Column: Army-Navy game’s future at important crossroads

Army football coach Jeff Monken’s recent suggestion to graciously move the Army-Navy football game to another weekend certainly checks off all the boxes.

For the good of the two academies, the two teams and all of college football, Monken mentioned that the game could be moved forward by two weeks to Thanksgiving Day weekend where an exclusive 4-hour window will be created to accommodate the annual contest.
 
The result would allow the growing College Football Playoff to use the second Saturday in December to play games and also permit the college football season to end in early January, even with 16 or even 24 teams in the tournament, as opposed to around Jan. 20 as it does now.
 
Monken was clear that it would also help Army and Navy since, in the end, both teams’ ultimate desire, besides beating each other, is to qualify for the CFP and moving the Army-Navy game ahead by a few weeks would certainly help the winner of that game if they were already in the running for a spot.
 
But, let’s hold on a minute or two here.
 
While Monken appears to have the best intentions, he might be missing out on a number of other factors that could hurt the academies. In fact, it did not take the Naval Academy’s sports department long to reply that the Army coach’s suggestion is simply a non-starter.
 
One is that Corps of Cadets and Brigade of Midshipmen are normally on leave for Thanksgiving and a game played without them in attendance or forcing them to miss Thanksgiving dinner at mom’s house will not play too well.
 
Much more important than that, though, is the exclusivity of the game. CBS Sports pays big, big bucks, the guess is around $10 million to each school, to broadcast the game every year and a big part of that, besides the patriotism, pageantry and the good possibility of a visit from the sitting president, is that it is just about the only game in town on the afternoon of the second Saturday in December. Sure, there is a minor bowl game or two taking place, but, by and large, Army-Navy is it for anyone to get their fill of football on that day.
 
Even a presidential decree is not going to make that work on Thanksgiving weekend. The NFL dominates Thanksgiving Day, squeezing three games into a 10-hour slot that has become as traditional for American families as turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Friday and Saturday have become major college football days, with most of the 138 FBS teams not only playing one of those two days, but enough of them playing their rivals.
 
Sunday, of course, is the NFL’s main day and the league still plays 12 games on that day, plus one more on Friday.
 
Unless Army-Navy want to play at 9 a.m. or after midnight on any of those days, and for a lot less money, there is no way they will get exclusivity on that weekend.
 
Here is the big problem. I worry that this extremely important game will get kicked to the side of the road and become no different than any of the hundreds of other college football games that take place in any given year. The bottom line is that no exclusivity means no big bucks from CBS or anyone else. As great as Army-Navy is, and I have seen dozens in person and the rest on TV over the last six decades, the networks are not a charity and they are not going to pay even a fraction of the money they pay now for a game that might compete with the Lions vs. Packers on Thanksgiving Day or Auburn-Alabama on Friday or Saturday.
 
So where does that leave us? Frankly, it is a potential problem for the two academies. CBS money makes up a sizeable amount of their athletic budgets, which help pay for many other programs at West Point and Annapolis. But times are changing and the demand for a larger CFB playoff is growing by leaps and bounds.
 
It is clear that the NCAA, though maybe not its individual schools and conferences, understands the value of Army-Navy. The hope is that something gets worked out that will keep the game front and center with the American public and also keeps those big checks coming in from CBS or anyone else who wants to pay the bills.
 
The parameters are simple: Army-Navy needs its own exclusive football window and must be played at the end of the college football regular season. Putting this jigsaw puzzle together and finding the right spot for this hallowed game is not going to be easy, but must be done.