Despite the government shutdown, it appears as though the service academy football teams will be able to follow through with Saturday’s scheduled games as originally planned. According to a report, a senior defense official says Army, Air Force and Navy will all be able to play football on Saturday. Navy has since confirmed their game against Air Force will be played as scheduled.
According to a report by the Associated Press, the decisions to allow games to be played this weekend is just for this weekend. Future games will be evaluated over the next few days while everyone waits to see how long the government will be in shutdown mode. The hope, of course, is that the shutdown does not last too long and everything as far as football operations can resume to a normal routine without fear of having to cancel any games.
Air Force is scheduled to play at Navy on Saturday. Army is scheduled to play at Boston College. While the government is shut down to ease financial concerns, none of the service academies were in danger of canceling football this weekend for financial reasons, according to previous reports. The decisions to postpone any football games would have been more of a political move of solidarity for fear of offending any being frozen out of a paycheck. United Airlines offered to provide free transportation to Air Force’s football team and Boston College had explored to chip in for Army’s travel expenses.
Because the games for the service academies are funded through non-appropriated funds, Army and Air Force traveling is not a concern related to the shutdown. It also helped that the expenses for the traveling for the service academies had been planned in advance and is not a new cost in the budget. Here’s hoping that no matter how long the shutdown may last, that at least football will continue to be played as planned.
Now, if this shutdown reaches a worst-case scenario and for whatever reason extends through the end of the year, then bowl games perhaps become a victim for any bowl-eligible service academy. And I have not even gotten to the topic of the number of bowl eligible teams to available bowl spots. This seems extremely unlikely so I suggest we cross that bridge when we get there, or is that a bridge to nowhere?
UPDATE (9:53 p.m. ET): Navy has made the news for their home game against Air Force official, via Twitter.#NavyFootball game on Saturday against Air Force is a GO. Kickoff 11:30 AM on CBS. No word on the rest of the sports this weekend.
— Navy Athletics (@NavyAthletics) October 3, 2013Follow @KevinOnCFB