Piece by: Thomas DeMeo
College football is home to some of the greatest moments and teams in all of sports. We happily remember UCF's perfect season and how they became the people's national champion. We remember guys like Joe Burrow and Cam Newton leading their teams to improbable title runs. But for everything incredible that occurs in a college football season, there are those down at the bottom looking up wishing they had different fortunes.
I think we all know the famous losers of college football. Kansas and Vanderbilt have been the laughing stocks of their conferences for most of recent history, Idaho was performing so bad that they dropped back down a division just to be more competitive, and who could forget Northwestern's infamous 34 game losing streak. All these teams were and are bad, but there's one team in one season that sticks out from all the rest. The 2003 Army Black Knights.
This team managed to go a record 0-13, while achieving and experiencing a number of firsts for both their own team and college football.
Now first for those of you who are wondering how they were able to play 13 games in a regular season, that year they played at Hawaii and the NCAA has an exception specifically for them. In short, to help teams cover travel costs to Hawaii they allow teams to play an extra (usually home) game to help make up costs.
So that's how it became possible, but how did it actually happen? Well, let's set the scene a few years back.
The year is 2000, Army brings in new head coach Todd Berry to rebuild the team. He had a short but solid career turning around Illinois State and seemed like a solid fit for the job. Not only was the coach changing, so was the team culture. See prior to Berry's hiring Army had been a heavy option run team, since the mid 1980's.
Berry brought in a brand new pass-first pro style playbook, something Army has never really been known to do since the 1970s. Meaning that if you were a returning player for this team, you had to learn a completely different style of play. With that in mind expectations were low for the 2000 season as a complete team overhaul and rebuild were being done. That year Army went 1-10 with their only win coming against a mediocre Tulane team.
The following year though did show some signs of progress. Army only went 3-8, but that is still an improvement and the team seemed to start becoming competitive, even beating arch rival Navy. As you may have guessed though this hope was short lived as the following year Army went a mere 1-11 including a loss to Holy Cross and the sole win once again being a mediocre Tulane team.
The 2003 season was likely Berry's last to prove something, but people didn't have too much hope. The internet was not what it is now back then, but I was able to find some predictions that only had Army finishing an awful 1-12. That year Army was only returning a total of 12 starters and combined that with Berry's lack of understanding his players' skills made it even worse.
See a big reason Army always ran and still does run the ball is because West Point is a very academically and militarily demanding school. They aren't able to get 5 star golden arm quarterbacks or Randy Moss type receivers. Running the ball allows teams to control the clock and not have to depend on big plays, settling for modest short yard gains. Berry's offense was the exact opposite.
So with that in mind how bad was his eventual last season. Army's first 4 games were at home losing all by an average of almost 22 points. If that doesn't sound bad enough the team was averaging less than 19 points in that stretch. One game in particular I want to mention is against South Florida, because this game was featured on ESPN College Game day.
It was Army's first as of right now, only time hosting and it was also the first time Game day had to abruptly end due to lightning. Even mother nature was trying to save people from watching this team. Army lost that day 28-0. Two weeks later Berry would be abruptly fired six games into the season. This was the first and as of right now only time this has happened in Army history.
Firing a coach mid season doesn't really do much, the intern coach can't magically fix things cause they're probably going to run the same game plan, because that's all the team knows. Also the team really can't start looking for a new coach until after the season. Heck Berry still probably got his full contract for the remainder of that season, so what was the point?
Well I have a theory. Firing a coach mid season is a warning to other teams. This coach was so bad we couldn't stand to have him for just a couple more months.
Here's some numbers just to show how bad it was. Through six games, Berry Army's offense averaged 14.2 points per game. About 292 yards of offense. Averaging only 3.7 yards per play and turning the ball over an average of 4 times a game. Defensively this team was equally as bad. They gave up an average of 37.2 points per game. About 471 yards of offense, leading opponents to average over 6.6 yards a play. If it's any consolation though this defense did force 2 turnovers a game.
Not a single game was remotely competitive, and there were no real signs of optimism. After Berry's firing Army appointed defensive line coach John Mumford to interim head coach. While he was also unable to get any wins, he was able to get the closest to one. His first two games as head coach saw his team lose by six and four points respectively. The rest of the season was filled with blowouts including losing to rivals Air Force and Navy by a combined score of 65 to 9.
Under Mumford the team did better but still nowhere close to where you want to be as a team. They put up a still less than impressive 17.3 points a game. Averaged an even worse 253 yards per game. But improved to an average 3.9 yards per play. They also managed to slightly reduce their turnovers to only about 2.9 a game. Defensively Mumford's led team gave up 36.1 points per game, about 459 yards of offense, being about 5.6 yards per play, while forcing only 1.7 turnovers a game. When those numbers are technically an improvement you know a team is truly terrible.
For the season as a whole Army lost by an average of almost 21 points a game. While their strength of schedule had them in an average area of 81 out of 117, they faced 5 teams with losing records.
To this day no other team has lost 13 games in a single season and with the current rules I don't see it happening again.
In the aftermath Army would get Bob Ross out of retirement to be the next full time coach. He also wouldn't be able to get the program back on track and Army wouldn't have a winning season until two head coaches later in 2010.
Army was sent into a school worst 19 game losing streak. Stretching from late 2002 into 2004. Berry would bounce around as an assistant for a couple years until landing another head coaching job at Louisiana Monroe. John Mumford stayed at Army under several different head coaches until he was let go in 2014 and funny enough ended up being hired by Berry again in 2014.
Even more funny is the 2015 season. After several rough seasons ranging from mediocre to awful Berry was let go after 10 games of a 13 game season. The man who took his place for the last three games…John Mumford. Over a decade later and nothing changed. Berry has not coached since.
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