Q: Which program perennially does the most with less?
A: And it's not even close. No one, no one, comes close to doing more with less than Navy and Air Force. Army has struggled, so it doesn't get thrown under the umbrella of military teams.
It takes a different type of player to go to those schools and play for those teams, and because discipline is part of the being at Air Force or Navy, running the style of offenses they run is possible with less talented players. The defenses tend to get by on want-to and motor. When have you ever seen a game played by one of the service academies when there wasn't 100% all-out effort?
Because of the military precision involved in running the Air Force and Navy attacks over and over and over again, it's almost impossible for most teams to adequately come up with the right simulation in practice to prepare for them. But talent-wise, if you put these players in another system or on another team with a different style, they'd struggle.
Air Force tends to get a higher caliber of player than Navy, but it's not like the NFL is waiting for the Falcon players to get through their commitments. Overall, these two teams don't have a ton of players who'd start for most non-BCS teams and they're picking from such a narrow field of recruit that it's impossible to bring in players like other teams do. Even so, they go to bowls year after year after year.