If a team is undefeated through the ninth week of the college football season, they are very solidly one of the best teams in the nation. This season, six teams can claim the feat of going 8-0 at this point in the season. Classic powerhouse programs like The Ohio State University and Texas A&M University have yet to lose, which isn’t particularly surprising for teams of their caliber. Some up-and-coming programs like Brigham Young University and University of Indiana-Bloomington remain undefeated as well, establishing themselves after creating promise last season. Georgia Institute of Technology crashed the party this season, led by head coach Brent Key and potential Heisman candidate Haynes King, blowing expectations out of the water. The last undefeated team this season, perhaps surprisingly, is the United States Naval Academy.

Every member of Navy’s athletic teams is in training to become a member of the military while playing their sport. Student-athletes at the service academies aren’t exempt from any of the experience of being in training for the military. All of the athletes eat the same mess hall food, take the same advanced classes and sleep in the same barracks as the rest of their cohorts. With the amount of moving parts in the lives of service academy members, how can they still find a way to be one of the few undefeated football teams left in the country?

The only service academies that play at the NCAA D-I Football Bowl Subdivision are the United States Air Force Academy, United States Naval Academy and United States Military Academy. In athletics, the schools are better known as Air Force, Navy and Army respectively. There are other service academies, though they compete at lower levels of the NCAA. There are other institutions that are affiliated with the military and have college football, such as Texas A&M University and Virginia Military Institute, but these schools are under a different designation than the other service academies. 

There are a few traits that make Navy particularly unique as a football program. To start, every single one of the Naval Academy’s 4,500 students are required to attend every home football game Navy plays, creating one of the best home-field advantages in college sports. That has been particularly apparent this season with their narrowest win coming on the road at Temple University, a 32-31 victory that required a last-minute drive to put the game away. 

With the era of the Transfer Portal and Name, Image and Likeness upon us, the way teams fill out their rosters is completely different to what it was just a few years ago. Having players with tenure on a team has become even more important, and smaller schools will often lose their best players to powerhouse programs. Players who play for service academies are completely exempt from everything NIL and are not allowed to enter the transfer portal, with one exception: After a player’s sophomore season, they are given the option to sign a contract to stay for the next two years plus five more years of active military service. Players can also go directly to professional football and have their service requirement voided. Very few players choose to leave at the halfway point, thanks to the comradery they’ve developed with their teammates. The service academies that are not getting transfers are the equivalent of a professional team not being able to make trades.

Having such limited access to the transfer portal is a double-edged sword. Recruiting for service academies is basically completely limited to finding the diamonds-in-the-rough of high school football, which is easier said than done. Beneficially, keeping players around is a big advantage when compared to other programs that constantly have players coming in and going out. It also means that when a service academy has a good player, they’re probably there to stay. 

Navy’s senior quarterback, Blake Horvath, is a good example of this. Horvath was a zero-star recruit coming out of high school in Ohio, but chose to head to Navy and continue his football career there. He didn’t play a single game as a freshman and only appeared in four games as a sophomore, but still chose to stick around. In his breakout junior season, Horvath led the Midshipmen to a 9-3 record that included an upset win against the University of Memphis and a clean sweep of the other service academy teams. This season, Horvath has seven touchdowns compared to just three interceptions and has been one of the better rushing quarterbacks in the nation. He put away the aforementioned Temple game with a 51-yard quarterback sneak. Horvath currently sits at eighth in D-I rushing yards, and that includes running backs. Navy’s offensive line has been a huge help for Horvath, only allowing a single sack all season thus far.

Navy plays in the solidly competitive American Athletic Conference, but still have their toughest games ahead of them. The Midshipmen will truly be tested over the next five weeks, with games on the road against one-loss teams in the University of North Texas and the University of Memphis, plus another away game against the University of Notre Dame. They get a slight reprieve with a single home game against the University of South Florida, but close their year with their most important matchup by far: the Army-Navy game.

The Army-Navy game is a cornerstone rivalry in college football, with this year being the 126th installment. Before each game, a “prisoner exchange” occurs where students who are spending the semester at the other academy get to watch the game with their original classmates. Navy is the favorite in this game, with Army having losses to weaker teams such as East Carolina University and Tarleton State University. Truly anything could happen considering the gauntlet Navy has to run in the weeks leading up to the game and the rivalry of the game itself, but we’ll have to wait and see how the academies fare for the rest of their seasons.

The United States Coast Guard Academy, one of two D-III service academies, played possibly the most action-packed game of football I have ever heard of against Nichols College earlier this season. They opened the game with a 35-point first quarter that included a touchdown pass thrown by wide receiver Matt LaBouliere. They put up 29 in the second quarter to bring their total to 64 compared to 28 for Nichols at the half. After a quieter third quarter for both teams, both Nichols and the Coast Guard put up three touchdowns apiece in the fourth, including an 88-yard kickoff return by Coast Guard senior Amr Baadani. The game ended as a 92-60 barnburner in favor of the Coast Guard Academy, good for the most combined points ever scored in a D-III football game.

By all stretches of the imagination, the service academies should not be very good. However, through leveraging the few advantages these schools have over the rest of the field, they can still create a very competitive and entertaining football team.