Playing on the biggest stage in decades, Air Force squandered its claim for a big bowl bid, coughed up the football six times and lost 23-3 Saturday to Army.
As 52,401 fans headed to the exit, Falcons cornerback Jamari Bellamy took a slow and silent walk the length of a stadium draped in shadows. His silence spoke volumes: With the dream of an undefeated season broken, the chances of challenging Alabama or Oregon in a New Year’s Six bowl now hover somewhere between slim and none.
“We had high expectations to come out here and win this game and we didn’t. So we’re very disappointed,” said Air Force tailback John Lee Eldridge III, the emotional letdown so great his words were robotic. “We just didn’t go out there and execute the small things like we usually do.”
Is college football now such a big business that it’s naïve to believe in an underdog story?
When the playoffs expand to 12 teams in 2024, it’s hard to make a case that any team from the have-not conferences deserves an automatic bid. With the Big Ten, Southeastern, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences now ripping up the map and trashing tradition in the pursuit of money, what Air Force lost Saturday was more than a game.
Fair or not, the Falcons must carry a heavy burden. They represent the legitimacy of a champion from the Mountain West, American Athletic or any team from college football’s land of misfit toys to make a case for inclusion in the 12-team playoff field.
While Air Force might well go on to win its conference, it is impossible to say with a straight face that the Falcons or Tulane or any team from the lower-echelon FBS conferences would be as worthy of a bid in the expanded playoffs as the sixth-best team from the SEC.
While the harsh economic realties make me a little melancholy, here’s the deal: With college football becoming more like the NFL with each passing year, maybe it’s time for Air Force and Colorado State to admit that trying to compete on the same level as Alabama or Ohio State is economic folly.
Upon entering Empower Field at Mile High to play in front of its biggest crowd in Colorado since 2002, with an undefeated record through eight games for the first time since 1985, Air Force looked flat and unprepared for the emotional energy brought to the field by a service academy rival.
In a sport where newfound riches for stars to reap from their name, image and likeness make college football a professional enterprise, a bad Army team made the fumbling, bumbling Falcons look like rank amateurs. Their normally robust option attack needed 40 carries to produce a meager 155 yards on the ground.
“We’ve had a pretty good go of it for a while and yet you realize how hard it is to win,” said Air Force coach Troy Calhoun, who has now lost three of his last four meetings against the Black Knights. “Credit to Army — played really hard, played really well.”
Calhoun is a great teacher of the game, but an awkward, reluctant marketer of a football program. He bristles at anything that smacks of showmanship. There’s much laudable about being a coach who views football as a tool to help young men grow. But Calhoun is now a proud, old dinosaur in a world where the only thing that really matters are television ratings and revenue streams.
That’s not the mission statement of Air Force football. The game has changed. Maybe the Falcons need to help start a league of their own, where money isn’t the primary way to measure success.