July 16, 2012

The Navy football team was ranked 65th out of 124 teams by Athlon Sports in its College Football Preseason Magazine. Only two of Navy's opponents were ranked higher than the Midshipmen as Notre Dame is ranked 20th and Penn State 44th.

The rest of Navy's opponents are ranked as follows: East Carolina 78th, Indiana 89th, Air Force 92nd, Army 96th, San Jose State 98th, Troy 109th, Central Michigan 110th, Florida Atlantic 120th and Texas State 121st. VMI is an FCS school and was not ranked by Athlon.

Here is Athlon's final analysis of the Midshipmen: Navy established a program record of appearing in eight straight bowl games by not beating itself and doing all the little things right. Last season, the Midshipmen hurt themselves with costly mistakes, untimely turnovers and poor special teams. There is always a small margin of error for a service academy program, and the Mids, who routinely find themselves in close games, need to get back to playing mistake-free football.

Athlon also quotes an unnamed opposing assistant coach: "This is still a good team. They lost a bunch of close games last year-the type of games they had been winning before. They'll be back."

Athlon projects Navy to play Utah in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco.