Is this year's Air Force team the best last chance for service academy football?

The Falcons are 7-0 and on track to play in a New Year's Six bowl as the structure of college football gets increasingly difficult for schools like it to excel

As a parade of celebrities and every imaginable national sports show descended upon Boulder, Colo. over the first several weeks of the 2023 college football season, there was an underlying belief, perhaps even among those there, that the fun surrounding Deion Sanders and the Colorado football program had an expiration date.

The Buffs surprised many by starting 3-0 and leaping into the top 20 of the major national polls less than one full year after finishing 1-11, but for all the excitement Sanders and some of his exciting young stars had generated, the team was in the early stages of a rebuild that not even an influx of 70 transfers could turn around quite so quickly. The bill was coming due and given that Colorado has dropped three of its past four games and has the most difficult stretch of its schedule still to play, it’s safe to say it has been delivered.

For some who closely follow college football, though, there was another layer to the eye roll-inducing, over-the-top coverage and discourse surrounding the Buffs in the season’s first month. It was quite possible that they, for all the attention they got, weren’t even the best team in their own state.

At 7-0 and at No. 19 in both the Associated Press and Coaches polls, Air Force is having the kind of season about which many Group of Five programs dream. 

The Falcons have been both consistent – they’ve had just two coaches over the past 40 years – and excellent – they’ve had 20 seasons since 1985 with at least eight wins, with a 21st almost certainly on the way – but the past several years have represented a different kind of sustained success. They’ve won their past 12 games going back to last season, giving them the fourth-longest active win streak in the FBS. They’re one of just seven FBS programs that have won at least 10 games in each of the past three full seasons and their win percentage in that stretch is the fifth-best in the FBS. The only programs ahead of them on that list? Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State and Alabama.

For all it has achieved in recent years, this season could represent a breakthrough for Air Force. Right now, it is the highest-rated Group of Five team. If it keeps winning games and manages to hold on to that distinction when the final College Football Playoff rankings are unveiled in early December, it will automatically go to a New Year’s Six Bowl game (working off the safe assumption a playoff berth isn’t in the cards). That would place it in either the Fiesta, Peach, Cotton or Orange Bowls, games a service academy hasn’t participated in since 1985.

It would be a resounding accomplishment for both the Falcons and coach Troy Calhoun, one of the steadiest winners in college football over the past 15 years, but what Air Force is embarking on right now is bigger than just itself.

In a rapidly changing environment, this might be the best, and perhaps even the last, chance a program like Air Force has to get to the heights it is on track to reach.

How the new landscape of college sports is more challenging for schools like Air Force

For much of college football’s modern history, the service academies – Army, Navy and Air Force – have been at a disadvantage compared to their peers elsewhere across the FBS.

Admissions and academic standards are stringent. There’s a military service requirement upon graduation and the allure of a free ride to college isn’t as appealing when someone’s football skills can earn them that at a gaggle of other options that come with fewer demands and a more traditional college experience. What is required of a solider isn’t always compatible with what makes a dominant college football player, meaning those programs don’t have the sort of overbearing size on both the offensive and defensive lines. What wins at the line of scrimmage doesn’t necessarily translate to combat.

Despite all of that, each member of the trio had managed to excel at various points over the past 40 years. Army made a Peach Bowl in 1985 and has been a consistent bowl team under current coach Jeff Monken. Navy made a bowl 15 times in 17 seasons from 2003-19. Air Force has been maybe the best of the bunch, finishing as high as No. 8 in the AP poll in 1985 and having remarkable steadiness at the helm of the program, with just two coaches (Fisher DeBerry and Calhoun) since 1984. The Falcons have finished with at least 10 wins five times since 2014 and appear poised to do so for a sixth time this year.

In the years to come, and as the effects of recent changes start to become felt in a more profound way, it’s about to get a lot harder.

Over the past several years, college athletics has undergone fundamental reforms that the powers that be fought against for the entirety of their existence. Many of the newly implemented measures were long overdue. Athletes can now profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL). They can now transfer once without the penalty of having to sit out a year.

But what’s beneficial, just and equitable for college athletes isn’t necessarily conducive to the on-field success of the likes of Army, Navy and Air Force.

Getting transfers into any of the academies is extraordinarily difficult to the point of being impossible. While the transfer portal is a way to effectively bolster and rapidly reshape a roster, it’s a one-way street for Army, Navy and Air Force, which only lose players to it. 

Since the government pays for their tuition and housing, athletes at the academies can’t capitalize on NIL deals, as their standing in the military forbids them from using that position for personal profit. The recruiting pool for Group of Five programs and non-Notre Dame independents generally isn’t able to command exorbitant contracts from companies and other third parties, but the fact it’s not even available to them should they end up at one of those three programs can be detrimental.

Since students at the schools are on a four-year clock toward graduation, the Falcons, Black Knights and Midshipmen often can’t redshirt players to bolster depth and experience, though Air Force has found some creative ways around it. As other schools have thrived with older rosters made possible by extra seasons of eligibility offered by the NCAA in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the service academies have largely operated as if nothing had happened.

Last December, Congress passed a law that, after this season, will not allow players from the three service academies to defer their mandatory military service to pursue a professional sports career. While it’s rare for players from Army, Navy and Air Force to make it to the NFL – and many players who attend those schools do so for reasons other than how it can benefit their draft prospects – the new legislation makes it that much more challenging to attract players who believe serving their country won’t come at the expense of their football dreams beyond the college level.

"Why do we want to repel people who want to serve?" Calhoun told ESPN in February. "They want an opportunity in that short, short window that's available to make the most of their gifts and talents. Well, let's be forward thinking here. If not, then we don't attract the best, because we're putting up roadblocks."

Then there’s perhaps the most relevant measure as it pertains to on-field execution.

For decades, the triple-option offense and variations of it has been an immensely useful tool for service academy schools, which have happily implemented it to mitigate their inherent size, speed and talent deficiencies. But in 2022, the NCAA’s playing rules oversight panel approved a rule that outlawed players from being blocked below the waist outside of the tackle box. College sports’ governing body cited player safety concerns as a reason for the move, but for service academies and others who utilize the run-heavy scheme, it eliminated the kinds of blocks that create space in the open field for their players and allow the offense to hum.

With that rule now in place, Army and Monken effectively abandoned the option for a more conventional offensive system. Just seven games into their 12-game season, the Black Knights already have more passing attempts than they did in all of 2022. It was, as Monken saw it, a necessary move, difficult as it may have been.

“In World War I, it was trench warfare, and, I mean, that’s combative and brutal,” he told Sports Illustrated earlier this year. “By World War II, we got aircraft carriers and hand grenades and we’re fighting the world a little bit differently. And in 2023, I mean, we’ve got all kinds of technology and weapons that we’re never dreamed of. People aren’t clamoring for us to go back to trench warfare. Find a way to win.”

So far, that rule change hasn’t impacted Air Force, which is running basically the same offense it has for much of Calhoun’s 16-year tenure. But the most pervasive and lasting effects of these legislative tweaks often take years to truly take hold.

Given that, a team like the Falcons has a small window before the enormity of the hurdle they’re facing will become apparent.

Can Air Force pull it off?

So far, they’re making the most of that opportunity.

Heading into its game today against Colorado State, Air Force is fourth among all FBS teams in scoring defense, at 13.4 points allowed per game. That stat is misleading in some ways as the Falcons’ offense creates lengthy, time-consuming drives that limits the number of possessions in a game – and thus, the number of chances for an opponent to score – but even when its defense is measured by points allowed per possession, it’s still among the country’s best.

That stout defense has been paired with an offense averaging an FBS-best 306 rushing yards per game, with four players having already surpassed 300 yards this season. Heading into this week, the Falcons were the only FBS team to have that many players with those many yards. Even after replacing three-year starters in quarterback Haaziq Daniels and running back Brad Edwards, Air Force largely hasn’t missed a step, with fullback Emmanuel Michel, quarterback Zac Larrier (the Mountain West outdoor 200-meter dash champion in the spring of 2021), running back John Lee Eldridge III and running back Owen Burk picking up the slack.

Behind them, Air Force has won its first seven games – the best start for a service academy since 1997 – and is in position to play in a caliber of bowl game it hasn’t since 1970. After getting this far, can it complete the task?

Only one of its five remaining regular-season opponents – 6-1 UNLV, a Cinderella story itself – has a winning record. Even if they do win out, the Falcons will have one final obstacle in the form of the Mountain West championship, where they’d likely face UNLV (again), Fresno State or Wyoming.

There’s not much margin for error, either. Given the current rankings and the perceived weakness of the Mountain West, it’s likely that a single loss would propel a school like Tulane past them (provided it wins out). 

If it does manage to go undefeated the rest of the way, Air Force will be granted the biggest stage it has had in some time, in a featured matchup against a prominent national program from a power conference, with an enthralled national audience watching along to see if a team likely to be more beloved than a typical underdog – who doesn’t love the troops? – can pull off the upset. And if they stumble at some point before then? It may mean the best chance at a service academy reaching such a high-interest bowl game will have been squandered, with the road to such a destination set to only get narrower over the coming years.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be framed in such dire terms.

Service academies will always play an integral role in college football and the pageantry enveloping it. The most desired piece of hardware between the three schools, the Commander-In-Chief’s Trophy, will still be there to compete over. Making a New Year’s Six bowl would be nice, sure, but beating Army and Navy in a given year might just be sweeter for the Falcons.

And if that magical run doesn’t happen this year? Calhoun’s program may just be belligerent enough, debilitating rules be damned, to get somewhere close to this point again.

(Photo: The Gazette)