It’s been another good year for Navy football.

Even after last week’s loss to Temple in the American Athletic Conference’s title game, the Midshipmen are 9-3, with victories over Notre Dame and Houston. They are favored to beat archrival Army on Saturday for the 15th consecutive year. And two days before Christmas, Navy will end its season by playing Louisiana Tech in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl, which has a payout of $600,000 per team.

This season is not an anomaly. The United States Naval Academy may not be Alabama or Michigan, but it plays a serious brand of Division I football. Last year, the Blue and Gold went 11-2, soundly defeating the University of Pittsburgh in the Military Bowl ($1 million payout for each team). In 2014, the team was 8-5, including a one-point victory over San Diego State in the Poinsettia Bowl ($750,000 payout). Its 2013 record was 9-4, with a season-ending win ... well, you get the picture. The last time Navy had a losing season was 2011.

But how does Navy do it? Aren’t there height and weight restrictions that would limit the Midshipmen’s ability to recruit the kind of athletes you need to succeed in Division I football? (There are.) Isn’t the federal government stingy in giving tax dollars to the military academies for athletics? (It is.) Aren’t the academies, charged with training the nation’s military leadership, supposed to maintain their admissions and academic standards even if it means passing on football players? (Yep.) And aren’t Naval Academy graduates required to put in five years of military service after graduation, which would seem to preclude attracting athletes with pro potential? (Yes again.)

The Naval Academy will tell you that because athletics is such an important part of the school’s culture — it has 33 varsity teams, and every midshipman on campus plays a sport, even if it’s intramurals — that it naturally attracts good athletes. Plus, there’s that Navy spirit. As Dorse DuBois, a Naval Academy alumnus, put it recently on Facebook:

“Football is a polite and unarmed version of warfare, played as though there’s no second place.” He added: “Yeah, we’re a small school, our players are usually smaller, too. But we’re very physical, very disciplined and approach every game with the urgency required to win a battle.”