Editor’s note: Navy’s Sports Information Department was named one of the FWAA’s Super 11 winners for the 2016 season earlier this year. The award is designed to reward the sports information departments and programs that exemplify excellent media relations.

You don’t have to be paranoid to win at college football. Just look at Navy.

By Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post

This summer — like most recent summers — has birthed new restrictions in the coverage of our most secretive communal pastime: college football. There’s LSU, which announced it would close all preseason practices to members of the media. And Notre Dame, which announced new rules on what sort of practice details could be revealed, and when, and at what length. And Texas, which announced a ban on the contemporaneous posting of quotes on social media, although that was later described as a preference.

In that context, an unlikely breeze of openness continues to waft from Annapolis. Breathe it in and grin. The Naval Academy — the rare college football program whose players might one day guard actual state secrets — doesn’t approach the sport as if it’s a fully classified endeavor. It doesn’t traffic in paranoia. And somehow, despite keeping its front door cracked open, Navy manages to win.

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