Season Review

Cole Jacobson: With the end of the season having come, it’s time to reflect on the long-awaited return of CSFL action. I’ll start things off with admitting defeat: unlike my perfect 2019 preseason predictions, I did not get it all correct this time around. I thought that Army would repeat as CSFL champs after winning it all in 2019, and though this year’s Army-Navy CSFL title game went down to the wire, it was ultimately the Midshipmen who took the throne back. Looking back on it, I simply underestimated how the Navy passing attack would look following the graduation of Braydan Chmiel. The Middies were dominant in every phase of the game all year long en route to becoming the CSFL’s first 8-0 team since Army in 2017, the inaugural season of the CSFL’s two-division system. They were just about as undisputed of a champion as you can have in any sport, so I accept the “L” with my preseason call. As for MVP, which the CSFL hasn’t announced yet, my preseason pick of Army senior LB David Dickerson should be in the mix as one of two CSFL players with 5+ sacks and 50+ tackles (joining STAC’s Tyreke Smith). But my guess is that, fresh off a 129-rushing yard performance in the title game win, Navy RB Matthew McGee takes it.

Broadly, I think the league has to be pleased overall with how the 2021 season unfolded, particularly the second half of it. The biggest difference between the second half and the first half was the sign of some emerging parity. At the midpoint of the season, neither Army nor Navy had beaten anyone besides each other by a margin of smaller than 25 points, and I wrote that “the title race is clearly those two schools, then the rest.” While the championship game ultimately did involve those two teams, the path there wasn’t as simple as it appeared to be when we were four weeks into the season. In particular, Army had a turbulent month of October. En route to its North division title, Army eked by Mansfield in an 19-11 dogfight despite Mansfield missing sensation QB Cahsid Raymond for the 2nd half. Two weeks later, the Black Knights edged Caldwell in a preposterous 4-2, 5-OT game in which neither team scored a point until the 4th OT, a result that was only made possible because of how asinine the new college football overtime rules are.  

When all is said and done, it’s still true that only three teams have won the CSFL title since 2007, and it’s still true that none of that “Big 3” of Army, Navy, and Penn even lost a game to anyone besides each other in either 2019 or 2021. But just how competitive some of these games were, particularly in the beefed-up North division that I wrote about before the season started, suggests that brighter days are ahead. To me, that competitiveness up north was the biggest surprise of the 2021 season. Obviously cold weather can impact some scores, particularly with the teams up north that are affected most by rain and snow, but the numbers don’t lie, and we saw Army get taken to the wire in a way that program has rarely, if ever, seen.

On the flip side, as for the league’s biggest disappointment, I’d have to head down south and pick Chestnut Hill. The Griffins had been improving year by year since their inaugural season in 2015, culminating in a program-best 5-2 record in 2019, but that upward trajectory took a drastic turn with this year’s 1-6 finish. As a former CHC player, Kyle Johnson-Hackett is far more qualified than I am to talk about what might have caused this abrupt decline, but what I can say is that, at least to a third-party observer, it absolutely came out of nowhere for a team that had three straight winning seasons before the Coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S.  For selfish reasons, I was somewhat disappointed in Penn’s season too. While most schools in this league would gladly take a 5-2 finish, I want to see my former program competing for championships, and the 2021 team just wasn’t there, trailing Army 38-0 and Navy 45-0 through three quarters in each of this year’s matchups.

Another key observation from this season is that, following Navy’s title win, the CSFL still hasn’t seen a repeat champion since Army did so in 2012 and 2013. In a nutshell, this drought doesn’t seem that noteworthy; for the sake of comparison, college football at the FBS level hasn’t seen a repeat winner since 2011-12 Alabama, and the NFL hasn’t had a back-to-back Super Bowl winner since the 2003-04 Patriots. But consider how much bigger the NFL and FBS are than the CSFL, which hovers around 8-10 teams (not to mention that two of those teams tend to be particularly dominant). For a league this small, and this top-heavy, to still not have had a repeat winner in the past eight years, is both mystifying and exciting. As for how it’s possible, my theory is a mixture of personnel and motivation. While there’s nothing that mentally fuels an offseason of working out quite like coming in second place does, it’s also candidly the case that championship teams in the CSFL tend to have very strong senior classes, leading to a potential dip in talent the following year. But no matter what your explanation for it is, the fact that we can enter each season without certainty about who is going to win it all, despite the size of the league, is something that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Looking ahead, there’s one big reason to be excited about sprint football’s outlook beyond what’s already been mentioned here: the arrival of the Midwest Sprint Football League. When I was recapping the 2019 season for this website two years ago, I wrote that “sprint football is likely never going to be a nationwide sport, with dozens of teams taking flights every week to compete across the country.” Clearly, I may have spoken too soon, as the founding of the MSFL took me completely off-guard. Even though the MSFL hasn’t played a game yet, there has already been speculation about where the sport could go from there, including potential expansion into the southwest U.S. and an eventual interleague championship game between the MSFL and CSFL winners. (For what it’s worth, I know a stadium that happens to be right in the geographic middle of where both leagues are set up.) Like anything else in life, it’s important not to get too far ahead of ourselves, so it might not do us any good to start thinking about a Navy-Air Force sprint football game or a national title game played at the Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton. But the fact that such ideas are even on the table is a testament to the strides that the sport has made, and I’m excited to continue following along with whatever steps are next.

Kyle Johnson- Hackett: Cole has done a great job summarizing and explaining the major talking points that occurred during this amazing 2021 season. The only thing that I will mention is the explosive jump in quality quarterback play that happened this season. I was very skeptical about quarterback play across the league heading into this season. Every team had a freshman or a first time starter taking over. I thought there would be a lot of poor lackluster play from the bulk of these guys. Boy was I wrong. Cahsid Raymond(MU), Brandon Atwood(Navy), Dennis Riordan(STAC), Frank DeMaio(CU), Andrew Paolini(Penn), and Timmy Tillman( AB) all had fantastic season for their teams. Just like every other league and every other level of competition you need a decent quarterback at bare minimum if your going to compete. All of these young athletes are way above that threshold and each made impactful plays for their team throughout the season. The future is bright for each of these guys and they will be important pieces for each program as they gear up for the 2022 season.