Well, it’s time to continue my annual tradition of doing a Navy dynasty with each new game. Perhaps, with luck and a bad enough team, I can keep this dynasty going long term and maybe pull off a Prairie Dogs type dynasty spanning over multiple new game editions and maybe even surpassing that century mark of seasons. I can only hope.
I was planning to use Online Dynasty and just do a single player OD with this, and had been testing it out for a couple nights just making sure things would work how I wanted them to, and they worked great. Then when I went to officially create this dynasty, it refuses to load up when I go on EA's site. I even recreated it to see if it was just the dynasty, but even now, I am still stuck on a perpetual loading screen on EA’s dynasty website looking at a never ending “Retrieving Online Dynasty” screen.
So, I’ve said screw it. I wanted badly to use Online Dynasty for multiple reasons. It’ll keep track of stats for me, instead of having to sit here manually writing them down after every game. I plan on doing a Prairie Dogs type dynasty, so being hired/fired as a coach didn’t matter to me. And Navy will never leave Independent under my reign, so conference invites didn’t matter to me.
But since EA’s dynasty website refuses to work for me anymore (I’ve tried it on Firefox, IE8, and Google Chrome, and all the same thing), I’ve officially created this baby as an offline dynasty and will be going about it that way. Sadly it’ll just mean much more work and slightly less frequent updates in terms of game summaries and stuff as I now have much more I’ll have to write down after games and then put into the proper format to post on here.
With that said, time to get into it…
Dynasty Information
• Xbox 360, NCAA '11
• Most likely 8 minute quarters
• All-American difficulty
• Game Speed: Normal
• Player Min Speed Threshold: 50
• Rosters: Will be using Fairdale King’s rosters for 360.
• Sliders: Will be using Jaymo's Balanced All-American Sliders (tweaked as needed)
• Offline Dynasty
• Playbook – Offense: Navy (Triple Option) --- Defense: 3-4
• Scheduling: Navy Scheduling Restrictions
• Recruiting: Navy Recruiting Restrictions
Current Sliders (Currently Jaymo's All-American Version)
Background History
The Midshipmen football team represents the United States Naval Academy in NCAA Division I-A college football. They are a Division I Football Bowl Subdivision independent school and coached by Ken Niumatalolo since December 2007. Navy has 19 players and 3 coaches in the College Football Hall of Fame and won the National Championship in 1926 according to the Boand and Houlgate poll systems. The 1910 team also was undefeated and unscored upon at 8-0-1 (the lone tie being a 0–0 tie with Rutgers). Their mascot is Bill the Goat.
The Early Years
Navy football got started in 1879 when they played their first game against the Baltimore Athletic Club, ending in a 0-0 tie. Navy football returned again in 1882, where they experienced their first win, claiming an 8-0 victory against Johns Hopkins. Unfortunately, Johns Hopkins got revenge the next year with a 2-0 win over Navy. Navy and Johns Hopkins continued their impromptu rivalry yearly (playing twice a year for a period of years) up through 1889, with Navy enjoying many successful records as the years went on.
1890 brought about more regular schedules for Navy, including the first ever Army-Navy game, a 24-0 victory of Navy. Along with the more regular schedules, Navy continued their success on the gridiron, experiencing only two losing seasons between 1890 and 1909. 1910 and 1910 took that success to a new high. Navy football experienced it's first perfect season in 1910, finishing the year with a record of 8-0-1, with Rutgers forcing a 0-0 tie to be their only blemish. The next year saw Navy end with a 6-0-3 record.
One of the most impressive of those two years, is the fact of Navy's points given up. Navy was perfect on defense in 1910. The Naval Academy team as a whole outscored opponents 99-0 during the 1910 season. While the defense ultimately surrendered points during the 1911 season, it wasn't many, as Navy outscored their opponents that year 116-11, only giving up 5 points to Johns Hopkins and 6 points to NC State. Navy would continue their winning way, only having one losing season through the rest of the decade.
The His and Lows
The 1920s would see Navy start to pick up more losses, but the team still remained successful, claiming winning seasons multiple times over the decade. It would be 1926 however that Navy would reach the highest point of it's program. It was during this year that Navy claimed their best record, 9-0-1, ending their season in a 21-21 tie with rival Army. It was also this year that Navy would claim their first, and still only, national championship, being declared the national champions by the Boand and Houlgate Polls. Navy would continue to succeed on the field through the end of the 1920s. However, the 1930s were not as nice.
The 1930s brought about many seasons of near .500 or sub-.500 seasons for Navy. The only truly claims of success for Navy in the 1930s were the 1934 and 1936 seasons when Navy claimed 8-1-0 and 6-3-0 records. Navy also saw one of their lowest seasons in 1932 with a 2-6-1 record.
The early 1940s would see a rejuvenated Navy football team, reeling off six straight winning seasons, including ending ranked in the AP Top 10 in four of those years, with a high ranking of #3 in 1945. Unfortunately, the 1940s would quickly turn sour for Navy after 1945, as Navy fell to a funk of losing records every year through 1951, including Navy's worst year to date, a 0-8-1 record in 1948.
Navy would snap out of it however, once again going on a hot streak, rolling out winning seasons every year from 1952 through 1963, ending seven of those years ranking in the Top 10, including three seasons in the AP Top 5, and ending the season #2 in both the AP and United Press polls in 1963.
Unfortunately, Navy slipped into a slew of losing seasons by the mid 1960s, experiencing a winning record only twice between 1964 and 1977. Navy found their winning ways again, fielding winning teams every season between 1978 and 1982 before defeat reared its ugly, hideous head upon the Midshipmen yet again.
From 1983 on, Navy would not see another winning season for their football team until 1996. A second winning record in a row, in 1997, gave Midshipmen fans hope that the program had finally turned around, however their hopes were quickly dashed, as Navy fell back into losing obscurity between 1998 and 2002, with 2001 being their darkest days, the team ending the season with a winless 0-10 record.
The Beginning of a Streak
2003 however, brought about a breath of fresh air for Navy, as Paul Johnson’s triple option offense took root in the Midshipmen ranks and propelled Navy to a 8-5 record, only their third winning season since 1982. Navy then proved they were back to stay to their fans, clinching winning records in every single following year through current day, gaining a 3-4 records in bowls, with wins over New Mexico, Colorado State, and Missouri, while losing close tough games to Boston College, Utah, Wake Forest and failing to keep up with Texas Tech during their 2003 Houston Bowl matchup.
Navy further proved they were relevant again, finishing with no worse than an 8-5 record during their current streak of 7 straight winning seasons. In 2007, Navy proved they were a force to be reckoned with, when they snapped their 43-year losing streak and finally defeated the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, 46-44 in triple overtime, only their 4th overtime game in school history, with their first overtime game occurring the year before in a one point loss to Tulsa.
Navy nearly defeated Notre Dame for a second year in a row, as the Midshipmen recovered two onside kicks and scored two touchdowns in the final two minutes of the game. However Notre Dame would ultimately hold on for the 27-21 victory. Navy would only have to wait one year to get revenge, defeating the Irish for the second straight game in South Bend, 23-21. It was also a significant victory as it was the first time an unranked Navy team had defeated a ranked Notre Dame team (ranked 22nd at the time) since 1936.
Navy also has enjoyed extreme success against their follow service academies, owning a perfect 14-0 record against Air Force and Army since 2003 and a 15-1 record since 2002. Navy has also possessed the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy for the past seven straight years, the longest such streak since the creation of the trophy in 1972. Air Force had owned the longest streak immediately before Navy’s current streak, possessing the trophy six straight years from 1997 through 2002.
The Fall from Grace
After the 2009 season, shocking reports came out about rampant, wide spread issues occurring in the athletic department and specifically the football team, at the Naval Academy. In response to the rumors, the NCAA promptly launched an investigation, and upon finding them true, declared all players on the team no longer eligible for NCAA play, however did not go so far as to officially declare the death penalty for the program. The NCAA also hit the team with a reduction of 10 scholarships for their next three seasons, if and when played.
The Naval Academy, reeling from the sudden upheaval of their program, was forced to resort to random walk-ons from the current students at the academy. Unfortunately, this essentially killed any progress the team had made in the past decade. One college football analyst assigned the overall rating, offense, and defense of the team a grade of F. To truly drive home how much damage has been done, he estimated the scores of the overall rating, offense, and defense of the Naval Academy and compared them to the two worst teams in college football last year, Eastern Michigan and Western Kentucky. His research came up with the following estimates:
The Naval Academy knew that continuing with their severely weakened team would make for some extremely rough seasons ahead, but to simply drop football, even for a year or two, would do irreparable damage, and far, far more damage than continuing on with the program in its current state. Thus begins the trek of Navy into the unknown as they attempt to recover from this sudden upheaval of their program.
May God have mercy on their (and mine) souls.....
Dynasty Note: Even though in the story above all the players were kicked off the team and Navy was forced to resort to random walk-ons, I will be using regular named rosters with the names of the current players. I can’t help my love for playing the game with the real life players currently on Navy’s team.
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