This won’t be a news flash, but service academy football teams don’t get many NFL draft prospects. Air Force has had a few over history, but the last one was Bryce Fisher in 1999. This list, done by Rivals.com, counting up the number of draft picks by school from 2000-2010, is a pretty stunning look at the success of Navy and Air Force.
Air Force and Navy are the only teams that had zero draft picks since 2000. In fact, look at the list – among the top seven conferences in college football, 70 of 74 teams reached double digits. Air Force, Baylor, Wyoming and Duke were the only four to not reach double digits in draft picks. Baylor barely missed, with nine.
So while 94.6 percent of the teams from the top college football conferences had at least 10 draft picks, Air Force and Navy had none (Army’s Caleb Campbell was drafted in the seventh round in 2008, making him the lone service academy player chosen in the 2000s). Service commitment is a reason NFL-caliber players like Ben Garland and Chad Hall didn’t get drafted, but the lack of draft picks puts the success of Air Force and Navy into a different perspective.
Navy has had eight straight winning seasons. The Midshipmen went to a bowl game each of those seasons, winning three, and didn’t lose a service-academy game from 2003-09. Air Force has been to six bowl games since 2000, including four in a row, winning two straight. The Falcons snapped Navy’s streak of service-academy wins this year.
Only 14 schools have a longer current streak of bowl appearances than Navy. Only 28 have a streak longer than Air Force’s four in a row. All of the schools above and below Air Force and Navy on that list have had more NFL draft picks this century.
Not sure exactly what you’re trying to say here, Frank. Are you saying that Air Force/Navy have done tremendously well (bowl games = success) considering their (relatively speaking) lower-caliber players? If so, there’s a few things wrong with that conclusion.
First is the caliber of opponents which allowed these two teams to get into bowl games in the first place. Navy may have eight straight winning seasons and bowl appearances, but who have those wins come against? The combined records of their nine beaten opponents in 2010, for example, is 53-63, with only three of those teams over .500. And they lost the bowl game, to boot. Things weren’t any more difficult for the Falcons last year, either; their defeated opponents were a measly 43-69.
Not to say that neither the Falcons nor the Midshipmen didn’t play well, of course. Just that their opponents weren’t all that great to begin with.
Second, you seem to discount the military commitment as a significant factor in the draft. Of course NFL teams are loath to waste a pick on somebody who they can’t even use for two years. But that doesn’t mean that service academy players don’t end up in the NFL. As you noted, Chad Hall and Ben Garland from Air Force both signed on with their respective teams as undrafted free agents. Any team that actually wants a service academy player knows that they only have to wait until after the draft to pick them up, given the reluctance of everyone else to risk a draft pick, too. (Frankly, I was surprised to see Caleb Campbell go in the draft, and believe it was more emotional/PR than logical thinking, there.)
This is, I think, the real point of what you are seeing play out in that analysis.
Finally, any attempted correlation of team success and draft picks to consecutive bowl appearances is tenuous at best. USC, for example, has been incredibly successful with 69 picks, although their bowl streak is now at 0 thanks to NCAA sanctions which prevented them from going last year. And Nevada has only had six players drafted versus a six-bowl streak, while Michigan (49:1), Tennessee (60:2), Miami (67:3), and Michigan State (39:4) all contradict the theory. The correlation you are looking for just isn’t there.
Enjoyed the article, though. Go Falcons!
(And Go Blue!)
To say that the military commitment is the only thing holding these players back from NFL careers is just not correct. If the NFL thinks you can play, they’ll work with you. We’ve seen that with Russ and Garland, for example, we’ve seen teams take a shot on a guy like Chad Hall. Even with all those guys, we’re still talking about a handful of NFL players. Every other team has more. The service academies have good players, but they don’t have as many NFL players as the teams they’re competing with. You can see that in what few other scholarship offers most service academy players had, as well. That’s a disadvantage and they’ve overcome it time and again. Kudos to them.
And WaterBoy, tell you what – if you don’t think these teams have beat anyone, here’s what I want. List for me every FBS team Navy and Air Force have beat since 2000. I will tell you if they had more NFL draft picks than Navy and Air Force.
I think AFA has a number of players who could make an NFL rooster…. IF they were allowed 12 hours a day to train, and didn’t have a military commitment. But I don’t think we have many (any?) who could make a real impact. Most all of them would bounce around between teams and practice squads. Schlegal, Russ, Farmer, Gizzi and Morgan all had pretty short lived NFL “Careers”.
I definitely feel Chad Hall still has an impact to make, he just needs to get more opportunities. He is every bit the player someone like Danny Woodhead is
Frank: “To say that the military commitment is the only thing holding these players back from NFL careers is just not correct.”
Well, considering I never said “the only thing”, I don’t know who you are accusing of being incorrect. I said that you seemed to discount that as a significant factor, not that it was the only one. Again, as you just pointed out in your response, the NFL will work with players from the service academies — they just generally seem to be loath to waste a draft pick, even a last round one, on a player who they can get as a free-agent instead. And the statistics from your link seem to back me up, here.
Frank: “And WaterBoy, tell you what – if you don’t think these teams have beat anyone, here’s what I want. List for me every FBS team Navy and Air Force have beat since 2000. I will tell you if they had more NFL draft picks than Navy and Air Force.”
Again, I didn’t say they haven’t beat anyone. I said that most of their wins have come against relatively weak opponents. And again, the numbers which I listed for 2010 support this.
Furthermore, you still seem to be drawing a correlation between the success of Air Force/Navy (as measured by consecutive bowl appearances) with their number of draft picks. As I already pointed out, that correlation — as borne out by USC, Michigan, et al — is false. Unless AF/Navy actually goes to the FBS championship game, you aren’t going to see many of their players drafted.
My point is that you conflate the two things — draft picks and bowl appearances — as though they are related, and that AF and Navy, by bucking that trend, are relatively better than the other teams in the FBS who have more draft picks. I’m saying that correlation is false, and that strength-of-schedule plays the larger factor in their success.
I don’t think you could seriously argue that NFL draft picks are not a decent measure of talent. The best players get drafted into the NFL, those people are paid a lot of money and invest a lot of time to determine who the best players are. It’s not lock solid, they’ll miss some, but it’s a good measure. And if the service rules could somehow be lifted for NFL draft picks, how many Air Force or Navy players would have been taken? Maybe a few more, but not an incredible amount. Probably not into double digits for either school.
Also, with strength of schedule, Air Force had a middling SOS but it was better than Wisconsin, for example. Being in a conference means they can’t schedule that poorly. Navy ranked 90th in SOS, which isn’t great either but still better than plenty of FBS teams.
My point is this – Air Force and Navy should be the “weak opponents” you mention. They rely heavily on players who were not recruited to any other Division I school. And obviously rely on players that aren’t selected in the NFL draft. Last year Air Force claimed that none of their players had a scholarship offer from a BCS school. A lot of factors go into what they’ve done – developing players, doing a good job scouting players bigger schools have overlooked because of size/speed, etc, or simply doing a great coaching job, with their system or in each individual game – but what they’ve done is impressive, I’m not sure how that can be dismissed.
Frank: “I don’t think you could seriously argue that NFL draft picks are not a decent measure of talent.”
No, I wouldn’t argue that at all. But the logical conclusion to this, sans the commitment factor, is that service academy players are generally mediocre relative to the rest of the FBS. If this is part of your point, I don’t know why you just didn’t come out and say so.
Which means that in the absence of significant talent, there is some other factor to success in play: SOS, coaching (getting the most from your players), and game strategy (also goes back to coaching) are then more important to that success. I happen to weight it more toward SOS than you apparently do.
Frank: “but what they’ve done is impressive, I’m not sure how that can be dismissed.”
This is our real bone of contention. It would be impressive if it had been done in the SEC, for example. As it is, I just don’t consider it as astounding, for either team. Sure, they are to be commended for playing as well as they have; but it’s not beyond reasonable expectations.
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Some players are good for college but not the pros. Witness the Boise State QB and the Houston QB.
With more speed coming to NFL d lineman, maybe an academy linemen and backer would have a shot but if that good, hello Stanford, etc.
The present 49er coach when, at Stanford said, only 175 HS players could make it at Stanford and that is its recruit pool. Same for the service schools and the Ivies.
Pray AFA can out recruit Navy now that the big USNA recruiter is now competing with Navy for the SEC area boys with Georgia Tech. Johnson will out recruit the Hawaii grad any day.
Navy has a great program going with TV games, Ireland game vs ND,
$4.5m for Army Navy etc.
Poor AFA with the TV less MWC. AFA needs to play EAST for the TV numbers and the money!!!!!!!!!!!!
BTW, the AFA killing USNA ex fullback Katani(spellingis in the the NE Patriots camp this summer.
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I’m 18 nd currently nd probably gonna enlist in the Navy soon but I’ve also played alittle bit of QB . I have tons of questions about this. How do I get with the navy midshipmen football program? Is there anychance of nfl prospects if a someone is a standout? Are you allowed to leave if you do get prospects or do u have to stick to your commitment? If you can answer these plzz email me thank you