CSFL Season Wrap Up

Cole Jacobson: For starters, before getting into anything that happened on the field, I gotta say it’s good to be back. I took a hiatus from writing during the season while I was coaching high school ball in California, and Kyle deserves a shoutout for running a solo operation during that time period. But I kept tabs on things from afar, and since our season ended earlier than I would’ve liked, I figured I had a season recap in me.

When discussing the 2024 CSFL season, the first order of business obviously has to be congratulating Army on a perfect season. The Black Knights earned their first championship of this decade, snapping a three-year streak by Navy during the three years of Alfonso Meidus’ coaching tenure. This prevented the Midshipmen from earning the league’s first four-peat since Army won six in a row from 1986-91 — a streak that coincidentally overlapped with current Army Head Coach Mark West’s playing career. It was also Army’s first perfect season since 2017, when they somehow beat my Penn squad in a championship where we held them to 132 total yards. 

As for how Army did it this year, it was hard to ask for a more exciting way to cap off the season. After dispatching Navy, 17-3, in the regular season, the title rematch was a different story, one where Navy won the battles of first downs, total yardage, and time of possession. Despite that, the Black Knights managed to take a 21-10 lead into the fourth quarter thanks to three Arthur Lavalais rushing touchdowns, and from that point on, it was about bending but not breaking. Navy scored early in the fourth to make it 21-16, and the Midshipmen had two more drives after that, but Army’s defense forced a turnover in downs in the red zone, and then secured an interception to clinch the win. It was an absolutely thrilling way to wrap up the sixth consecutive CSFL title game between these rivals (Navy has won four of them, for what it’s worth).

At the individual level, the overwhelming favorite for MVP has to be Army QB Kyle West, given his league-leading totals in completion percentage (66.9%), passing yards (1,429), passing TD (18), and just about any other relevant passing metric out there, along with the best stat of all: the team championship. Mansfield’s Cahsid Raymond deserves some recognition too, as it’s not every day that a player ranks in the top eight of the league in passing, rushing, and receiving yards, but it’s certainly West’s award to lose. Assuming he does take it home, it would be a pretty damn cool achievement for the West family. Kyle’s brother, Keegan, won the award in 2018 at Army, and they both did it while playing under their father, Mark — who took home the inaugural CSFL MVP trophy during his senior season playing QB at West Point in 1990. It’s fair to say that this is sprint football’s version of the Manning family, with Kyle channeling his counterpart, fellow younger brother Eli, by also bringing a championship to New York. Army should be grateful that it doesn’t have the same three-year maximum for head coaches that Navy does, as that’s allowed Mark West to experience these incredible moments with his sons.

Elsewhere around the league, a nice story to see for selfish reasons was that my old Penn squad had a bounce-back season. I wrote in last year’s season roundup things weren’t quite as bad as they seemed following their 2-4 year in 2023 — the Quakers’ fewest wins since 2006 — and that came to fruition this year, with the squad finishing 5-2. When we played them to a scoreless tie in this year’s Alumni Game, it was easy to be skeptical of whether their offense would be improved from 2023, but they certainly made progress on that side of the ball, largely thanks to the youth movement led by freshman QB Michael Malone and sophomore RB JT Goodman. The team still wasn’t really in the championship conversation, losing 31-0 to Navy in a game it was out-gained by 395 total yards, but it was still Penn’s first winning season since 2021, which is worth something. 

In fact, Penn’s improvement was a microcosm of a notable trend across the league: the South division being back. When Kyle and I were in college during the early years of CSFL’s divisional era, the South division was clearly the better one, with Army typically cake-walking to the title game in the North while the South had much more competitive battles. Then, early in the 2020s, there was a sudden shift toward the North becoming stronger, partially thanks to Caldwell temporarily moving up there. But this year, despite Army being the champions, the tide undoubtedly turned back toward the South. In fact, Army was the only one of the five North division teams to win a single game against a South division team this season. Caldwell, Penn, Chestnut Hill, and Navy went a combined 13-0 against North division teams not named Army. It remains to be seen whether the South’s strength will be maintained going forward, but at a minimum, it’s been interesting to see the back-and-forth nature of this phenomenon so far.

Looking forward, there’s one million-dollar question that still hasn’t been answered over the past three years: will the MSFL and CSFL merge to create a true national championship game? We’ve seen CSFL teams scrimmage MSFL teams, such as Army facing Walsh earlier this year, but we’ve yet to see any form of interleague play become official. One possible roadblock, which I don’t believe existed before this year (or I at least didn’t know about it), is that the MSFL’s current weight limit is 190 pounds, 12 ahead of the CSFL’s 178. If the sports have different rules, it might be too practically difficult to see a compromise for a merged title game. But if it can happen one day down the road, I imagine all involved parties feel that it’d be awesome to see exactly how much the MSFL has improved by letting their best face the CSFL’s best. And of course, if the sport does expand geographically even further than the Midwest, that’d be more fun for everybody — and there’s no doubt that Kyle will be there to cover it.