SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Michael Marty will tailgate near Yankee Stadium on Saturday afternoon after commuting from Darien, Conn. He wouldn't miss the chance to see his alma mater face his former employer, although calling Notre Dame the place Marty went to school and Army a place he used to work undersells both by the magnitude of the Hudson River, which connects New York City and West Point.
Marty graduated from Notre Dame in 1995 through the school's ROTC program and applied to just two colleges out of high school. Army was the other one. The Irish won out, thanks in part to visits to see his older brother Pat in South Bend on football weekends. Pat went through the ROTC program too and graduated from Notre Dame in 1991.
Their father, Major General Fred F. Marty, had asked both boys to help fund college with some type of scholarship. ROTC covered it. And Michael Marty got the full Notre Dame experience on top of physical training twice per week and military courses. He attended the epic win over Florida State as a junior, the lighting of No. 1 atop Grace Hall and the loss to Boston College a week later. He served in the Army for seven years and later taught economics at West Point. He did an eight-month deployment to the Middle East during Operation Enduring Freedom immediately after 9/11.
In a life of perpetual military movement -- Michael attended four high schools in four years -- Notre Dame offered a constant. So did the concept of service.
"I'll be rooting hard for Notre Dame at Yankee Stadium," Marty said. "But the guys I'm there tailgating with will be supporting the other side."
Marty now runs a tech company focused on ticketing, fan engagement and live events that tries to maximize revenues and find inefficiencies. When undefeated No. 19 Army faces No. 6 Notre Dame on Saturday night, Marty will see his life's work in action, just on the visiting sidelines.
The 20-year road Army traveled from football backwater to College Football Playoff contender was hardly a straight line. Marty is quick to mention that coach Jeff Monken or former athletic director Kevin Anderson as bigger players than "a guy who doesn't know football from foosball," although self-deprecation may be par for Marty's course.
Still, if Army football had a modern Big Bang, this Notre Dame graduate helped light the fuse.
Seventeen years ago, Marty authored a report that helped convince generals that Army football could be more like the innovator it used to be, back when the program produced three Heisman Trophy winners and played a "Game of the Century" against Notre Dame in Yankee Stadium in 1946. After returning to West Point from serving, Marty worked with the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis, which is basically the department of making things function better.
He already was developing an Army video game to boost recruiting after shortfalls in enrollment. Instead of basic advertising, Marty wanted the Army to collect data and better understand what made potential cadets tick. Enrollment went back up.
The next task was fixing Army's athletic department, which had become a financial drain to the point that the federal government covered annual shortfalls that approached $5 million. Like everything in college athletics, getting right meant winning at football, something Army had failed to do, even with former national championship coach Bobby Ross running the program. From 1998-2007, Army football went 23-92 with 10 straight losing seasons and eight losses to Navy. Under Anderson, who served as the athletic director from 2004-10, the Black Knights were desperate.
So in late 2007, the same season Navy and Air Force both won in Notre Dame Stadium, Marty began working on a project called Generating Long-Term And Sustainable Revenue for the Office of the Directorate of Intercollegiate Athletics.
In civilian terms, the report was a fix-it guide for Army athletics.
Some of Marty's recommendations were low-hanging fruit, like charging for parking or moving the cadets' seats in Michie Stadium so they'd be featured on television. But the biggest one was more complex. An economics professor who never played high school football wanted Army to start running the option again, moving forward by getting back to its football roots.
"In some sense, the senior leaders didn't have a choice because it couldn't get any worse," said retired Colonel Dave Lyle, who operated the Office Economic and Manpower Analysis for 14 years. "The fact that Michael lived in the shadows of Notre Dame for four years, he's such a smart guy and so astute, so personable and when he went in and briefed generals, they wanted to listen to him."
Marty didn't push the option as a purely schematic advantage, although the report included the average margin of defeat of Army, Navy and Air Force. The Midshipmen and Falcons were running the option while the Black Knights tried to go pro-style with service academy talent. Navy and Air Force were winning more games and getting blown out less.
Marty theorized if Army got back to the option it would shorten the game, reduce the scoring margin and give the Black Knights a better chance to win, maybe grabbing a bowl check in the process. It would keep fans in their seats longer because the games were more competitive, which meant more concessions sold and a better chance of repeat ticket buyers.
"Even the staff and faculty weren't getting their season tickets because it was just miserable," Lyle said. "I'm not going to watch us get beat by 30 by a bad team in our own stadium."
Anderson liked what he heard, even if coach Stan Brock, who replaced Ross at the former coach's recommendation after the 2006 season, did not. Brock stuck with the pro-style offense during his first season in charge. A year later, after Marty's report, Brock installed the option. He just didn't believe in it.
Brock went 3-9 in both of his two seasons as the coach. Then Anderson fired him, in search of a coach who believed in option football.
"You know how the quarterback goes back to handoff? Well, we couldn't hold the blocks. We were just getting killed," Anderson said. "Not only was the option a good decision for the athletic department and the football team, but it was a great business decision because as you see now, they're selling out them, they're getting promoted."
Anderson interviewed candidates alongside a committee of generals, determined to find an option devotee. He settled on Rich Ellerson from Cal Poly, although he couldn't shake the impression made by a young assistant with Navy ties. Anderson just couldn't convince himself that Army would hire a first-time coach whose main experience came at Navy. So Anderson passed on Jeff Monken, who stayed with Paul Johnson at Georgia Tech instead.
"I was already getting resistance about hiring someone from Navy," Anderson said. "Jeff was the best person to interview out of the two days."
Ellerson re-installed the option and won a bowl game in his second season. But he went 0-5 against Navy and was fired in 2013, replaced by Monken. Athletic director Boo Corrigan, a Notre Dame graduate, made the hire.
By then, the recommendations in Marty's report had begun to take root, even if Army football was four years away from a 10-win season or snapping Navy's 14-game winning streak in the series.
The Army-Navy game moved off conference championship weekend to increase ratings, basically tripling viewership for CBS. The cadets moved to the east stands, a living Army billboard in every camera shot. Army starting using "West Point" in branding, making it clear where the academy called home.
Army played more home games in October, highlighting upstate New York's fall colors. Michie Stadium started closing its gates during games, meaning fans couldn't leave and re-enter, which increased concession sales. And scheduling started to make more sense for Army, which was independent the past 19 years before joining the American Athletic Conference this season. Army played at Oklahoma in 2018 and at Michigan a year later. The Black Knights lost both in overtime.
Sure enough, the athletic department books began to balance. Winning begets winning, whether that's athletic victories or fiscal ones. The option was working. So was everything else.
"Marketing became easier and better, being competitive," Anderson said. "It went from being dire to where we were becoming profitable."
Michie Stadium is now undergoing a massive renovation, with the east stands razed to make room for a new facility set to open in two years. It will include luxury suites and replace a structure built in 1962.
Like any success story, this one has many authors. And Notre Dame will be part of the next chapter on Saturday night, regardless of the final score. NBC will broadcast a Top 25 game with CFP implications. It's a prime-time kickoff that warrants the showcase slot on national television. It has all been a long time coming for Army. And Marty will get to watch it happen up close.
His former colleagues will see it from a distance, Lyle from Pittsburgh and Anderson from Arizona, both knowing a Notre Dame alumnus helped put Army in position to compete with the sport's bluest blood. Just like it used to.
"That report was groundbreaking in the sense that it started to remove obstacles that always prevented good people from doing a good job," Lyle said. "Mike removed those obstacles, planted those ideas, even if sometimes in a bureaucracy it doesn't catch on quick.
"Of all the projects I worked on, which I couldn't even name them all over those years, this one was one I definitely remember. I would give Mike all the credit."