 |
| THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE |
Don’t give me any non-committal, wishy-washy nonsense. Take a stand! Choose your goat! Do you like the charging goat, the old skool goat, or the anchor holdin’ & sleeve rollin’ goat? This is more important than Republican primaries right now, so sound off!
Graduation is a special time at any school, but at the nation’s service academies it takes on an even greater significance. It is more than just the culmination of four years of academic work. Graduates not only receive their degree, they also receive their commissions as officers in the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, or Air Force. On that day, these young Ensigns and 2nd Lieutenants will set out to do the work that the American people paid to train them to do. Some of them will become aviators. Some will hit the ground and go into armor, infantry, or artillery. Others will take to the seas on warships deployed around the world. A few more newly-minted officers will find their way into roles that directly support those on the front line, such as in intelligence or supply. There are a number of ways to serve.
Each of these pursuits can be arduous at times, with dangerous tasks to be completed on long deployments away from home. But the work can also be as rewarding as it is difficult. There is a special satisfaction that comes from knowing the importance of what you’re doing. The American people know how important it is, too. These aviators, soldiers, and sailors are among the most celebrated figures in American society. There are organizations like the USO that support them. Hollywood tells tales of their exploits. We have national holidays to honor them. America appreciates what it takes to defend itself, which is why it pays for service academies; a top-notch education is worth paying for if it results in men and women willing to commit to one of these challenging careers.
Sadly, some of those in uniform aren’t shown the same appreciation as the rest. They toil in virtual anonymity, their contributions unknown to the general public. The work they do is vital to the defense of this nation, yet they have nobody to tell their story… until now. I am proud to use my little corner of the internet to bring attention to these distinguished service academy graduates who make the most of their four years of military training. So read on as I pay homage to the best of the best: Air Force football coaches.
 |
| If you thought Fallujah was hard, try two-a-days! |
Their records speak for themselves:
One would think that such an awe-inspiring collection of military might would be sure to make headlines, yet the American taxpayer never seems to hear about the fruits of their valuable investment. I know… Crazy, right? Especially when you consider how many Air Force football coaches spend their active duty time in public affairs when they aren’t coaching. But the Air Force Academy, unlike Annapolis and West Point, doesn’t release the service assignments of their graduating seniors. Why they would keep this information to themselves, I have no idea. But America should know when one of their service academies is producing this kind of excellence.
Any Air Force fan can tell you the obvious benefit to our nation’s security that comes from active duty football coaches. You see, the Air Force Academy is the most difficult of the service academies by a mile. It really isn’t even close. In order for cadets to have a chance to make it through the grueling 4-year pressure cooker that is the Air Force Academy experience, they need mentors. These mentors work best when they aren’t tainted with too much exposure to the, you know, Air Force. Their minds need to be sharpened, fresh with the memories of what it took to survive such an ordeal as found in Colorado Springs. That’s where these football coaches come in. Unencumbered with the fetters of actual operational experience, only they can deliver the kind of leadership that cadets need to make it through. Unconvinced? Navy’s APR score in the last NCAA report was 982. Even with their elite cadre of mentors, Air Force’s score was lower– 975. Imagine how low it would be without football coaches on active duty! The higher attrition clearly shows how much harder it is at Air Force! And just having a graduate assistant or two stick around for a few months while he waits for a spot at flight training (or another service school) doesn’t cut it. Unlike the Army and Navy, the Air Force needs officers whose military careers are dedicated to mentorship. They also need graduates who don’t serve a day on active duty, and instead go straight into the NFL. Because the NFL and minor league baseball, as we all know, prepares someone to lead cadets far better than operational Air Force experience.
Now that you know how crucial it is for Air Force grads to embark on a coaching career immediately upon graduating, you can understand my befuddlement when it comes to the lack of recognition that these warriors of the clipboard receive. But as any good Air Force football-trained leader will tell you, it isn’t enough to just complain. If you see a problem, point it out and offer a solution. So that’s what I’m going to do. The first step in getting our heroes recognized would be for the Air Force Academy to release the service selection information of its graduating football class. Shout it from the top of Pikes Peak! “We need mentors for our football team so we can produce more mentors for future football teams!” It’s hard to imagine a better use of service academy graduates than a self-sustaining pipeline of mentorship without any significant operational service.
The second step we can take is to create a piece of uniform insignia so that fellow airmen know when they are in the presence of the elite. Something should set these leaders apart. Why should pilots get wings while these highly trained officers go unrecognized? If I may be so bold, I have a suggestion for this badge of honor:
Nothing says “airpower through the intricacies of zone blocking” quite like a winged football. One look at this, and Hollywood will know that there’s a story to be told here. Imagine the possibilities… “You want me on that sideline. You need me on that sideline!” Finally, we’ll have an Air Force movie to compete with the cinematic masterpiece that is Iron Eagle.
It’s hard to believe, but there are actually people who don’t think that it’s appropriate for service academy graduates to spend their active duty careers as football coaches. How dare any of you think that way. For shame. Air Force fans have taught us a great lesson; the job that you do isn’t important. What matters is the clothes that you wear while you do it! Anything done in a uniform must be mission essential. If it wasn’t, then nobody would do it! Duh. And if it’s mission essential, who better than an academy grad to do the job? I mean come on, if you can’t trust the U.S. Air Force, an agency of the federal government, to make good use of your money– then who can you trust?
 |
| If only she was in an Air Force uniform. Then it’d be as valuable as storming the beach at Normandy! |
Now, I know that I rub some people the wrong way by placing these coaches on a pedestal. All service is valuable, you might be thinking. It isn’t appropriate to “rank” the service of various Air Force Academy graduates. Well, you’re wrong. The fact is that service gets ranked every single time someone’s record appears before a promotion board. And you and I both know that assignments as a football coach are a bullet train to General. All you have to do is compare the bios of the two active duty Captains on the Air Force staff right now. Here’s Charlton Warren’s:
Warren began his military career at the Academy in the admissions office as the Southeast U.S. admissions coordinator for the minority enrollment office from 1999-2000. He then went to Warner Robins AFB, Ga., from 2000-03 where he was the C-130 avionics program manager for the Air Logistics Center. While stationed there, Warren earned an MBA from Georgia College and State University. He was also recognized as the company grade officer of the quarter in 2002.
Before returning to the Academy in 2005, Warren was stationed at Eglin AFB, Fla., from 2003-05 as the MK-82 joint direct munitions program manger for the Air Armament Center. He also worked as the anti-spoof/anti-jam program manager while at Eglin. Warren was honored as part of the weapons program team of the quarter in 2003 and the direct attack group company grade officer of the quarter in 2004.
How on earth is a record as lackluster as this supposed to compete with fellow Captain Mike Thiessen, who worked in a personnel office, played minor league baseball, and taught algebra? I mean, if you were going to promote someone to Major, who would you pick? Face it, guys–service is “ranked” all the time. California League Player of the Week is a far bigger eye-opener than something like Officer of the Quarter no matter how many times you receive that award. Air Armament Center? Avionics program manager? Please. Give me some of that career-enhancing quadratic equation action instead.
But don’t feel sorry for Capt. Warren. Chances are that he will get that promotion. The sad reality is that the grueling life of a combat football coach takes its toll. Despite being on the fast track to promotion, career Air Force coaches shockingly don’t seem to stick around beyond their active duty obligation– well, those that actually have an obligation, anyway. The reason for this is that the Air Force does a terrible job taking care of these warriors. There is no career track established for Air Force football coaches. Think about it– there’s only one Air Force Academy. Once they’ve coached there, where are they supposed to go? And who has oversight responsibility for these coaches? Who mentors the mentors? The Air Force needs to establish an Office of Football Affairs. That way, football coaches who want to continue their life of valuable service have the means to do so.
As in-tune as I am with the plight of these champions of football warfare, even I have some questions. What manner of classroom training do cadets receive about this branch of service? Are they even aware that this is an option available to them? I mean, surely this path is open to more than just members of the football team. The Air Force wouldn’t limit career choices based on extracurricular activities, would they? That would be silly. Actually, since attending the Air Force Academy is such a backbreaking endeavor, why is it that only the football team receives this elite mentoring? Wouldn’t all cadets benefit from the guidance of a specialized mentor? In fact, the Air Force Academy should probably grow by another 1,000 or so cadets just to ensure that it graduates enough career mentors to meet its needs. For that matter, why is it that only select Air Force Academy graduates get to serve as football coaches? Why can’t ROTC graduates fulfill that role? Imagine the quality of coaching the American people would receive if we expanded the talent pool from which to draw football coaches! And are coaches on active duty eligible for individual augmentation assignments? I imagine not, since coaches are far more mission critical than other Air Force officers.
Hopefully these questions will be answered. And hopefully the Air Force Academy will highlight their football coaches so the American people can give them the accolades that they deserve. Because the longer that the practice of using a service academy to produce football coaches is swept under the rug, the more some people will think that it’s just a taxpayer-funded boondoggle designed to help recruit players like Brad Padayao who want nothing to do with actual military service. And we can’t have that, now can we?
Bill Wagner talks about Navy’s prep school-bound recruits, including Kevin Eckel, here:
http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2008/02_17-11/NAS
It’s a great write-up on some of our future Mids, and Wags’ list includes several players that we didn’t have on our big board.
Billy Coates LS 6-5, 220 Pebble Beach, CA
Jake Delvento K/P 6-0, 180 Toms River, NJ
Kenson Dera LB 5-11, 205 Naples, FL– We had mentioned Dera, but all I could find on him came from signing day last year. I’m not sure what his story is, but I’m going to take Wagner’s word for it.
John Kelly DL 6-5, 225 Norcross, GA
Trey Reed SB 5-10, 185 Texarkana, TX
Nick Ryan OL 6-3, 270 Tucson, AZ
Kavon Seaton QB 5-10, 180 Vista Murrieta, CA
Jordan Spriggs DB 5-11, 155 Renton, WA
Siu Tafuna DB 6-0, 180 Kahuku, HI (highlights)
Kyle Widhalm OL 6-2, 250 Carrollton, TX
Will Wied LB 5-11, 210 Lafayette, LA
Is it just me, or did Navy recruit the west coast harder than ever? I can’t remember seeing so many players from California, Arizona, Hawaii, Washington, etc. Maybe Steve Johns is a recruiting juggernaut, maybe it’s a result of Ken Niumatalolo’s influence… Or maybe that’s just the way things happened to shake out this year.
Speaking of Hawaii, there is no doubt in my mind that thanks to Coach Niumatalolo, Navy is on the radar of a lot more island recruits. There’s a real us vs. them attitude there, and the locals take tremendous pride in their heritage. It was a remarkable sight at the Poinsettia Bowl luncheon, where many of Utah’s Polynesian players took the time to go to Coach Niumat, shake his hand, and have their picture taken with the nation’s first and only head coach of Polynesian descent. It definitely makes a difference when a Navy coach sits down in a Hawaiian kid’s living room.
This should be it for recruiting news until I-Day.
Odds & ends you may have missed over the past week:
Chop Block
ARTICLE 3. A chop block is:
a. An obviously delayed block at the thigh or below against an opponent
(except the runner) who is in contact with a teammate of the blocker, is
in the act of disengaging from the first blocker or has just disengaged
from the first blocker but is still confronting him. When in question, the
contact is at the thigh or below (A.R. 2-3-3-I-V).
b. A high-low, low-high or low-low combination block by two nonadjacent
linemen with or without a delay between contacts occurring in the
neutral zone.
c. A high-low, low-high or low-low combination block by any two
offensive players with or without a delay between contacts when the
initial contact clearly occurs beyond the neutral zone (i.e., all involved
players are beyond the neutral zone) (A.R. 2-3-3-III and IV).
Navy had one more big recruiting weekend after signing day, and two players who made the trip to Annapolis decided that it wouldn’t be a bad place to call home for four years. Arkansas linebacker James Bornhoft and two-way lineman David Mills from Opelousas, Louisiana, both gave their pledge to Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo to suit up for the Midshipmen. Mills will go to NAPS. No word on Bornhoft, but with a 4.1 weighted GPA and a 28 ACT, he’s probably a good candidate for direct admission (because you know what I say carries a lot of weight with the admissions board). While Mills is all-state on the offensive line, he says he’s being looked at for the defensive side of the ball. Read more about our two newest signees here and here. Bornhoft actually has his own website, complete with highlight video. Congratulations to the future Mids.
Speaking of websites & highlight videos, here’s one for Josh Fitzpatrick.
 |
| Not as marketable as the CBS eyeball. |
CSTV is getting a facelift. Navy’s television home for football (and just about everything else) is being re-branded as the CBS College Sports Network in March. So what does this mean? Hopefully two things. One, the CBS name should give the channel more name-brand appeal when negotiating with cable providers about adding it to their lineups. Selling some upstart product that nobody’s heard of is a lot harder than selling something with the name recognition of CBS. Two, with any luck, the on-screen graphics for football games will change. CSTV’s Gametracker ticker at the bottom of the screen makes their broadcasts look like something on the Bloomberg channel more than a football game. A more CBS-style presentation would be welcome. All in all, this is probably a net positive.
If you’re reading this blog, chances are that you’re a college football fan– that, or your Google search has gone horribly, horribly wrong. “College football fan” means different things to different people, though. The typical college football fan cheers for a big BCS school, watches College Gameday every Saturday morning to see a preview of their team’s game, and can track the whims of the players that their school is recruiting on any number of websites. They can see the highlights of their games on Sportscenter, read about their team in just about any paper in the country, and look for where their school sits in the top 25. This is the mainstream; the fan that the national media serves.
But there is another group out there. These people might watch College Gameday, but only with a passing interest; they know that their school won’t get mentioned (unless Herbstreit brings them up just to call them a fraud). Some fans can read countless interviews with their teams’ recruits that break down minutiae you’d never imagine to care about (BREAKING NEWS: Terrelle Pryor ranks his favorite desserts at the dining halls of schools he’s visited!). Other less-privileged fans have to scour the internet just to find a newspaper clipping that might have a sentence or two about a local high schooler who committed to play for their school. This congregation of college football faithful doesn’t worry about the top 25, because their schools are rarely included. News coverage for their schools is limited to papers in the immediate metro area of the campus– before the internet, these die-hards heard nothing if they lived too far away. They are the great unwashed, the low rung on the caste ladder of college football fandom. I’m talking, of course, about fans of the non-BCS conferences.
We are as hardcore about our college football as anyone– maybe more so, considering how hard we have to work to get our news– but sometimes it’s hard to convince other people of that. You know how it is. At work, everyone stands around the ol’ water cooler & talks about the weekend’s big games. One group is talking about the Illinois-Ohio State game, while another group is in the corner talking about Auburn & Georgia. A third group is talking about the latest BCS rankings and how they think the top 5 should shape up. You’ll walk up to one of those groups and listen, and when the conversation appears to be dying down a bit you’ll chime in by saying, “man, that Navy-North Texas game was a real scorcher, wasn’t it? 74 to 62!” At that point, everyone feels a bit awkward as they stare at you like you just chose that moment at the company water cooler to come out of the closet. After 5 seconds or so, they pretend they didn’t hear you and resume their previous conversations, while you slink away, dejected. If it’s outside of the BCS, people don’t want to talk about it.
There’s nothing wrong with that, necessarily; living in Jacksonville, I don’t expect people around here to care about Navy any more than I care about Florida. The problem is that my attitude isn’t reciprocated. Around here, if you don’t care all that much about the SEC, then you aren’t even a college football fan. No, tell someone that you root for Navy and you’re met with the most clever of responses, such as, “You mean they have a team?” followed by a hearty guffaw. With my pride crushed by such witty and stinging rebukes, I often escape to my elaborate fantasy land– otherwise known as NCAA 08 on Xbox– to alleviate my anger by building Navy into a national leviathan that tramples teams like Florida every week on the way to 9 straight national championships. Of course, even my fantasies have their limitations as I play my way to glory in some half-assed generic gong show of a stadium. It usually takes a year or two for EA to get around to including Navy-Marine Corps Menorial Stadium whenever the game moves onto next-generation consoles, while BCS conference stadiums are beautifully rendered down to the slightest detail from the beginning. But that’s life as a Navy fan.
So why do we do it? Why do we go through the trouble of unearthing scraps of information when we could have a bounty handed to us? Why put up with the indignities of national anonymity when we could instead revel with the fans around us? Wouldn’t it be easier to just put loyalty aside, find some typical bandwagon reason to like some other school (“my uncle went to Virginia Tech!”) and hop onboard the Mainstream Express? Yeah, it’d be easier. Easy, but empty. We don’t want to root for someone else. Nobody likes a bandwagon fan anyway. We are already as loyal and rabid about our team and the game as any other fan. We just happen to be loyal to schools that aren’t as celebrated. Our boosters might not maintain a log on how hard our coach is working based on on how late the light stays on in his office each night, but that doesn’t make us lesser fans. It makes us well-adjusted.
But this isn’t a plea for pity. As trying as it can be sometimes, there are perks to being a fan of a lower-profile school. The ability to afford season tickets without selling your children into slavery is a plus. And you’d be mistaken if you assumed that the on-field product was inferior. The BCS schools have the advantage in money, facilities, and for the most part, talent. But there’s more to college football than that. College football is more than the lowest-common-denominator world of ESPN, sports talk radio, and other hype outlets. Lost in the glamour of polls, highlights, and televised commitment announcements is the game itself.
We all love football, but we love it for different reasons. “College football” consists of so many different elements. We love the traditions, the rivalries, and the amazing athletes. Yet while each of these items are undeniably critical to the college football experience, they are only supplemental to the game. You know– the game. The coach at the chalkboard, Xs & Os kind of stuff. This is the cerebral component of college football, with coaches matching wits against each other in preparation for and during each game. It’s this clash of ideas that brings about the evolution of the sport, and it’s here that we find the true strength of non-BCS football. For those who enjoy creativity in strategy and scheme, this is the best show in town.
There’s a saying in football that gets tossed around a lot, almost to the point of cliché: “It ain’t about the Xs & Os, it’s about the Jimmies & Joes.” The expression makes the point that it’s talent rather than strategy that ultimately makes for a good football team. There’s truth in that. But for the coach outside of a BCS conference, it’s a truth he must disregard. In most cases, the talent won’t be going to his school. The talent is going to schools with glamour, big recruiting budgets, and posh facilities. But non-BCS coaches are under all the same pressure to win as their BCS counterparts. A lack of talent can’t be used as an excuse for losing. So what does the coach do? He hits the drawing board, and in doing so he begins the next cycle of football evolution.
The cycle goes something like this: faced with the pressure to win against more talented competition, a coach will devise a scheme that accentuates his team’s strengths while masking their weaknesses. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention. At first, this new scheme is dismissed as a “gimmick” by media outlets and fans. But the more that team is winning, the more credible that scheme is in the eyes of the mainstream. Eventually, someone at a BCS school gets the idea that if a scheme works that well with lesser talent, it will be unstoppable with BCS talent. So the innovative coach is hired at a BCS school, where he installs his scheme and keeps on winning. Success breeds imitation, and other coaches start to incorporate bits of that scheme into their own systems. Eventually, what was once labeled a gimmick becomes part of the mainstream, and soon the non-BCS coaches are devising something else to overcome this new standard. The non-BCS coach subscribes to a slightly different bit of football wisdom: “Good football teams either do something different or they do it better.” Doing it better isn’t really possible without the best talent. That leaves doing things differently.
And when it comes to doing things differently, no place is better than the non-BCS conferences. This is the proving ground of football ideas. This is where Urban Meyer unleashed his offense before taking it to the SEC. This is where Paul Johnson did the impossible at Navy before taking his spread option to Georgia Tech. This is where Jim Grobe devised the schemes that would take Wake Forest to places it could never have imagined. This is where a school might be willing to take a chance on a high school legend like Art Briles at Houston or Todd Dodge at North Texas. This is the realm of Chris Ault’s pistol and Todd Graham’s Tulsa offense that leaves defenses cross-eyed. This is the last bastion of innovations past, with June Jones running the run & shoot to perfection and Ken Hatfield having clinged to the wishbone at Rice years after both were abandoned by everyone else. Innovation isn’t limited to the offensive side of the ball either, with coaches like Rocky Long perfecting his 3-3-5 scheme at New Mexico. The variety of schemes and ideas are what make the game of football interesting, and the laboratories for these ideas are the non-BCS conferences.
So why don’t more BCS schools innovate? Why don’t they take more chances? Sometimes they do, especially at schools that have traditionally struggled (Kentucky and Hal Mumme’s Air Raid, Duke with Spurrier’s fun & gun). But for the most part, BCS schools don’t want to innovate. It’s too risky. With the money at stake from boosters, TV, and ticket sales, there is tremendous pressure to win right away. That means hiring proven winners, not visionaries. Faith is something that doesn’t have a place in the BCS hiring process; they don’t want to believe that a coach can win games; they want to know that this coach will win games. And they usually have the money to hire someone who fits the bill.
That leaves the non-BCS schools to carry the flag of ingenuity. And that makes non-BCS football the thinking man’s game. Sure, nobody at the water cooler will care, but they aren’t football fans as much as they are fans of everything that surrounds it. Maybe you don’t have anyone to talk to, but hey– that’s life on the cutting edge. When we watch our games on Saturday, we’re watching the future of the sport.
Lacrosse is a spring sport. Whoever makes the schedule didn’t get the memo, though, as Navy opens their 2008 campaign tomorrow at home against VMI. (Note to Navy– if you’re going to play this early, do it in Florida!) The Keydets, who were 2-12 last year, will be led by preseason all-MAAC attackman Kevin Hill, a 6-foot, 170-pound senior that has paced the team in scoring for the last two years (including a 50-point season in 2007). The game starts at noon (with pregame at 11:45) and will be carried by WNAV, with Pete Medhurst on the call.
Christian Swezey wrote a great Navy preview for Inside Lacrosse that you don’t want to miss. Also be sure to read this Baltimore Sun piece on the area’s new goalies, including Navy’s Matt Coughlin. Go Navy.
As it would be expected the week of signing day, this is going to be a recruit-heavy list of links. There are more stories on Navy recruits out there, too, which I might not get around to posting. Seriously, there are a lot of ’em. Those of you who pitched in with links, thanks! In case you didn’t know where the name of this blog came from, scouting for Navy recruits is what “Birddogs” are all about. Anyway, on to the news:
Bill Wagner’s signing day article is up at the Capital:
http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2008/02_07-01/NAS
Along with some details on a few of the players, his list has a name two names we didn’t have:
Ryan Ackerman, LS, 5-11, 180, Clearwater Central Catholic, Oldsmar, Fla.
Austin Hill, LS, 6-0, 195, Mahopac, NY
If a player isn’t on Wags’ list, he’s probably going to NAPS. I’m going to leave the recruit page up until I-Day, when the official list is published.
The Birddog 