Schlabach Gives Shout-Out to Navy

A few days after penning an article on the schedules of a mysterious mixture of teams with and without BCS bowl aspirations, ESPN's own Mark Schlabach highlights the "must-see" games on a weekly basis for the 2007 season. His choice for week 14? None other than the Army-Navy game, which, according to him, "still matters more than most." Another interesting note is that his week 10 "upset alert" is Navy over Notre Dame. Interesting, I guess someone has been reading this site.

Mark Schlabach: Navy's Schedule Sucks

...From his most recent column over at ESPN.com, in reference to the teams with the easiest schedules in 2007.

6. NAVY: The Midshipmen play only four Division I-A teams that finished with winning records last season: Rutgers, Wake Forest, Notre Dame and Northern Illinois. Five of Navy's 2007 opponents won four games or fewer last season, including Duke (0-12), Temple (1-11), North Texas (3-9), Army (3-9) and Air Force (3-8).
Toughest game: at Rutgers, Sept. 7

Easiest game: vs. Duke, Sept. 22

You'll notice first of all that his list of the easiest schedules makes absolutely no sense to begin with. Since he claims he's going off of 2006 winning percentages, it's interesting to see how he left out just about every team that faced the worst teams in 2006. Ohio, for example, faced opponents with a combined 37.8% winning percentage in 2006, which was the lowest in the country. Navy, in contrast, faced teams with a combined 45.1% winning percentage. Ball St., Akron, Nevada, BOISE ST (!!!), Buffalo, TCU (!!!), Bowling Green, and Miami (Oh) all faced teams with winning percentages lower than 45.1% in 2006, yet none appear on Mr. Schlabach's assessment. Can it be that Mr. Schlabach was only focusing on BCS conference teams? At first it might appear so, but why would Navy and Hawaii be on the list?

I don't believe in baseing schedule strength off of last year's winning percentages anyway, and tend to take the approach that Phil Steele and others recommend with regards to forecasting strength of schedule in the preseason. Translation? Some mathematical formula I don't understand. Needless to say however, a number of teams Navy plays in 2007 look like they'll be much better than last season, if for no other reason that there is no place to go but up for some of these teams!

The last point I'd like to make is that Mr. Schlabach gets Navy's "easiest" and "toughest" games wrong. Duke is not the worst team Navy will face in 2007. I hate to label any team as the "worst," but from where I'm standing (and that is a very attentive and specialized position as a Navy fan) it sure looks like North Texas won't be as good as Duke in 2007. Not to go sour on Coach Dodge and his program, but had the Blue Devils had the luxury of playing within the Sun Belt conference I doubt they'd be performing as poorly as they have been in the ACC. In addition to this, I think Mr. Schlabach overrates Rutgers, as you would expect the World Wide Leader and its Big East contract to do. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Notre Dame is still a better overall team than Rutgers, and it's going to take more than a home upset of Louisville to convince me of that.

As they say, that is all.