by Patrick Zier | Sep 9, 2026 |
TAMPA – South Florida Coach Brian Hartline doesn’t want his team to be like Mike. He wants it to be like Army. And no, we’re not talking about going to the wishbone or some version of it. “We have a lot of respect for the way they operate,” Hartline said Tuesday before heading for West Point, N.Y. and Saturday’s game against the Black Knights.
“It kind of feeds into everything I believe in.”
Army doesn’t have a lot of size. It doesn’t have a lot of speed. It struggles against teams with superior talent, especially when it steps outside the Group of 6. And even in the Group of 6, specifically the American Conference, it often doesn’t measure up physically. What it does have is a lot of heart, a lot of pride and a no-quit attitude regardless of the circumstances.
“It’s not about your talent level,” Hartline said. “It’s about your skill and discipline level, your ability to develop skill based on the technique, based on the fundamentals you need to do your job and then your ability to develop the discipline to do it consistently, prepare for it the right way, execute the right way on game day. That’s what it’s about.”
Ever since he arrived on the South Florida scene, Hartline has preached those things to his team. He believes that when you get your mind focused on playing well and then go out and play well, when you stay within yourself and do what you’re supposed to do, the wins will come.
“There’s talent, there’s skill and there’s discipline,” Hartline continued. “Talent is kind of what God’s blessed you with and your job is to maximize that. Your skill and discipline development is purely on you. They kind of embody that,” Hartline said of Army.
“They maximize their skill and talent,” Hartline said. “They maximize from a discipline standpoint. They know what they’re supposed to do on each job and they know their job description. So, you know, I have a lot of respect for the way they operate.”
The big thing Army has going for it, especially in the wild, wild West that college football has become, is stability. Jeff Monken, its coach, is in his 13th year. Only four coaches in the college game have longer tenure. Because it is a service academy, Army doesn’t have to deal with the transfer portal, NIL or collectives.
Players come to Army because that’s where they want to be. Monken has a chance to develop them, integrate them into his system. And it shows. Army is always troublesome, sometimes good and occasionally very good, like when it won the American in 2024. The Black Knights haven’t had a losing season since 2015. Primarily, that’s because they run a jazzed-up version of the wishbone, an offense which is almost extinct.
Army’s opener against Bryant is a case in point. Army won, 59-3. Okay, you say, who cares? For heaven’s sake, it’s Bryant. But the story here is not that Army beat Bryant, it’s how they did it. Army gained 569 yards rushing with 16 different players carrying the ball. Everybody that suited up for the game played.
More importantly, Army was virtually mistake free. It ran 70 offensive plays, including 57 runs, and NEVER HAD A TURNOVER OR A SINGLE NEGATIVE PLAY. Let me repeat that, not one turnover or a single negative play. It had only one offensive penalty, for holding, and only one on defense, giving it two for the entire game. And that’s not unusual. In 2025, Army was the least penalized team in college football. It also led the country in time of possession.
“Why is it hard to play them? Probably because it’s aways difficult to go against somebody that’s pretty consistent,” Hartline commented. “They show up the right way. They do things the right way. They hold themselves accountable.
“Those are the kind of people you – frankly – probably don’t want to compete against and so I have a lot of respect for, you know, how they operate, what they do and the way they go about their business. So a great opportunity for us,” Hartline added.
“For them it’s not about what other people do, it’s about what they do. I have a lot of respect for that,” Hartline repeated. “And, you know, they’re expert at it. So they’re going to do a good job maximizing every drive, maximizing their skill set and what they’re best at.”
What Army wants to do is grind you up and spit you out. It’s what Army does. At Michie Stadium, there is a bronze plaque that every player touches before every home game. On it is inscribed a quote attributed to General George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff during World War II, although there is some question as to whether he actually said it. Doesn’t matter, because it embodies the essence of Army football.
“I want an officer for a secret and dangerous mission. I want an Army football player,” the plaque reads. And so Saturday, if USF is to win, it will, to borrow a slogan from the Army, have to be all it can be, because Army does what Army does, and nobody does it better.
by Patrick Zier | Sep 2, 2026 |
It’s kind of funny, really. In 2022, Atlanta Motor Speedway repaved its track so it would be more like Daytona, becoming a mini-superspeedway, if you will. It couldn’t be a true superspeedway because at a mile-and-a-half, it’s not as big as Daytona and Talladega.
Mostly, it added banking to produce the long lines of cars that went round and round until somebody got out of shape and caused a big wreck, just like Daytona and Talladega. Actual racing? Again, just like Daytona and Talladega, there wasn’t much of that.
Until the summer race this July. In a totally unexpected development, drivers and race teams found the track had changed its character. I was nothing like what had been going on the past few years, including the spring race this February.
The track surface was worn, and the cars lost grip. Some teams’ set-ups were better able to take advantage of the change in downforce than others, but the long lines didn’t form because at a certain point, everybody was unstable. They couldn’t reach the high speeds produced by drafting one another usually seen on superspeedways where slower cars were pulled along at the same speed as the faster ones. Now, there were small groups of cars, and if a faster car got a good run it could pull out of line and pass a slower car in front of it and then get back in line. There was real racing for a change.
NASCAR saw that and, to its credit, put together a committee to see if it couldn’t come up with some changes that would create better racing at Daytona. In effect, whereas Atlanta had wanted to become Daytona, now Daytona wanted to become Atlanta.
The curing of the track had produced improved competition at Atlanta naturally, but Daytona was a different animal. So NASCAR came up with some rule changes. It lowered the rear spoiler from seven to four inches and cut horsepower from roughly 550 to 450.
The high spoiler trapped air flowing over and around the car, pushing it into the track and creating downforce. By lowering the spoiler, the cars wouldn’t stick as well and by lowering horsepower, it was harder to close on the car in front and take advantage of the draft, keeping the cars farther apart. The changes were supposed to keep the pack pace steady while adding 3 m.p.h. to cars pulling out to make a single car run.
It was a good idea except for one thing: it didn’t work. Like so many things that look good on paper in NASCAR, when theories were put into practice the results were not what was expected. The long lines quickly formed up again and anybody that pulled out to pass without another line of cars forming behind him was quickly shuffled to the back of the pack.
The one positive, at least early in the race, was that because they weren’t running nose-to-tail, if something happened the cars had enough maneuverability to prevent the big wreck. But in the end, it was a typical superspeedway mess. With Zane Smith leading on the last lap coming to the finish, he was bumped by Tyler Reddick, hit the wall, the big wreck was on and Ryan Preece, who had never won a NASCAR race in 249 starts and may never win another one, snuck home with the win.
“I think it was a great job by NASCAR and the whole team, you know, coming up with something different here,” Denny Hamlin, a member of the committee that came up with the rule changes, said on USA Sports. “There definitely was a change,” Hamlin continued. “The cars felt a little different. I didn’t think it was quite as logjammed as it was in the past. If you wanted to get to the front I felt like you could.”
However, the general consensus seemed to be that not much was different, and some thought the new rules made things worse. Speaking to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Hamlin’s teammate, Christopher Bell, was highly critical of the racing on the track.
“Even with the lower downforce, there were no holes (to get into), there was no bubble (the air compressed by a trailing car closing on the car in front) to separate the cars, which meant there were no places to slide into,” Bell said.
“I don’t know. I expected it to be a lot different,” Bell continued. “There wasn’t a difference at all and it was worse with the fuel mileage and stage lengths we had tonight (Saturday).”
“Honestly, I could not tell a difference,” Brad Keselowski told NASCAR.com. “I couldn’t tell they changed the rules at all. My car drove almost identical to what it did (last year). I was shocked by that,” Keselowski continued. “I thought it would drive poorly (have less downforce), particularly here in the summer.
“I was caught off guard by that,” Keselowski said. “I don’t expect it to be much different at Talladega,” he added. “The car was pretty forgiving, maybe a little bit harder to build a run to push (get to the bumper of the car ahead of you) but it was not dramatic. The handling, I think we all thought handling would be a bigger factor than it was,” he said. “It really didn’t come into play.”
Oh well. Nice try NASCAR.
NASCAR NOTESp
Three most likely winners at Darlington Sunday: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Tyler Reddick, 3-Christopher Bell. Last year’s winner of the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington: Chase Briscoe. Top five in Cook Out Southern 500 last year: 1-Briscoe, 2-Reddick, 3-Erik Jones, 4-John Hunter Nemechek, 5-Justin Allgaier.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport picks: The OGS competition index does not score races at NASCAR’s three superspeedways, Atlanta, Daytona and Talladega. Last week’s race was at Daytona.
Top 10 in OGS competition index after 21 races: 1-Hamlin 565, 2-Bell 391, 3-Reddick 344, 4-Briscoe 312, 5-Ty Gibbs 295, 6-Kyle Larson 283, 7-Ryan Blaney 280, 8-Shane van Gisbergen 226, 9-Joey Logano 208, 10-Chase Elliott 192.
OGS competition index top 10 on intermediate tracks (tracks most like Darlington: 1-Hamlin 419, 2-Reddick 232, 3-Bell 212, 4-Briscoe 147, 5-Larson 129, 6-Elliott 120, 7-William Byron 99, 8-Corey Heim 78, 9-Brad Keselowski 63, 10-Carson Hocevar, Daniel Suarez 51.
by Patrick Zier | Aug 29, 2026 |
Kyle Petty has long been a close observer of NASCAR; after all, he was born into the sport and been around it all his life. And he has opinions, which he is not afraid to express even if they make some people uncomfortable.
Recently, Petty made some waves when he took a shot at Josh Berry, a nose-to-the-grindstone kind of guy who was just fired by the Wood brothers.
Berry, Petty said, deserved to be fired because he wasn’t producing on the track and up-and-coming youngster Jesse Love, the 2025 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Champ who drove Chevys for Richard Childress, was a better long term option.
Possibly. But there are many in the garage who feel Berry is being blamed for something that is not his fault. They see Berry as a talented driver who is being aged out of Cup (he will be 36 in Oct) because he couldn’t get good results in a bad car.
Commenting on X, former crew chief Rodney Childers, who won the 2014 Cup championship with driver Kevin Harvick, defended Berry by repeating a truism that is originally attributed to Harvick. “You can’t drive a slow car fast,” Harvick remarked.
And Berry has been in nothing but slow, uncompetitive cars his entire career. His best – and probably only – shot at getting something better came when Stewart-Haas collapsed and he and Chase Briscoe were the mainstays of the team.
There was an opening at Joe Gibbs Racing, one of Cup’s few elite organizations, and Briscoe, with three more years of Cup experience than Berry plus a pair of Southern 500 wins at Darlington, got it.
Berry cycled over to the Wood brothers, a much better team on paper than they are on the track because their cars are built by Penske. Despite that, the Wood brothers have never been able to seal the deal. They aren’t competitive, except on superspeedways where anybody can win, and their results prove it.
Berry is, by far, the best driver the Wood brothers have had in their car since 2017, when Ryan Blaney drove it. In 2025, Berry put the Wood brothers in victory lane when he won at Las Vegas.
That’s the first time the Wood brothers have won on a track other than a superspeedway since Blaney did it at Pocono in 2017. Berry recently ran off a string of three top 10 finishes in a row, and nobody has done that in a Wood brothers car since Morgan Shepherd had four in 1994.
And nobody, except Blaney, has led more laps for the Wood brothers over the past 10 years then Berry. In his two years with the Wood brothers, 2016-17, Blaney led 312 laps, 39 of which were on superspeedways, giving him a total of 273 on regular tracks.
Including 2025 and with 11 races still left in the 2026 season, Berry has led 298 laps. Ninety-five of those were on superspeedways, giving him a total of 203 and counting on regular tracks.
So clearly, Berry has gotten a lot out of the Wood brothers car, more than almost all of his predecessors. Beyond that, he has proven himself in first class equipment when given the chance.
Out of a Cup ride, Berry was driving in the Infinity Series for JR Motorsports in 2023 when Hendrick Motorsports signed him to replace Chase Elliott, who had been injured in a snowboarding accident.
It is extremely difficult to move into another driver’s seat with an unfamiliar crew chief and team, let alone do it at a place like Hendrick, but Berry proved up to it.
He ran five races for Elliott and had two top 10s including a second at Richmond. Later, Hendrick brought him back to replace Alex Bowman, who had a bad back, and Berry ran three races for him with a top 10 at Dover. He also won the Open qualifier which got him into the All-Star race. So he has produced under pressure.
In his last time out for the Wood brothers, Berry led 73 laps at New Hampshire, finished third, and might have won except for a slow pit stop. He won’t have many more opportunities like that, though.
The clock is ticking for Berry. When this year ends, his Cup career may end as well because there is no place for him to go. No good rides, no bad rides, no rides anywhere.
There was some thought he might end up at Richard Childress Racing, which is in worse shape than the Wood brothers, but Childress is bringing back Austin Hill so that’s out.
“Everybody knows the situation I’m in right now,” Berry said after New Hampshire according to NASCAR’s website. “All these guys I’m racing with right now have a lot of respect for me. I think they understand the situation I’m in.”
It’s frustrating, because Berry deserves better. But like Harvick said, you can’t drive a slow car fast. And unfortunately, no one gave Berry a chance in a fast car.
NASCAR NOTES
No race this week. Old Guy Sport does not count superspeedways (Atlanta, Daytona, Talladega) in its standings because anybody can win on those tracks. NASCAR has made some rule changes which might make the racing there competitive again so that will be something to watch.
