Introducing the Against All Enemies Podcast

We launched Against All Enemies approximately seven months ago. When we started, the whole goal was to provide coverage of service academy athletics that quite frankly wasn’t available across the country to a large extent.

This was something I felt very strongly about. I had pushed SB Nation for a couple of years that they should consider adding a site dedicated to service academy athletics, because I knew that this was a chance to shed some light on three schools (and other military interest stories) that compete in Division One athletics but don’t always get to share the spotlight in the media with the blue bloods of college athletics.

From the beginning, we wanted this to be a way to write not just about football, but to provide exposure for all of the varsity athletes competing at these three schools. There are some incredible young people competing in athletics at a high level that have and will go on to do tremendous things in the defense of our nation.

We wanted to tell their stories.

We wanted to pull the curtain back for those that only tune in during early December to catch their annual dose of Army-Navy and showcase what it really means to be an athlete in the very unique environment that is our nation’s service academies.

As we tried to keep our heads above water and make it through football season, it became clear to us that one of the next logical steps in sharing these stories was to move from not only writing about them weekly, but getting the chance to talk about them as well.

And so, today, we are launching our first episode of the Against All Enemies podcast.

We are excited about the chance to extend our coverage of service academy athletics even further, and are thankful that SB Nation has dedicated some resources to helping us spread the word. The fact that they were willing to do that with us only having even established our brand a few months ago means a lot.

I intend to serve as the moderator for the podcast and we have three contributors who will be joining each episode to ensure we have equal coverage for Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Scott Lopez is our primary Air Force contributor on the site and also will be contributing as the lone USAFA graduate to the podcast.

Kaylah Jackson is our only enlisted voice on the site and will be adding her perspective and making sure we don’t give Army too hard of a time on air.

Austin Lanteigne is a 2009 USNA graduate and will be our primary Navy contributor for the podcast.

I think we have a good mix of personalities and coverage for each of the three schools. The beauty of discussing three rivals on the same podcast each and every week is that there will no doubt be some contention and disagreement as to who is the best service academy (that’s easy, it’s Navy) and what the landscape looks like for service academy athletics.

I believe that’s what makes our podcast and site unique. We bring rivals together to discuss their schools but we also appreciate and understand the overall bigger picture of service academy athletics.

We were able to secure Billy Hurley III as our first guest interview and it was a pleasure to be able to interview him, especially since it’s Masters Week, and he is the only veteran currently on the PGA Tour.

Billy is a 2004 USNA graduate, served five years as a Surface Warfare Officer, and was able to secure his place on Tour after nearly five years of being unable to really work on his game. He gives us some great insight on how he arrived at Navy, when he knew he might actually be able to compete professionally, how he managed (or didn’t) his golf game while serving as a SWO, what life is like for him on tour right now, and where we can catch him playing in 2019.

He also discussed with us about his incredible Foundation that helps military families and the Billy Hurley III and the Brave Golf Tournament which just started taking entries at MWR courses around the country for this year’s event.

So, I hope you will give us a listen. You can subscribe to the show for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or in your favorite podcast app to automatically get new episodes when we publish them.

We can’t wait to grow our community through this new outlet and continue to shine some light on the military and service academy athletics for SB Nation!