If there’s an area of college football lacking in analysis, it’s the competency and culpability of the individuals who hire and fire head coaches. That’s also the only reason Jeff Monken is still coaching Army. Army entered Saturday’s rivalry game with Navy as American Athletic Conference champion at 11-1, its best season in modern history. Monken, who comes from a family of football coaches in the Chicago suburbs, is 81-56 in 11 seasons at West Point, which might be the most impressive record of any active Football Bowl Subdivision coach when weighted against the demands and constraints of a service academy. He’ll also be on the sidelines at West Point again next fall, barring another wildly unforeseen jolt in the coaching carousel. For every baffling hire of a misfit celebrity coach destined to fail, there’s an athletic director, university president or consulting firm that continues to fail up the ladder of college administration mostly unscathed. It’s hard to explain this incongruence in a billion-dollar enterprise such as college football. But unlike the unambiguous goals of professional sports franchises, the beauty of colleges’ mealymouthed union of academics and capitalism is that it’s often easier to hide within it. North Carolina is a fantastic example. The Tar Heels’ hire of former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick is an obvious PR play for a UNC brand considered deeply unserious about football success by the industry. It’s also evidence of how often the wrong people wielding the wrong information float to the top of a decision-making matrix. Army head coach Jeff Monken reacts after an NCAA college football game against Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger) AP Belichick is a six-time Super Bowl-winning coach. He has also never coached college football, let alone managed a college roster. That’s never been harder: The NCAA’s attempt at self-preservation over governance has created a lawlessness of never-ending free agency. Only the most naive of analyses could rationalize the selection of Belichick, whose very interest in the job should have signaled to North Carolina brass that the pedigree he will sell to recruits is considered an outdated blueprint by current NFL executives. Monken, meanwhile, is not a schematic genius, nor is he particularly compelling as a public figure. But he is a college football head coach intimately familiar with the specific challenges of building a winning roster. With the lopsided rule set of the college game, any coach of an 11-win service academy should be deemed nothing less than a personnel savant. And acumen for overcoming organizational limitations and internal politics was exactly what a program such as UNC desperately needed, not the NFL’s grumpiest lion in winter. Army was routinely one of the worst programs in the entire FBS under the four head coaches preceding Monken. If you put even the slightest stock in recruiting valuation or believe in the popular Blue Chip Ratio, which states no team can realistically compete for a national title without a certain percentage of top prospects, Monken is nothing less than a wizard. Army is a Top 25 team boasting zero five-star or four-star players in its signing classes. Army, Navy and Air Force cannot successfully recruit the game’s top recruits for obvious reasons. The combination of lifestyle, academic requirements and commitment to military service void service academies’ chances at 99% of the high school recruits who make headlines. Monken is 12-4 in his past 16 games against Navy and Air Force, Army’s only true peers and the best measuring sticks of coaching prowess because their personnel disadvantages are considered close to equal, especially between West Point and Annapolis. While Monken’s Army might lack a brand-name upset (it pushed Oklahoma to overtime in 2018 and did the same to Michigan in 2019) he oversaw Georgia Southern’s legendary 26-20 upset of Florida in 2013, in which the then-Football Championship Subdivision Eagles beat the Gators without completing a single pass. So why wasn’t Monken at the top of the list at a place such as North Carolina, or any other power conference school searching for a new coach while balancing name, image and likeness (NIL) funds and budgets smaller than the game’s dominant powers? Because he coaches at Army. That’s it. There’s no logic to unfold here. There’s no counterpoint to the idea that winning at a place such as West Point should overqualify a coach for a bigger college coaching job. There is simply the lazy, popular belief that service academy coaching is too bespoke to translate. Head coach Jeff Monken, stands with his team, during an event where President Joe Biden presented the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy to the United States Military Academy Army Black Knights, in the East Room of the White House, Monday, May 6, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) AP Monken is starting to mirror his friend and former rival Ken Niumatalolo. At Navy, Niumatalolo posted six seasons of nine or more wins for the Midshipmen and upset Notre Dame three times. But three consecutive losing seasons, as well as allowing Monken’s Army to meet and overtake the Midshipmen on the field and in recruiting, led to staffing arguments with Navy’s athletic department and Niumatalolo’s firing in 2022. He is now the head coach at San Jose State, where the Spartans qualified for a bowl game in his first season. Niumatalolo didn’t miss his chance to pivot Navy’s momentum into a power conference job so much as he was effectively blackballed by that lazy consensus about what academy success means. Also, the height of Niumatalolo’s success coincided with the tail end of Paul Johnson’s decline at Georgia Tech. Both Niumatalolo and Monken worked under Johnson when he coached Navy from 2002 to 2007 and saw their boss parlay a 45-29 record to the head job at Georgia Tech, where he led the Yellow Jackets to an ACC title and two Orange Bowls. Johnson and his assistants ran the triple option, the most stigmatized scheme in the sport’s history, to great success at the service academies. The game of football specifically poses a challenge at a place like West Point, where cadets must manage weight requirements designed for combat readiness and not offensive line play. It’s one of many reasons the triple, which runs the ball almost exclusively and doesn’t often stress linemen into traditional pass-blocking scenarios, is considered a stylistic dinosaur. And in a pre-transfer portal world, popular logic held that transitioning a roster in and out of the triple would be career suicide not only for a coach but also for the athletic director who hired him. Aware of the bias, Monken approved an overhaul of the Army triple option in 2024, hiring new co-coordinators Matt Drinkall and Drew Thatcher. Publicly, Monken said he was concerned about changes to officiating the style of blocking an option required. In coaching circles, the motive was an open secret — Monken wanted to shed the academy stereotype and prove he could succeed with a system friendlier to non-academy recruiting. The result was an offense that leaned toward its weaknesses instead of away from them, and Army’s output suffered before the old, under-center “flexbone” formation returned later in the season. Army’s offense, while varied in its looks, averages 32.9 points a game this season and throws the ball less often than any other FBS program. But despite turning in arguably the greatest season of his career, at a place bereft of the talent that fuels college football success, Monken is still considered the wrong fit for a bevy of programs in desperate need of pragmatic solutions to market deficiencies. North Carolina is promising an exponential increase in investment to their football program to support Belichick, who has more than a full hand’s worth of Super Bowl rings but not even a hangnail of experience creating a consistent college winner against impossible odds. Monken might win 13 games in one season coaching a team less talented at virtually every position than its opponents. That any faction of North Carolina’s selectors, official or otherwise, entertained such a wildly unqualified name as Belichick over Monken borders on criminal mismanagement.

If there’s an area of college football lacking in analysis, it’s the competency and culpability of the individuals who hire and fire head coaches. That’s also the only reason Jeff Monken is still coaching Army. Army entered Saturday’s rivalry game with Navy as American Athletic Conference champion at 11-1, its best season in modern history. […]

If there’s an area of college football lacking in analysis, it’s the competency and culpability of the individuals who hire and fire head coaches. That’s also the only reason Jeff Monken is still coaching Army.

Army entered Saturday’s rivalry game with Navy as American Athletic Conference champion at 11-1, its best season in modern history. Monken, who comes from a family of football coaches in the Chicago suburbs, is 81-56 in 11 seasons at West Point, which might be the most impressive record of any active Football Bowl Subdivision coach when weighted against the demands and constraints of a service academy.

He’ll also be on the sidelines at West Point again next fall, barring another wildly unforeseen jolt in the coaching carousel.

For every baffling hire of a misfit celebrity coach destined to fail, there’s an athletic director, university president or consulting firm that continues to fail up the ladder of college administration mostly unscathed. It’s hard to explain this incongruence in a billion-dollar enterprise such as college football. But unlike the unambiguous goals of professional sports franchises, the beauty of colleges’ mealymouthed union of academics and capitalism is that it’s often easier to hide within it.

North Carolina is a fantastic example. The Tar Heels’ hire of former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick is an obvious PR play for a UNC brand considered deeply unserious about football success by the industry. It’s also evidence of how often the wrong people wielding the wrong information float to the top of a decision-making matrix.

Army head coach Jeff Monken reacts after an NCAA college football game against Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)
AP

Belichick is a six-time Super Bowl-winning coach. He has also never coached college football, let alone managed a college roster. That’s never been harder: The NCAA’s attempt at self-preservation over governance has created a lawlessness of never-ending free agency.

Only the most naive of analyses could rationalize the selection of Belichick, whose very interest in the job should have signaled to North Carolina brass that the pedigree he will sell to recruits is considered an outdated blueprint by current NFL executives.

Monken, meanwhile, is not a schematic genius, nor is he particularly compelling as a public figure. But he is a college football head coach intimately familiar with the specific challenges of building a winning roster. With the lopsided rule set of the college game, any coach of an 11-win service academy should be deemed nothing less than a personnel savant.

And acumen for overcoming organizational limitations and internal politics was exactly what a program such as UNC desperately needed, not the NFL’s grumpiest lion in winter.

Army was routinely one of the worst programs in the entire FBS under the four head coaches preceding Monken. If you put even the slightest stock in recruiting valuation or believe in the popular Blue Chip Ratio, which states no team can realistically compete for a national title without a certain percentage of top prospects, Monken is nothing less than a wizard. Army is a Top 25 team boasting zero five-star or four-star players in its signing classes.

Army, Navy and Air Force cannot successfully recruit the game’s top recruits for obvious reasons. The combination of lifestyle, academic requirements and commitment to military service void service academies’ chances at 99% of the high school recruits who make headlines.

Monken is 12-4 in his past 16 games against Navy and Air Force, Army’s only true peers and the best measuring sticks of coaching prowess because their personnel disadvantages are considered close to equal, especially between West Point and Annapolis.

While Monken’s Army might lack a brand-name upset (it pushed Oklahoma to overtime in 2018 and did the same to Michigan in 2019) he oversaw Georgia Southern’s legendary 26-20 upset of Florida in 2013, in which the then-Football Championship Subdivision Eagles beat the Gators without completing a single pass.

So why wasn’t Monken at the top of the list at a place such as North Carolina, or any other power conference school searching for a new coach while balancing name, image and likeness (NIL) funds and budgets smaller than the game’s dominant powers?

Because he coaches at Army. That’s it. There’s no logic to unfold here. There’s no counterpoint to the idea that winning at a place such as West Point should overqualify a coach for a bigger college coaching job. There is simply the lazy, popular belief that service academy coaching is too bespoke to translate.

Head coach Jeff Monken, stands with his team, during an event where President Joe Biden presented the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy to the United States Military Academy Army Black Knights, in the East Room of the White House, Monday, May 6, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
AP

Monken is starting to mirror his friend and former rival Ken Niumatalolo. At Navy, Niumatalolo posted six seasons of nine or more wins for the Midshipmen and upset Notre Dame three times. But three consecutive losing seasons, as well as allowing Monken’s Army to meet and overtake the Midshipmen on the field and in recruiting, led to staffing arguments with Navy’s athletic department and Niumatalolo’s firing in 2022. He is now the head coach at San Jose State, where the Spartans qualified for a bowl game in his first season.

Niumatalolo didn’t miss his chance to pivot Navy’s momentum into a power conference job so much as he was effectively blackballed by that lazy consensus about what academy success means. Also, the height of Niumatalolo’s success coincided with the tail end of Paul Johnson’s decline at Georgia Tech. Both Niumatalolo and Monken worked under Johnson when he coached Navy from 2002 to 2007 and saw their boss parlay a 45-29 record to the head job at Georgia Tech, where he led the Yellow Jackets to an ACC title and two Orange Bowls.

Johnson and his assistants ran the triple option, the most stigmatized scheme in the sport’s history, to great success at the service academies. The game of football specifically poses a challenge at a place like West Point, where cadets must manage weight requirements designed for combat readiness and not offensive line play. It’s one of many reasons the triple, which runs the ball almost exclusively and doesn’t often stress linemen into traditional pass-blocking scenarios, is considered a stylistic dinosaur.

And in a pre-transfer portal world, popular logic held that transitioning a roster in and out of the triple would be career suicide not only for a coach but also for the athletic director who hired him.

Aware of the bias, Monken approved an overhaul of the Army triple option in 2024, hiring new co-coordinators Matt Drinkall and Drew Thatcher. Publicly, Monken said he was concerned about changes to officiating the style of blocking an option required. In coaching circles, the motive was an open secret — Monken wanted to shed the academy stereotype and prove he could succeed with a system friendlier to non-academy recruiting.

The result was an offense that leaned toward its weaknesses instead of away from them, and Army’s output suffered before the old, under-center “flexbone” formation returned later in the season. Army’s offense, while varied in its looks, averages 32.9 points a game this season and throws the ball less often than any other FBS program.

But despite turning in arguably the greatest season of his career, at a place bereft of the talent that fuels college football success, Monken is still considered the wrong fit for a bevy of programs in desperate need of pragmatic solutions to market deficiencies.

North Carolina is promising an exponential increase in investment to their football program to support Belichick, who has more than a full hand’s worth of Super Bowl rings but not even a hangnail of experience creating a consistent college winner against impossible odds.

Monken might win 13 games in one season coaching a team less talented at virtually every position than its opponents.

That any faction of North Carolina’s selectors, official or otherwise, entertained such a wildly unqualified name as Belichick over Monken borders on criminal mismanagement.