Army Prepares for Independence BowlWith Changes to Roster and StaffBy John ChuhranCaMMVets Media
West Point, N.Y. – There will be significant changes to the Army Black Knights (11-2) players and coaches when they face last- minute substitute Louisiana Tech (5-7) in the Independence Bowl on Saturday, December 28 (9 PM on ESPN TV). Those changes could cause anyone to lose a lot of sleep and they are representative of bigger problems facing college football.
While it had been known that the architect of Army’s offensive line, assistant coach Matt Drinkall, had accepted the Head Coach position at Central Michigan, new came out in the last few days that he will be taking defensive line coach Sean Cronin with him to be his defensive coordinator. Additionally, Army associate head strength and conditioning coach Jacob Riedel is leaving to be the head strength and conditioning coach at CMU. Both Cronin and Riedel had been on the staff of the Army Black Knights for the last three seasons.
While the loss of Drinkall, Cronin and Reidel will certainly cause the Black Knights to focus harder on working together for the upcoming finale, a greater impact will be felt by the loss of sophomore running back Kanye Udoh, who announced after Army’s 31-13 loss in the Army-Navy game that he was entering the NCAA Football Transfer Portal and intended to leave West Point. Many players enter the portal, but not all find happy new homes and some return to their original team. That wasn’t the case with Udoh. A few days ago, the native of Mays Landing, N.J. again took to social media and shared that he had signed documents to transfer to Arizona State.
The college sports world changed radically in October 2018 when the NCAA officially opened the transfer portal, which really is nothing more than a spreadsheet operated by the NCAA to keep track of players interested in changing schools. The database is available for all coaches and coaching staff to review possible recruits. Significantly, personnel from other institutions cannot approach players currently enrolled in a college or university to encourage them to enter the portal.
Originally intended to make it easier to switch schools for players who found themselves blocked at a position or in a situation where they had conflicts with or had lost confidence in program leadership, the usage of the portal expanded in 2021.
Since the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) formation in the early 1900s, student-athletes were prohibited from receiving money from the use of their own Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). Amateurism continued for more than a century, but it slowly started to be eroded, most noticeably in 1992 when professional basketball players competed for the first time as “the Dream Team” for the United States in the Olympics.
Also, the Red-Shirt rule requiring players to sit out of competition for a year if they changed schools, all but disappeared for players with extenuating circumstances such as suffering injuries that prevented playing for a significant period of a season or have learned that coaches had changed, causing them to learn entirely new philosophies and schemes. Players now can effectively play an undetermined amount of time; one quarterback recently announced he was coming back for his seventh season of NCAA competition.
The shift towards financial compensation was completed on July 1, 2021, when, after some effective lawsuits favoring player compensation were resolved in favor of the students, the NCAA introduced new bylaws, permitting student-athletes to (a) profit from their own NIL through endorsement agreements and business ventures, and (b) hire professional representation to manage their interests in such activity. In a related move, high school associations throughout the nation began to change rules to copy the NCAA change, permitting high school athletes to profit from their NIL. Currently in development are plans to incorporate revenue sharing from athletic activity into the NCAA model.
One of the major problems of the current transfer portal involves the time that players can enter it and find new athletic and academic homes. For football, the portal opens on December 9 and closes on December 28. These dates occur while the season is still underway, a ridiculous situation which can totally disrupt the remaining games to be played. That is exactly what happened to Army’s original scheduled opponent for the Independence Bowl, Marshall University (10-3), the champions of the Sun Belt Conference.
But Marshall’s Head Coach, Charles Huff, announced after the game that he was leaving the school to accept the Head Coach position at Southern Mississippi. Within 96 hours, more than two dozen players for the Thundering Herd – including the top three quarterbacks on the depth chart – had entered the transfer portal. So, the school faced the scary proposition of having a new head coach without knowledge and experience with his team, and a team of players that were hardly likely to play like a 10-3 team or even like a Division I also-ran. The Independence Bowl was left to scramble for an opponent to play Army. Options were thin; all other Bowl-eligible teams (those with six wins or more) were committed to other games, and as a result a rarely utilized exemption was given to allow the Independence Bowl to reach out to teams that had won five games in 2024. Most of those programs had already shifted into an off-season regimen, so according to several reports, it took more than a dozen invitations to finally land Louisiana Tech (5-7) as Army’s opponent. With a significant Army player and a number of assistant Army coaches leaving, and Army’s next opponent being a surprise, last-minute replacement that would require completely new preparations before meeting on the field of competition, the Black Knight’s Head Coach Jeff Monken had some strong feelings about the transfer portal and its effects on college football. He gave the longest position statement that this reporter ever heard him deliver in analyzing the situation.“We certainly wish Kanye (Udoh) well and we're disappointed to lose him,” Monken said. “He's a good player, but he's also a really good young man. I really like him, (and) his parents and have enjoyed having him here in the program. But that's a decision that a lot of young people are faced with now and I think there were some things going on, feelers being put out through other channels. It's not permissible for coaches to contact other players at other colleges directly, but through other channels and I think that just kind of got him thinking about the opportunities, other places.
West Point, N.Y. – There will be significant changes to the Army Black Knights (11-2) players and coaches when they face last- minute substitute Louisiana Tech (5-7) in the Independence Bowl on Saturday, December 28 (9 PM on ESPN TV). Those changes could cause anyone to lose a lot of sleep and they are representative of bigger problems facing college football.
While it had been known that the architect of Army’s offensive line, assistant coach Matt Drinkall, had accepted the Head Coach position at Central Michigan, new came out in the last few days that he will be taking defensive line coach Sean Cronin with him to be his defensive coordinator. Additionally, Army associate head strength and conditioning coach Jacob Riedel is leaving to be the head strength and conditioning coach at CMU. Both Cronin and Riedel had been on the staff of the Army Black Knights for the last three seasons.
While the loss of Drinkall, Cronin and Reidel will certainly cause the Black Knights to focus harder on working together for the upcoming finale, a greater impact will be felt by the loss of sophomore running back Kanye Udoh, who announced after Army’s 31-13 loss in the Army-Navy game that he was entering the NCAA Football Transfer Portal and intended to leave West Point. Many players enter the portal, but not all find happy new homes and some return to their original team. That wasn’t the case with Udoh. A few days ago, the native of Mays Landing, N.J. again took to social media and shared that he had signed documents to transfer to Arizona State.
The college sports world changed radically in October 2018 when the NCAA officially opened the transfer portal, which really is nothing more than a spreadsheet operated by the NCAA to keep track of players interested in changing schools. The database is available for all coaches and coaching staff to review possible recruits. Significantly, personnel from other institutions cannot approach players currently enrolled in a college or university to encourage them to enter the portal.
Originally intended to make it easier to switch schools for players who found themselves blocked at a position or in a situation where they had conflicts with or had lost confidence in program leadership, the usage of the portal expanded in 2021.
Since the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) formation in the early 1900s, student-athletes were prohibited from receiving money from the use of their own Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). Amateurism continued for more than a century, but it slowly started to be eroded, most noticeably in 1992 when professional basketball players competed for the first time as “the Dream Team” for the United States in the Olympics.
Also, the Red-Shirt rule requiring players to sit out of competition for a year if they changed schools, all but disappeared for players with extenuating circumstances such as suffering injuries that prevented playing for a significant period of a season or have learned that coaches had changed, causing them to learn entirely new philosophies and schemes. Players now can effectively play an undetermined amount of time; one quarterback recently announced he was coming back for his seventh season of NCAA competition.
The shift towards financial compensation was completed on July 1, 2021, when, after some effective lawsuits favoring player compensation were resolved in favor of the students, the NCAA introduced new bylaws, permitting student-athletes to (a) profit from their own NIL through endorsement agreements and business ventures, and (b) hire professional representation to manage their interests in such activity. In a related move, high school associations throughout the nation began to change rules to copy the NCAA change, permitting high school athletes to profit from their NIL. Currently in development are plans to incorporate revenue sharing from athletic activity into the NCAA model.
One of the major problems of the current transfer portal involves the time that players can enter it and find new athletic and academic homes. For football, the portal opens on December 9 and closes on December 28. These dates occur while the season is still underway, a ridiculous situation which can totally disrupt the remaining games to be played. That is exactly what happened to Army’s original scheduled opponent for the Independence Bowl, Marshall University (10-3), the champions of the Sun Belt Conference.
But Marshall’s Head Coach, Charles Huff, announced after the game that he was leaving the school to accept the Head Coach position at Southern Mississippi. Within 96 hours, more than two dozen players for the Thundering Herd – including the top three quarterbacks on the depth chart – had entered the transfer portal. So, the school faced the scary proposition of having a new head coach without knowledge and experience with his team, and a team of players that were hardly likely to play like a 10-3 team or even like a Division I also-ran. The Independence Bowl was left to scramble for an opponent to play Army. Options were thin; all other Bowl-eligible teams (those with six wins or more) were committed to other games, and as a result a rarely utilized exemption was given to allow the Independence Bowl to reach out to teams that had won five games in 2024. Most of those programs had already shifted into an off-season regimen, so according to several reports, it took more than a dozen invitations to finally land Louisiana Tech (5-7) as Army’s opponent. With a significant Army player and a number of assistant Army coaches leaving, and Army’s next opponent being a surprise, last-minute replacement that would require completely new preparations before meeting on the field of competition, the Black Knight’s Head Coach Jeff Monken had some strong feelings about the transfer portal and its effects on college football. He gave the longest position statement that this reporter ever heard him deliver in analyzing the situation.“We certainly wish Kanye (Udoh) well and we're disappointed to lose him,” Monken said. “He's a good player, but he's also a really good young man. I really like him, (and) his parents and have enjoyed having him here in the program. But that's a decision that a lot of young people are faced with now and I think there were some things going on, feelers being put out through other channels. It's not permissible for coaches to contact other players at other colleges directly, but through other channels and I think that just kind of got him thinking about the opportunities, other places.
“A lot of kids are faced with that now, unfortunately. It's all of our problem, it's college football's problem. The portal is great because I think it's important for all of our young men and women who play college sports to be able to play where they want. I think that certainly they're entitled to be at the school where they want to be. I think there needs to be some guardrails on it, especially tied to the NIL and now the revenue sharing that's going to come into college sports.“I don't know that anyone in any profession without a contract should be able to accept money and say I'm going to pledge a commitment to this organization and then be able to walk with that money and not fulfill their obligation or their duties. I think that's probably coming to college sports and I think it's important for teams and organizations to be able to build and know who's going to be on the team. But also I think it's an important lesson for young people to learn that when they make a pledge of commitment they keep it – I fulfilled the obligations of my contract.
“Now, it's just off the guard rails. I mean, it's go wherever you want, pay whatever people want to pay you, transfer here, transfer there – it's not good college sports. It's not good for college football and I don't think it's teaching positive lessons for our young people, but I do think that they should be able to go where they want and play where they want to go to school and get a degree where they want and be able to earn money doing that.“All those things are great and I hate for us to lose the importance of seeking a college degree. I think it's really hard to earn a college degree if you're at four different colleges. Some student athletes are going to end up playing more places than that.
“And I don't think it's healthy to have a transfer portal window open during the season. The coaches all said we were opposed to a transfer portal window during the season because of what it's creating. In college football, you've got teams of young men who are committed to those teams and say, ‘I want to finish this season and play in a bowl game with my team.’ They have teammates that have left the team and said, ‘well, I'm not going to play with you anymore. I don't want to be a part of this team. I'm going to go pursue another team.’
“If a transfer window was open outside of the season, I don't think there would be the issues like we had with a team just completely dropping out and saying ‘we're not going to play, we're not going to field the team for the game.’ I think players would stick it out through the end of the season and it would give those teams the best chance to win, which is what every player deserves. Every team deserves that.
“Players who stay in a program, they don't deserve to have people that desert them in the middle of the year and just say, ‘well, you guys go fend for yourself. You've counted on me all year, but you can't count on me anymore.’ I don't think that's healthy. I don't think it's healthy for a team and I don't think it's a good lesson for our young people to learn.
“If, in fact, they're on a contract and they're getting paid a certain amount of money to play at these schools, well, okay you pay or you play. If you don't play, you don't get paid. That's the same as it works in any other job. If I left my job today, they would stop paying me and they should. So, I think there's just a lot to unpack. Moving the transfer portal outside of the football season I think would be a great start.
“If you're watching press conferences and listening to coaches answer questions, they're all saying the same thing because we all believe the same thing. We want to build teams and we want our young people to come and earn degrees. We want them to have a great experience and we want them to build lasting relationships with their teammates and coaches and feel a sense of loyalty to the school that they play for.
“We're in the people development business – that's why I got into this profession. One of the things I really enjoy – still – about being here is that we recruit these guys and for the most part we're able to retain them through the duration of their college career. They get a chance to develop and we see them grow and graduate and, I mean, it's awesome. That's what college sports was intended to do. I still think that student athletes should be able to choose where they want to go to school. I think it's great that they're now able to benefit off their Name, Image and Likeness and that we're able to share revenue with student athletes, but I don't think that the system as it is now is a healthy system or sustainable.”
Those are strong, wise sentiments and, hopefully, those individuals making decisions will listen. But for now there is a game to play. And on Saturday night, the Black Knights will play with the team they have against the opponent that has agreed to meet them. That is the reality of college football in the last week of December 2024.
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“If a transfer window was open outside of the season, I don't think there would be the issues like we had with a team just completely dropping out and saying ‘we're not going to play, we're not going to field the team for the game.’ I think players would stick it out through the end of the season and it would give those teams the best chance to win, which is what every player deserves. Every team deserves that.
“Players who stay in a program, they don't deserve to have people that desert them in the middle of the year and just say, ‘well, you guys go fend for yourself. You've counted on me all year, but you can't count on me anymore.’ I don't think that's healthy. I don't think it's healthy for a team and I don't think it's a good lesson for our young people to learn.
“If, in fact, they're on a contract and they're getting paid a certain amount of money to play at these schools, well, okay you pay or you play. If you don't play, you don't get paid. That's the same as it works in any other job. If I left my job today, they would stop paying me and they should. So, I think there's just a lot to unpack. Moving the transfer portal outside of the football season I think would be a great start.
“If you're watching press conferences and listening to coaches answer questions, they're all saying the same thing because we all believe the same thing. We want to build teams and we want our young people to come and earn degrees. We want them to have a great experience and we want them to build lasting relationships with their teammates and coaches and feel a sense of loyalty to the school that they play for.
“We're in the people development business – that's why I got into this profession. One of the things I really enjoy – still – about being here is that we recruit these guys and for the most part we're able to retain them through the duration of their college career. They get a chance to develop and we see them grow and graduate and, I mean, it's awesome. That's what college sports was intended to do. I still think that student athletes should be able to choose where they want to go to school. I think it's great that they're now able to benefit off their Name, Image and Likeness and that we're able to share revenue with student athletes, but I don't think that the system as it is now is a healthy system or sustainable.”
Those are strong, wise sentiments and, hopefully, those individuals making decisions will listen. But for now there is a game to play. And on Saturday night, the Black Knights will play with the team they have against the opponent that has agreed to meet them. That is the reality of college football in the last week of December 2024.
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