can continue to stay relevant in college football during this day and age.

Doug: 50:47

And here's one. What was going on this weekend? This weekend, or the last two weekends, it's been senior day, the last game of your college career. How many of those colleges, unlike the Naval Academy or the service academies, actually put a lineup on the field in which those players were there for all four years?

Karl: 51:09

Yeah, exactly.

Doug: 51:10

Some of them have there. They only go one or two, so how do you get them to step to go? This is senior day. This is your day to go out there. For some, it's like this is my last shot to make a big paycheck. There's no loyalty to the stands.

Doug: 51:27

This is like my third school.

Karl: 51:30

Yeah, yeah.

Doug: 51:30

Yeah, Tradition is is dying in collegiate sports.

Karl: 51:34

Yeah, and that's too bad. And to your point, real quickly, before we wrap things up here, I think that uh, uh, it's. It's just getting so much more common to hear the announcers that are calling a game, uh, say some athlete's name and saying the transfer from you know school a, and before that he was at school b. Like you said, this is like the third school that they're at and I mean you'll never see that at navy. I mean people, people don't come to the academies through the transfer portal. That we know for sure exactly and, uh, you know.

Doug: 52:07

So you know, we're the traditionalists that hopefully will remain to have a strong foundation. We'll know our place, We'll do it well and our pool of kids is really not going to change.

Karl: 52:22

Yeah, yeah, all right. Hey, doug, listen. That's going to wrap things up for us here, but I just want to thank you again for joining us today on Navy Sports Central and, like I said, in 2025, I'm looking at bringing in just kind of a rotating group of panelists and so forth to discuss different sports. So it'd be great to have you back on sometime in the future.

Doug: 52:45

That'd be awesome. Love to and thanks for all you're doing and go Navy beat Army All right. Thanks, Doug. Go Navy beat Army, All right, Take care.

Karl: 52:52

All right, bye-bye. Okay, stay with us, folks, because we've got our question of the day and mid-watch segments coming up next. This is Karl Darden, and you're listening to Navy Sports Central. We are into the home stretch now, which means it is time for our question of the day. So let's start by checking out the responses from the last one, which, if you recall, was from the episode marking the Class of 84's 40th reunion. Here is the question In the game against Charlotte, navy had a 38-3 halftime lead.

Karl: 53:34

What is the most number of points that the Mids have put up in the first half of a game since 2003? Is it A 40, b 42, c, 45, or D 49? Now, as we check out the answers, the most popular one was D 49 points. There were 66% of you who went with that choice. Next was B 42 points, with 17%, and then there were 16% of you who picked 40 points. No one selected C, which was 45 points.

Karl: 54:04

Okay, before I get to the answer, I'll tell you that at some point since 2003, the Mids have put up these numbers. In one half, they scored 40 against Rutgers in 2004. The year before that, they put up 42 in the first 30 minutes on their way to beating Central Michigan, and I think they scored like 63 points in that game. Then, in 2010, the offense led by Ricky Dobbs went crazy against East Carolina on the road and rung up 49 points in posting a 76-35 win. But all those points came in the second half. Remember the question asked for the points scored in the first half? That means that C 45 points is the correct answer, and that came in 2007 when the Mids played North Texas in what has to be one of the wildest games I've ever been a part of. Navy would end up winning the game 74-62, which sounds more like a college basketball score. But here's what's totally nuts there were four different times in the first half where Navy was behind by 18 points, and at halftime they were still behind 49-45. And it was the third quarter that proved to be the difference. The offense outscored North Texas 20-7 to put the game on ice, and the two teams must have been exhausted by then, because there were only 15 points scored in the fourth quarter, and that was a 9-6 in favor of the mids, I think. At some point during the first quarter, both teams scored 28 in a span of about five minutes and the stats were something right out of a video game. There was over 1,300 yards of total offense between both teams. Navy had 572 rushing yards to go along with 108 through the air, and the offense was so explosive that they averaged 10 yards per rush. So they were basically picking up a first down every time they carried the ball. That was one crazy game.

Karl: 55:39

Okay, now let's check out today's question. ESPN is predicting Navy will play in either the Armed Forces Bowl on December 27th against Miami of Ohio or the Military Bowl on December 28th against Boston College. The mid's overall record in bowl games is 12-11-1. What is their longest winning streak in these games? Is it A, 2, b, 3, c, 4, or D? None of the above? Go ahead and give that some thought and you can get back to me with an answer by responding to the poll question which will be posted later on the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page. You can also text the show directly by using the link in the show notes.

Karl: 56:13

Now let's finish things up with our mid-watch segment, starting with the women. We were following Amanda Graziano, who is a midfielder on the soccer team. The mids ended up 9-10-2 on the year and lost in the first round of the Patriot League tournament. In fact, it was kind of a rough month of October overall. Now, the team defense was generally pretty good, except for the star match against Army, where not much of anything went right. Navy held their opponents to no more than one goal and, as a midfielder, graciano played a big role in that. The only problem was that the mids went through a bit of a scoring drought at exactly the wrong time. They only put up one goal in their last six games, and that was a 1-0 win over Holy Cross on October 25th. Graciano did finish the year by leading the team in points, though, which is a nice way to finish her career.

Karl: 56:55

Moving on to the men, we've got Luke Wagner and Luke O'Connell from the sprint football team. The Mids did get back to the championship game, as expected, but they weren't able to make it four titles in a row, dropping a close game to Army 21-16. O'connell did not play in the game, so I don't know what was going on there. He might have been injured. Luke Wagner did lead the team in rushing with 67 yards. He also threw for 156 yards and two touchdowns, but it wasn't enough to overcome the Black Knights' 11-point lead. In the fourth quarter, the Mids scored with less than a minute to go and they couldn't recover the onside kick, so the Black Knights just ran out the clock. Wagner side kick, so the Black Knights just ran out the clock. Wagner will be graduating in the spring, so we wish him the best in his future career, but O'Connell is just a sophomore, so he will likely be back to help Navy pursue another CFL championship in 2025. That's going to do it for this edition of Navy Sports Central.

Karl: 57:41

Thank you all so much for joining us Now. If you like what you've heard, please be sure to hit that follow button wherever you get your podcasts, and remember to get the word to all the other Navy fans out there. Once again, I'd like to thank my classmate and Navy sports superfan, doug Conkey, for joining me today. It was great to get his perspective not only on Navy football, but also the transfer portal and NIL, two things that are really disrupting the college game.

Karl: 58:02

Our question of the day continues to be a show favorite. You can get in on that by joining the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page and giving your answer to this week's question. You can also respond by sending us a text. All you need to do is click on the link in the show notes. And just a quick reminder the views expressed on Navy Sports Central are my own and do not reflect those of the US Naval Academy or Navy Athletics. By the way, the music used in Navy Sports Central comes to you courtesy of Audio Jungle. This is a great site for purchasing the rights to use the music from thousands of artists around the world, and those featured in the podcast will be credited in our show notes. Talk to you soon, everybody, until next time. This is Karl Darden. Go Navy beat Army.