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For those fans who only look at wins and losses the result of this game should come as no surprise, but for those who like to go beyond the final score, this game was a big disappointment.

Special teams set the tone for the rest of the game by allowing CJ Sanders to score his second return TD of the season on the opening kickoff. No doubt, that run took the wind out of any optimism the Army Black Knights had before the start of the game, and just when it appeared that Army might be gaining some traction, Mitchell Howard missed his first attempt at a PAT after sitting out 5 games with an injury. Later in the game, Blake Wilson missed a 33 yard field goal attempt. While neither of those missed kicks had any bearing on the final outcome, they confirmed that this is an area of significant concern. Army’s average on kickoffs was a meager 46 yards, although we suspect that the 36 yard pop up was intentional to keep the ball out of Sanders hands.

Just when we thought we’d seen everything that could go wrong on special teams, Richard Hanson was called for kick interference on a punt. In all fairness to Hanson, the return man waited until the last second to signal fair catch, but the call was still right.

The one bright spot on Special Teams was the kick returns by Elijah St Hillaire who fielded 5 kickoffs that he returned past the 25. Unfortunately, his best return of 29 yards to the 33 was wiped out by a holding penalty, something that has become an issue for the return team in recent games.

On the whole it was not a great day for the defense, although they were only responsible for 37 of Notre Dame’s 44 points. They had problems containing Irish quarterback DeShone Kizer, who evaded a couple of potential sacks and scrambled for 72 yards, finishing second in rushing for ND. At times the defense looked good, and they did hold ND to 6 points in the second half, and we thought that a couple of the pass interference calls on Army were borderline at best.

The substitution of Chris Carter at quarterback for the injured (sprained MCL) Ahmad Bradshaw didn’t improve the passing attack as he went 0-5 for the game, albeit without an interception. His one “completion” was a nice pitch and catch, but it was negated by a chop block. Malek McGue completed his first two pass attempts, but then he threw an interception into two-man coverage. Notre Dame was able to stop the fullback dive most of the game, but Darnell Woolfolk ended up with 95 yards, about half of which came on one long run where he demonstrated that he does not have Andy Davidson’s breakaway speed however he is becoming a load to deal with.

Notre Dame was able to get past the blocking up front to drop Carter and McGue in key situations, and with no kicking game, the Black Knights missed a couple of red zone opportunities that would have made the game seem less lopsided. The timing on some of the pitches was less than optimal, but ND had learned from playing Navy and was generally playing the option well. It’s seems clear that the Black Knight offense is not up to the same level as Navy and Air Force at this point.

The obvious answer is the game of all games Navy, but what about other goals.

Army West Point has one home game remaining on the schedule against Morgan State, a team that is currently 2-7 and ranked 245 by Sagarin. A win against the Bears would make Army 6-5 going into the Navy game, but only the Morgan State game can be counted toward full bowl eligibility. Army could qualify under the NCAA guidelines for awarding bowl bids to teams that are not fully qualified.

The scholarship situation at Lafayette and its effect on Army’s bowl eligibility is not entirely clear. The NCAA allows one victory per season over a Division I FCS team to count toward an FBS team's bowl eligibility, so long as the FCS team has supplied financial aid for football averaging out to at least 56.7 full scholarships (90% of the limit of 63 allowed to FCS schools) over "a rolling two-year period" that can include the current season. In 2014, USMA got an NCAA waiver to count Yale as qualified under the scholarship provision because of the historical significance of the game. As it turned out that waiver didn’t matter because Yale won the game.

The Patriot League voted to allow football scholarships for its member schools in 2012, with a maximum of 15 scholarships per year until they reached their limit of 63 full-time equivalents. In 2015, Lafayette offered 18 football scholarships and presumably had maxed out at that point; so it’s not clear how or when the scholarship deficiency became a known problem.

The NCAA has established a set of priorities for filling vacancies in bowl games when there are not enough bowl-eligible teams for all the spots, and the priorities provide for counting wins against two FCS teams as well as wins against FCS teams that don’t meet the scholarship requirement; so we would hope that the ODIA is asking the NCAA for a clarification of Army West Point’s status. A win over Navy would make Army West Point fully bowl eligible, but the timing of the game one week after most bowls make their bowl offers, poses problems for bowl sponsors.

All of that is a mute point if there are enough teams from conferences with tie-ins who are bowl-eligible to fill the 78 spots in the 2016-17 bowl games. There are 40 bowl games altogether, but since one is the championship game, the two teams in that game will come from spots allocated for the semi-finals. The tie-ins are by conference; so a vacancy created by a shortage in any one conference opens the door for the bowl to invite another team that is not covered in their contractual arrangement with the conference(s).

There are no FBS teams facing post season bans this year; so any team that has enough wins will be bowl eligible. There are 78 bowl openings available. Currently the Power 5 Conferences have 34 teams eligible and another 11 that need just one win for eligibility. We figure the Power 5 conferences will have 45 teams eligible, leaving 33 spots for other teams.

If Army West Point is going bowling, they will most likely have to get one of the bowl tie-ins from the Group of Five conferences. Collectively, the Group of Five has 23 teams that have achieved bowl eligibility already and 20 that are out of the running with 7 or more losses. That leaves the following 17 teams still in competition with Army West Point for a remaining bowl bid:

-Arkansas State (5-4) needs one win over league leading Troy next week (unlikely), La Lafayette (more likely) or Texas State (probable). All 5 wins were vs FBS teams.

-Colorado State (5-5) needs a win against New Mexico (quite possible) or San Diego State (highly unlikely). Root for New Mexico.

-Central Michigan (5-5) has to beat Ohio (not likely) or Eastern Michigan (toss up).

-SMU (5-5) has to beat USF (unlikely) or Navy (also unlikely).

-UTSA (5-5) faces a near certain loss to Texas A&M, which would require them to beat Charlotte in the final game of the season.

-Southern Miss (5-5) could eliminate North Texas (4-6) next week to become eligible, but otherwise would have to beat Louisiana Tech (unlikely).

-Miami (5-6) must eliminate Ball State (4-6) to be eligible.

-Akron (5-6) must beat Ohio (7-3).

-South Alabama (4-5) has an easy game against Presbyterian next week, and had their game vs LSU cancelled the following week, but is likely to win against New Mexico State which would leave them at 6-5. S Alabama has already won a game against an FCS team, which puts them in a similar situation as Army with two FCS wins but one less loss.

-La Lafayette (4-5) faces a near certain loss versus Georgia next week to go 4-6, and then must win both games against Arkansas State and arch rival La Monroe.

-Cincinnati (4-6) is hovering on the brink of elimination needing wins against Tulsa and Memphis (both unlikely).

-Ball State (4-6) needs to beat both Miami and Toledo (unlikely).

-Georgia Southern (4-6) is likely to beat Georgia State next week but then must beat Troy (unlikely) for bowl eligibility.

-La Monroe (4-6) has to beat Appalachian State (unlikely) and La Lafayette.

-UNC Charlotte (4-6) in its first year of potential eligibility has to beat both Middle Tenn and UTSA.

-North Texas (4-6) would have to get by Southern Miss and UTEP.

-UNLV (4-6) has a slim chance needing to win out against Boise State (highly unlikely) and Nevada

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