Around the Base: Army-Navy sprint football set for Sunday - Links for 10/23/20

Army and Navy will meet on a football field this weekend

Well, a sprint football field.

The annual sprint football clash between the two academies is set for a 1 p.m. kickoff in Annapolis on Sunday. The game will air live on ESPN+ and Scott Wykoff will have the call.

Navy holds the all-time series record, 44-37-1, but Army beat Navy last season 13-0 in the CSFL Championship game.

This game is part of the overall Army-Navy Star Series presented by USAA.

Onto the links...

Army

Army hopeful of cleaning up mistakes (Ken McMillan, Times Herald-Record)

LI’s Elijah Riley takes high road to success, and NFL (Gregg Sarra, Newsday)

Army purring again under coach Jeff Monken (John Kekis, AP via Yahoo)

Rhattigan emerges as top linebacker in Nation (Ken McMillan, Times Herald-Record)

• Here’s what Cade Ballard had to say about his first career pass completion: “Got great protection on the touchdown. T-Rob had a great fake there and you know it’s a team effort on plays like that. I saw Cam come open, we repped that in practice. Had great protection and they ran great routes. I went through my progression and gave him the ball but that was a very special moment for me because I knew when he caught that, that it was probably going to be a big play.”
• ­­Army’s win on Saturday vs. UTSA was their first road victory since Sept. 14, 2019.
• Army is now 4-4 under Jeff Monken when a quarterback is making his first career start.

Navy

Navy football faces tough two-week stretch against top conference contenders from Texas, starting with Houston (Bill Wagner, Capital Gazette)

The ECU Debrief (Mike James, TheMidReport)

Navy football uses creative blocking schemes, deep playbook to keep fullbacks chugging along (Bill Wagner, Capital Gazette)

• Navy’s game at SMU on Oct. 31 will kick off at 7:30 p.m. EST on ESPN2, the American Athletic Conference announced.
• Navy’s women’s soccer season will end Saturday afternoon with a road tilt at Virginia Tech. The Mids (0-2) kick off against the Hokies at 4 p.m. and the game is available on ACC Network Extra.

Air Force

Air Force’s patchwork defense will face different test from pass-happy San Jose State (Brent Briggeman, The Gazette)

Air Force vs San Jose State Prediction, Game Preview (Pete Fiutak, CollegeFootballNews)

Elsewhere in sports and the military…

Six Coast Guard Football Players Test Positive for COVID-19 (Military.com)

Northam orders independent investigation of VMI’s culture following reports of systemic racism (The Roanoke Times)

VMI released schedules for men’s basketball and spring slates for men’s and women’s soccer.

And here’s The Citadel’s men’s basketball schedule.