WP76.....

[CTOkie]

My wife works with a West Point grad who's around 33-35 years old.
He mentioned that Coach Monken arranged through the administration a few years ago to eliminate the summer military training for Army's football team, while NOT impacting the academic requirements.
This obviously has lifted Army's competitiveness over the past three years as I see it and it's good PR for West Point on so many levels as well.
I expect a close game today as this is Navy's "bowl" game to end a dismal season. Army 30, Navy 21.

 

[WP76]

As I understand it (and in a move that copied what the other academies had been doing for awhile) they moved the military training program for football players to earlier in the summer. Previously, the FB players came out of that training pretty late and fairly worn down. This move allowed the team to get back to putting on weight and resume football activities sooner.

The argument against was always that Army didn't want to create a football team that was a separate caste from the Corps of Cadets. They feared such a move would diminish the incredible cohesion cadets share over the four year experience.

When I was there, my football-playing buddies had a steep hill to climb because the academic year was starting as football was ramping up. In terms of football prep, they were also behind the schools they'd be playing. Up until perhaps the 1960s or 70s, it wasn't that big a deal as football wasn't the year round pursuit as it's become. However, you can't do what you did forty or fifty years ago without putting yourself at a considerable competitive disadvantage now.

I could be entirely wrong on the details of this new routine but I knew that when they made the change, it didn't get my attention as being inconsistent with the Academy's mission or of "dumbing down/lessening" the experience. They simply had to do it as Army had fallen so far behind Navy and Air Force and, for all intents and purposes, was a mediocre FCS school playing an FBS schedule.