The Army Black Knights are the cleanest team in college football

You might hate on Alabama, but they aren’t the dirtiest players in college football, not by a long shot. In fact, the Crimson Tide are far from the top: 37th on Action Network’s list of dirtiest teams in CFB. But what’s even more interesting is who’s on the very bottom of that list. Or, to put it another way: who tops the list of cleanest teams.

It’s the Army Black Knights.

Also Read: The worst and best college football traditions in America

Action Network is a sports betting media and analytics site, and since there’s no new college football to analyze for the season yet, they have to analyze something. they decided to look at the past few seasons and determine which teams are the dirtiest and cleanest in college football.

A study like this should be of particular interest to military academy sports fans, because another word for “clean” in a football context is “disciplined.” Discipline, as the writers point out, is about who controls the football game. But discipline, as we in the service should know, is the absolute core of military training.

army cleanest team in football discipline army — So what did you expect? C’mon. (U.S. Army/Master Sgt. Michel Sauret)

There are a lot of Ohio State fans out there right now demanding that Michigan be rated dirtiest, because well… you know. And refusing to join a conference and getting special coverage despite poor play doesn’t make you dirty, it just makes you Notre Dame. But this not about whether or not a team is scandal-ridden, hated, or gets more attention.

The way the gambling eggheads at Action Network scored clean vs. dirty was to first gather six seasons’ worth of penalty data from 2020 to 2025. They tracked:

• Penalty yards per game
• Penalties per game
• Penalty first downs per game
• Penalties per play

Then, based on these numbers, each CFB team was given a Dirty Score based on the individual seasons, and then one for the total of each. Teams who were dirty year after year were weighted heavier to reflect that they can’t clean up their act. Final scores ran from a clean 0 to the dirtiest 100.

Out of 136 teams, Army college football came out squeaky clean at number one. The Air Force Academy Falcons were at number two. Then after Iowa, Michigan, and Minnesota, Navy came in 6th.

cleanest team sixth navy courtesy — Congrats, buddy. (U.S. Navy)

The Black Knights averaged just 3.72 penalties per game, according to Action Network. Thay also gave up fewer than 33 yards per game to penalties and one penalty first down per game over the past six seasons. Army scored the lowest in three of the four categories, and placed in the top five cleanest teams in every season measured.

Jeff Monken, as it turns out, means discipline.

To learn more about the dirtiest teams in college football, to see the detailed methodology, or if you’re just a stunned Navy fan who thinks this has all been a very long typo, check out the study on the Action Network.

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