There are plenty of podcasts out there focusing on either one team or an entire league, but it’s interesting to see a new one covering three separate schools. And that’s particularly interesting when the podcast in question is focused on service academies. SB Nation announced Thursday morning that they’re launching a new Against All Enemies podcast covering Army, Navy, and Air Force athletics, a spinoff of their team site of the same name and mission, and it sounds like it’s going to be quite different from your standard sports podcast. Here’s more from their release:
The show will be hosted by U.S. Naval Academy graduates Lieutenant (LT) Justin Mears and Lieutenant (LT) Austin Lanteigne, U.S. Air Force Academy graduate Scott Lopez, and Army National Guard veteran Specialist (SPC) Kaylah Jackson. Mears also serves as the manager for SB Nation’s Against All Enemies.
“SB Nation is devoted to offering the best communities to every team we cover, and we’re thrilled to launch a podcast for the service academy community,” said SB Nation Director of Team Brands John Ness. “Army, Navy, and Air Force athletics are a source of passion and pride for countless alumni, fans, and veterans across the country and we’re proud to devote coverage to a community that knows, in the words of its founding editor, ‘what it means to compete and what it means to serve.’”
The show will cover news from all of the nearly 30 different sports offered by the service academies, specifically focusing on football and men’s and women’s basketball. The hosts will interview current and former service academy athletes, coaches, and fans as they share the storied legacies of Army, Navy, and Air Force sports. The show’s name is a reference to the oath all academy student-athletes take to defend the U.S. Constitution.
The first episode of Against All Enemies, available today, includes an interview with Billy Hurley III, the only veteran on the PGA Tour, as well as a preview of the Army vs. Navy lacrosse game taking place on Saturday, April 13. New episodes will be published each week.
Team-focused podcasts obviously have an audience of their own, as shown from recent investment on that front from sites like The Athletic. So one key target here is those who already care about sports at the service academies. But the release goals of Against All Enemies could perhaps be interesting to a broader audience than those concerned with the Xs and Os of, say, Army football.
That might especially be true if Against All Enemies winds up doing a lot of those interviews. Student-athletes and coaches at the service academies both face some unique challenges, something explored in shows like Showtime‘s A Season With Navy Football, and there might be plenty of people who aren’t diehard fans of the service academies, but are interested in the perspective of someone like Hurley (who graduated from Navy in 2004), or other current and former service academy athletes and coaches.
It’s also notable that they have four announced hosts who have backgrounds from across the Army, Navy and Air Force; that should provide a variety of perspectives. And it could be interesting to hear their thoughts on how things differ in each branch and at each academy. Here’s the hosts’ audio introduction:
We’ll see how this turns out, but it’s certainly not your average sports podcast concept.
[The Against All Enemies podcast]
