We talked about this a lot last year and it's even more true this year—any team out of the top nine could be a national champion.
It is that close. OK, so we have Navy still at #1 and they are looking solid there for the moment. Cal is at #9 (!) after their loss to Army, but remember Cal has been moved down before and, funnily enough, seem to be very good at peaking when they need to peak and making the D1A final. The Bears made the final in 2018, 2019, and 2023.
In case you were wondering and didn't want to search around, here are the finalists from each year of D1A:
2011: Cal over BYU
2012: BYU over Arkansas State
2013: Life over Saint Mary's
2014: Saint Mary's over Life
2015: Saint Mary's over Life
2016: Life over Saint Mary's
2017: Saint Mary's over Life
2018: Life over Cal
2019: Life over Cal
2020: Not held
2021: Not held
2022: Army over Saint Mary's
2023: Navy over Cal
And we'll beat this drum once more. After all the talk that East Coast teams are hampered by seasonality and West Coast teams are favored by playoffs in the spring, the West Coast hasn't won since 2017, and cold-weather teams have won the last two.
Anyway ... on to this past weekend.And a momentous weekend it was.
Army beat Cal and that's the one that really shakes things up. Army lost five games in the fall, and so that's why they were ranked lower down. But let's break that down a little bit, shall we? One loss was to Trinity (Dublin University), so that's not really unexpected or relevant. One loss was by two points to Navy—no shame in that. And in fact we can add in their tie with Notre Dame College. NDC was, of course, NCR D1 champs and tying them, again, carries frustration but no shame.
Massive Result: West Point Over Cal 27-14
One loss was 29-26 to St. Bonaventure. Very close to a very good team. Certainly a result that we can say "OK, they have improved since then" which of course the close loss to Navy (which was a month later) indicates as well. One loss was a close loss to Life ... OK, well, Life is pretty good too.
So the only thing that we have to think about throwing out, really, is their October 21 27-7 loss to Kutztown. Now, Kutztown is pretty good, but we have to acknowledge this was a bad day for West Point. They just didn't play well. That doesn't go away ... unless a really big eraser shows up. Beating Cal is that eraser. In the end it just doesn't fit. We can skip by a three-point loss and a tie from back in September fairly easily, chalking those up to "they're better now." But a 20-point result? It's tough. We just have to say now Army is a different team.
The reshuffling works out pretty well the rest of the way. Central Washington beat BYU (as did Lindenwood) and the winning margins were about the same. We put CWU at #5 and Lindenwood at #6 and, to be honest, it's a somewhat arbitrary choice. Thankfully they play each other in two weeks! Saint Mary's is at #4 after a good win over Cal Poly but their ranking is a bit of a house of cards right now, based as it is partly on a 27-26 win over CWU
They've beaten UCLA and Arizona, but what about BYU or Cal? Those guys are coming the next couple of weeks.
