Alison Althouse-GoMids.com
When a program wins 11 games as Navy did last year, the contributions of the collective create the achievement. Even though specific individuals held the Midshipmen together in 2015, everyone had a role in shaping the season. Ivin Jasper must now confront the reality that 10 of his 2016 starters will be stepping into that role for the first time.
It is an eternal and unavoidable dimension of collegiate athletics -- perhaps not within the context of single seasons, but certainly within the prism of extended coaching careers: Ideal rosters don't last.
Decorated senior classes, bands of brothers who climbed the mountainside over a period of a few years, must eventually part company with the coaches who molded them into first-rate performers.