(Apologies to my movie audience, but sometimes I talk about other things, too.)
Now, I know what you’re thinking.
“A Clickbait list? Really?”
Well, not exactly. It’s a Top 10 list, to be sure, but I do have a point larger than generating clicks.
During the wild ride of the 2020 Army Football season, pretty much from the word go, there were discussions pertaining to that team’s place in program history.
Ultimately, it wasn’t quite what we Army faithful hoped it might be heading into the Cincinnati game (no New Year’s Six bowl, for one thing), but it did get me thinking as to where to properly rate the 2020 squad in an expansive, yet still reasonable timeframe.
However, seeing as how I’m not in my seventies, and therefore have not seen every Army Football team for the past 50 years, I needed some way to put the list together objectively, and thus I turned to the Simple Rating System (SRS) at Sports-Reference.com. Not the end-all, be-all, mind you, but a useful tool nonetheless.
So, without further adieu, here are, and I can’t stress this enough, in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, The Top 10 Army Football Teams of the Past 50 Years:
1. 1971 – 6-4 – Head Coach: Tom Cahill
I know certain Old Grads and fans will wonder why this is not Coach Cahill’s 1972 squad that also went 6-4, and won the inaugural Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy competition (don’t worry, they’ll get an honorable mention before we’re all the way through), but just look at the schools on that schedule.
No bargain hunting here; it’s all brand names on the slate.
Seems crazy now, but 1971 was clearly a different time in college football (Conference-mania had yet to arrive, for one thing). Even crazier is that the strength of this schedule was only slightly above average at the time.
Still, no matter the year (or the teams’ records), it’s hard to shake a stick at wins over Georgia Tech, Missouri, Virginia, and Pitt.
Talk about a nip-and-tuck crew though.
I don’t know too many teams that post winning records while getting outscored by 6 points per game, but given how many Army teams many of us grew up with that struggled to score and never won close to 6 games in a season (or beat Navy), I think we’d be reasonably happy with a season like this.
The loss at Air Force always stings, but is somewhat forgivable given that they were a fellow quality opponent, and were coming off a Cotton Bowl appearance in 1970.
2. 1977 – 7-4 – Head Coach: Homer Smith
Homer’s Odyssey!
A good season (the best of a generation, to be frank), ultimately made truly special by wins over Air Force and Navy.
In fact, for 40 years, this was the only Army team to win the CIC while beating Air Force on the road.
Beyond that, no bad losses, but nothing else too remarkable in the win column (though it was nice that they beat the pants off of Holy Cross while the three Heisman winners were in attendance).
As weird as it sounds, the losses are almost as interesting to look back on as the wins, as the program cashed a couple of nice old Giants Stadium checks courtesy of that year’s ultimate National Champion in Notre Dame (yes, Joe Montana’s Notre Dame), and the previous season’s National Champion in Pitt.
If nothing else, you have to admire the grit of the Army team to bounce back after those two games (and, for further context, after beating Army by a meager 24 points, Notre Dame went out the next week and trounced a Top 10 Southern Cal team 49-19).
Again, it was a different time in College Football, but a winning record against a winning schedule and taking the CIC trophy would make any Army fan grin.