R-day for the class of 2030 was yesterday, Monday June 29th. Congratulations to all the New Cadets and good luck!

Unfortunately, West Point appears to have disregarded Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s guidance on May 09, 2025, to use exclusively merit-based admissions.

Most Football Players Attended USMAPS

R-day is an exciting event. There were many social posts and articles on the induction of new cadets. One of those was Army Football’s post welcoming the incoming class of 2030 football players.

The linked article shared the following information:

The Black Knights welcome 72 newcomers from 22 states…

…

Army Football Class of 2030

Name	Position	Hometown / High School (PREP SCHOOL DENOTED)
Nehemiah Allen	DL	Spring, Texas / Westfield (USMAPS)
Mark Andrzejewski	WR	Owens Cross Roads, Ala. / St. John Paul II Catholic
Jared Anthony	ILB	Conyers, Ga. / Stockbridge (USMAPS)
Elijah Bechtel	HB	San Diego, Calif. / San Marcos (USMAPS)
Robby Belmarez	LS	Austin, Texas / Lake Travis (USMAPS)
Hendrix Beran	DL	Charleston, S.C. / JI Charter (USMAPS)
Cameron Binkowski	OLB	Haymarket, Va. / Battlefield (USMAPS)

And listed all 72 of the players. 48 of the players (or two-thirds) came through USMAPS.

USMAPS Relevance to Admissions

The purpose of USMAPS, the US Military Academy Preparatory School is:

… to prepare candidates selected by the U.S. Military Academy Office of Admission for the academic, physical, and military challenges of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (USMA). Selected students (cadet candidates) are high school graduates or enlisted personnel from the Active, Reserve, or National Guard force.

More relevant to USMA admissions is this section with questions “About USMAPS” (red outlines added):

In short, candidates who apply to USMA and don’t make the cut get an opportunity to earn admission by attending USMAPS. They usually (but are not guaranteed to, at this point USMA still has offer discretion) receive an offer to USMA around graduation time of the following year.

What does this mean for the football team?

Merit, USMAPS, and Football

In summary: A number of football players applied to West Point. 48 of them did not meet requirements for direct admission and so had to go to USMAPs. This happened in/about Q1 / Q2 of 2025.

Remember that Sec. Hegseth’s memo came out on May 09.

Then the football players attended USMAPS. THEN, after the merit-based admissions guidance had been in place for a year, they received their admissions to USMA.

So are we to conclude that admitting these players fell within the guidance?

No. In a world where USMA complied with the guidance, these players would have been evaluated on WCS order-of-merit against the new class of applicants We already know they did not meet the bar for direct-admission (i.e. were deficient academically or on WCS), so there is only an infinitesimal chance that they would have earned their spots in an order-of-merit ranking. Our research on football player WCS scores bear this out.

Even without a comprehensive data release of the entire set of applicants, we can evaluate their chances against what we saw in previous years’ applicant pools. West Point loves to boast that so many people apply and so few get in.

WEST POINT, N.Y. – More than 1,230 U.S. citizens and 20 international students, will report to the U.S. Military Academy on June 29 for Reception Day to join West Point’s Class of 2030. The incoming class was selected from a highly qualified national pool of over 13,600 applicants. [emphasis added]

We have previously showed that there are plenty of qualified candidates to line up for merit-based admissions, and many are turned away because of USMA’s non-merit-based interests.

In the final analysis, the merit-based admissions guidance was clearly violated.

But What About The “Unique Athletic Talent” Clause?

Oh yes. Sec. Hegseth’s memo contained some language saying that “unique athletic talent” could be given “weight” in a merit-based admissions regime.

Leaving aside for a moment that WCS already includes tiering, scoring, and awarding points for different levels of athletic talent, let’s examine the assertion: that these players deserved to go around Merit-based admissions because of their unique athletic talents.

Were any of the football players “unique athletic talent”?

None received offers from top-10 football schools. The highest 247sports FBS tier ranking in the Army lineup is 3 stars, with composite score of .872 / national rank of 872. 5 stars is elite; 4 stars is excellent; 3 is good. But there’s no case to argue that 3 stars and this ranking is “unique athletic talent.” Talented individuals? Yes. Good for Army recruiting? Sure, yes. But worth arguing an exception to merit over? We don’t think so.

Army Again Chooses Football Over Mission

When given clear direction on how to conduct admissions, with a system for merit that it designed itself, and given the time with which to comply with the guidance, West Point again chose to prioritize Football over Merit, Football over clear guidance from the chain-of-command, Football over building the Corps best positioned to win wars. (Admittedly the West Point mission says nothing about winning wars, but we have to assume that’s assumed in the Army’s mission of fighting and winning our nation’s wars.)

It either disregarded orders or chose to interpret the “unique athletic talent” clause in such a way to render the use of “merit-based admissions” meaningless. You, dear reader, and I are both “unique athletic talents” in the sense that every snowflake is unique, but this was clearly not the intent of the memo.

As we’ve said earlier, football in particular is a distraction from West Point’s values and mission. And here we see it corrupting the ability to follow orders.

The only reason we can think of is that following the guidance would have rendered West Point unable to field an NCAA-Div-1-competitive football team. To which we respond: So what? We should not accept the sunk-cost fallacy and let it corrupt our spirit, and, dare we say, honor.

What we’re seeing is the behavior of an organization that clearly thinks football is the most important thing at West Point, more important than what the civilian leadership says to do. We think this behavior is beneath the values and spirit of the US Military Academy.

Did We Miss Something?

It is always possible that we’ve missed some important facts, or an agreement, or there’s more going on than we know, which makes this situation different. We can only see what’s published and spoken about in public. If that’s the case, if there are other salient facts to consider, please add them in comments. Factual corrections and thoughtful criticism are always welcome.