re: The Army Navy Game Betting

quote:

---

navy played a much harder schedule and is almost identical on paper.

---

I'll agree that Navy had a more difficult schedule. Whether or not it was "much harder" is up for debate. A quick glance at a couple SOS rankings shows the discrepancy to be not significant. But it's the second part is what I wanna focus on as I do not believe it to be a statement soaked with veracity.

Navy is 3-9 with one of those wins being over Lehigh. Their best win and performance of the season was in week 2 against Memphis where they won 22-21.

Army is 9-2 with their only losses being road games against Duke and Oklahoma, the latter being a loss in overtime against a team that got into the CFP.

Moreover, they have common opponents.

Hawaii: Army won 28-21. Navy lost 59-41.
Air Force: Army won 17-14. Navy lost 35-7

By my unofficial count Army is +56 over Navy against common opponents.

Additionally, Army just has more impressive performances than Navy. Army beat the best team in the MAC 42-13. Buffalo almost certaily would have beaten Navy. Army also got a very nice overtime win over Hipster Miami with their backup QB. The next week the starter, Kelvin Hopkins, returned and they beat yet another top MAC team by a comfortable margin.

Fwiw, the computers like Army as well:
FPI: 69, 99
Sagarin: 53, 106
Teamrankings: 53, 94

S&P has them the closest of any I've seen: 83, 102

quote:

---

the triple option is familiar to both.

---

I actually like this aspect. When two teams do basically the exact same thing but one does it better, I find it tougher to make an argument for the inferior team. This is actually most true in tennis, but I think it's true in football to a certain extent as well.