NCAA Football Air Force Football

Remember Nate Longshore? The junior Cal quarterback. He beat Tennessee earlier this year. Started all last year. Rumor has it he's a pretty good football player.

Well . . . He's done.

This is nothing official, mind you, but I think it's over for him. Cal melted down late in the year and was staring at a 21-0 second quarter deficit against Air Force earlier today. Longshore then went to the bench and in a little over two quarters of work his backup Kevin Riley rallied the team to a 28-27 lead.

This is the same backup who was scintillating against Oregon State in another start earlier in the year (nevermind that boneheaded last play, if possible). Cal just seems to play better behind him and he's rescued them from a colossal embarrassment in a big way.

Final score today: Cal 42 - Air Force 36

Riley's line: 16/19 (.842), 269 yards, 3 TD/ 0 INT

That's twice now California's offense has played well behind Riley following shaky Longshore performances. Longshore's got a nice bond going with his head coach, but his backup makes it happen better on the field.

And none of it is anything they particularly wanted to claim.

With the 42-24 loss to Air Force, the Irish achieved a few dubious things.

• Notre Dame's first 9 loss season in the Irish history.
• The sixth straight home loss is a first for Notre Dame.
• The most lopsided loss by ND to a service academy in 44 years (Navy winning 35-14 in 1963).
• The first time ND has lost to two service academies in the same year since 1944.

Unofficially, I think the record for cracks regarding the "decided schematic advantage" of Charlie Weis coaching Notre Dame went for an all-time high today.

TCU came into this season with visions of being this year's Boise State. They had non-conference games with three BCS conference schools (sure that includes Stanford and Baylor, but they still count, sort of) to bolster their resume. They were ranked in the preseason top-25.

Unfortunately for the Horned Frogs, the dream died this past Saturday when the Longhorns took them apart in the second half. The hangover apparently didn't dissipate in time for a Thursday night road game.

TCU lost on the road at Air Force 20-17 in Overtime. A sloppy and painful in-conference loss as TCU blew a 17-3 lead in the 4th quarter. TCU found itslef unable to kill time with an ineffective running game that couldn't even crack 100 yards on 34 attempts. It marks the first time TCU has lost to Air Force or any of the service academies under head coach Gary Patterson.

Sure Michigan and Notre Dame each starting out 0-2 has been the big story. A huge dosage of schadenfreude to start the college football season as the respected fanbases are humbled. TCU, by contrast, will be largely overlooked and at most dismissed as another non-BCS team that couldn't live up to their hype.

Colorado and Air Force are trying to make sweet scheduling whoopee sometime in the near future. The problem: Colorado coach Dan Hawkins is wetting his pants in fear of Air Force running the option offense.

"I'm not going to lie to you: who wants to go up against that offense for one game?" the University of Colorado second-year coach said Tuesday at a football kickoff luncheon. "I'll have to see how much option offense (new Falcons football coach Troy Calhoun) wants to keep doing."

Now, I'm a big fan of Hawkins and think he's one of the most innovative coaches around. That said, he's being foolish here.

1)Do you homework, coach. New Air Force coach Troy Calhoun is promising less option and more of a balanced/passing offense. No longer will the option be deployed every down, in all looks. Instead, it will be situational and perhaps phased out as the roster is built to Calhoun's image.

2)You're Dan Freaking Hawkins! Zen master supreme. Mr. Take on All Challenges. Mr. invent crazy offenses and then force opponents to prepare for you. The Colorado air must be extra thin and reducing oxygen to his brain because a series with Air Force should be right up Hawkins' alley.

As disappointing as the de-commitment of Philip Davis was (who has since committed to Tulane) Navy landed a good one today in Norcross linebacker James Simien. Simien is 6'1, 210-lb middle linebacker who chose Navy over Air Force, Ball St, and Western Kentucky. Simien was a key component on the Blue Devils' playoff run in 2006, and was named to the All-Region football team by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Simien is listed as running a 4.66/40 from Scout.com, although I dug up a 4.56 time from a combine held at Clemson earlier last year. Whatever the case may be, the point is that Simien had good speed for a linebacker and should be a valuable addition to the 2007 Navy recruiting class, which currently stands at twenty three players.

Also, Navy has received a verbal commitment from North Carolin LB/TE Trey Grissom, who at 6'4, 220-lb also sports a 4.5 grade point average and participates in his school's International Baccalaureate program. Jason Wright, a 6'2, 195-lb safety from northern Indiana also recently committed to Navy. Both players will likely bypass NAPS and be directly admitted into the Academy.

They say that things like this are bound to happen. That in all manner events, whether on or off the football field, all things must eventuall come to an end. For Fisher DeBerry and the Air Force football community, the dynasty built during the 1980s and 1990s has come to a sudden halt following a third consecutive losing season, an event which culminated with the retirment of the 68 year old living legend and the beginning of a new Service Academy football era.

And just as Rome did not fall by the hands of the Visigoths alone, so to can we trace the fall of Fisher DeBerry's Air Force program to a multitude of different causes and events. And while one can dispute the label of "fallen," one certainly cannot find argument in the fact that the Falcons of today are not the Falcons of five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty years ago. The possible explanations for this are many, and in reality we will come to find that it was probably a combination of both internal and external factors which finally slowed DeBerry's Juggernaut. From the advent of a more competitive Mountain West to the changing face of the Air Force Academy's administration, these factors finally came to a head in 2003, which, not by coincidence alone, was also the year another Service Academy asserted itself onto a winning stage. But for the sake of argument, I wish to focus in on only one of the many aspects that contributed to the recent downswing of the Air Force football program, and with it, DeBerry's career; The advent of Paul Johnson's resurgent Navy Football program.

Fisher DeBerry, the longtime Air Force coach, has resigned. You may remember that sometime last year he said some things about the Afro-American player" that were perhaps better left unspoken, or better yet unthought. (Though that would have robbed us of the completely awesome sign at right displayed at this year's BYU-Air Force game. Favorite nuance: the guy sitting down, looking at the sign guy, obviously thinking "Doesn't this guy know we're in Utah? There's no yelling in Utah!")

No doubt the racial whatever will form a major part of his legacy, but it shouldn't overshadow a remarkable record: 169-109-1 and 17 winning seasons at a military academy devoid of NFL prospects.

For those of you who missed the first installment of our little photo essay from Navy's 24-17 win over the Air Force Falcons, you can catch what you missed right hyah.

Ah, Falcon Stadium. Tucked into the side of some mountains at over a mile above sea-level, it's not exactly the most comfortable place to watch a game. Modern, it was not, but I will admit the food selection was very good. It should be noted that I enjoyed a fine piece of chicken on a stick during the game.

For a team that only completed eight yards worth of passing, the Navy offensive line does a good job in pass protection on this play. After struggling with UConn's defensive line last week, it was good to see Hampton get time in the passing game, even if he only completed one pass.

Shun White has really come in and played well for Navy over the first half of the season. While the Mids routinely rotate four different players into the second slotback position, it's White who's shown the most promise as a runner.

It seems like Navy just can't get any respect. In fact, two days after defeating rival Air Force on the road, Navy's players and staff are busy defending their 5-1 record after whispers arose of the team being nothing but "lucky."

By now you've probably heard of these so-called "lucky" comments that were supposedly uttered by an Air Force player/coach in Saturday's game. Johnson, who didn't name a specific player or incident, went on to explain how his team gets decidedly little respect from teams they beat.

"You get tired of hearing it every year. Every day we pick up the paper we see something about how it's embarrassing to lose to us, we're the luckiest team in America. It gets old after a while. We've won four in a row, they can call it whatever they want. That's four years in a row now, any way you want to spin it."

I, along with just about every other writer who covers Navy football, have no idea where all this sprang from. Most likely it had to do with some on-the-field trash talk or behind the scenes stuff that none of us regular people see or hear about. When asked if the source of the comment was an Air Force player, Johnson responded with a "sure was." However when Johnson elaborated on his team being the "luckiest team in America," Navy's head Coach maintained that it wasn't just coming form the Falcons.

Well, I just got back from Colorado Springs, and may I say the long trip was definitely worth it. It was my first time at Falcon Stadium (more on that tomorrow), and I was very fortunate to have the amazing photographic skills of my father along with me. Here are some images he snapped from Navy's 24-17 win over Air Force...

If you look up "wrecking ball" or "hit stick" in the dictionary, chances are you'll see Adam Ballard's picture. The 6'1, 230 lb fullback was a monster for the Midshipmen on Saturday, rushing 27 times for 134 yards. He's now well on his way to 1000 yards on the year.

Don't get me wrong, I think Air Force quarterback Shaun Carney is a good player, but Navy's defense really made him look mediocre on Saturday. Carney had only 57 yards on the ground, and was 9-19 for 119 yards through the air. Still, he's one of the most elusive quarterbacks in all of college football.