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:

• Head coach Troy Calhoun graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1989. Of his six years of active duty in the Air Force, four were spent as an academy football coach. From 1989-1990 he was a graduate assistant for Fisher DeBerry. From 1993-1994 he was DeBerry’s recruiting coordinator.
• Blane Morgan is the quarterbacks coach for the Falcons. He graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1999 and spent the next year as a graduate assistant. After spending 2 1/2 years doing less important work at Laughlin AFB, he returned to the academy in 2003 to complete his active duty obligation as the wide receivers coach and an assistant coach for the junior varsity team.
• Running backs coach Jemal Singleton is a classmate of Morgan’s. He spent two years of his active duty obligation at Little Rock AFB. The rest was spent in Colorado Springs working in the athletic department, and as an assistant coach with the USAFA Prep School, junior varsity, and varsity football teams.
• Mike Thiessen graduated from USAFA in 2001 and remains on active duty while coaching the team’s wide receivers. Thiessen not only carries out this daring mission as a coach, but he had the unique opportunity to defend the Constitution by playing minor league baseball. Through the Air Force’s vital World Class Athlete Program, Thiessen more than repaid the taxpayer’s cost of his education by hitting .278 for the Lancaster JetHawks. If that wasn’t already of incalculable benefit to the American people, the former Falcon quarterback also spent the three seasons prior to 2007 as the offensive coordinator at the prep school.
• Joining Thiessen on active duty is Charlton Warren, another 1999 academy graduate. Capt. Warren is the least accomplished of this elite military unit, having spent the majority of his military career doing things other than football, and in places other than Colorado Springs. Fortunately for you & me, though, he’s back serving where America needs him most: as the Air Force secondary coach.
• Tight ends coach Ben Miller is a real hero. I’m not sure if he wasted any time on active duty at all. Following his 2002 graduation, Miller signed with the Cleveland Browns. He spent 2005 as a member of the Philadelphia Eagles’ practice squad, and in 2006 was a graduate assistant at Illinois.
• Brian Knorr, a 1986 grad who coached linebackers at Air Force, was hired away this week by Jim Grobe at Wake Forest. Knorr should feel right at home in Winston-Salem, though, as he will be joined by another group of Air Force Academy patriots. Steed Lobotzke, the Demon Deacons’ offensive coordinator, is a 1992 graduate of the Air Force Academy that jumpstarted his military career with a two-year graduate assistant job immediately following graduation. Another new Wake Forest assistant, Steve Russ, is a 1995 Air Force graduate who, like Ben Miller, didn’t bother with the hassles of active duty military service. Instead, Russ went straight into the NFL. After spending 5 years with the Denver Broncos, Russ began his college coaching career at Ohio, where Knorr was head coach in 2001.

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?

The Air Force Academy completed 50 years of major college football in 2006, having played their first NCAA season in 1957. For nearly half of those 50 years, Fisher DeBerry was their head football coach. Think about that for a second; DeBerry was Air Force football. He was the face of the school, the answer to any word association quiz when told “Air Force Academy.” Any tradition associated with the relatively young football program probably stems from some point during DeBerry’s tenure. At Air Force, he was a legend in his own time.

But even legends have their limits. The Air Force Academy as a whole has faced several allegations of religious intolerance in recent years, and DeBerry was caught up in the middle of it. In 2004, he was ordered to remove a banner that he had hung in the football team’s locker room which read in part, “I am a Christian first and last… I am a member of Team Jesus Christ.” DeBerry received “sensitivity training” as a result. A year later he was officially reprimanded for remarks he made following a loss to TCU in which he essentially blamed it on his team’s lack of black players:

It’s very obvious to me the other day that the other team had a lot more Afro-American players than we did, and they ran a lot faster than we did. It just seems to be that way, that Afro-American kids can run very, very well. That doesn’t mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can’t run, but it’s very obvious to me they run extremely well.

Their defense had 11 Afro-American kids on their team, and they were a very, very good defensive football team.

Proselytizing and reinforcement of stereotypes aside, DeBerry probably would have survived all of this if he was still winning. Air Force was 5-0 and ranked 25th in the Coaches’ Poll coming into their game at Navy in 2003. The Mids won that game, 28-25. It was a program-altering event for Air Force, who went on to lose 4 of their last 6 games to finish at 7-5– Fisher’s last winning season. After that loss to Navy, Air Force was 15-25 until DeBerry either retired or was forced out following the 2006 season.

I say “retired or forced out” because the story differs depending on who’s doing the talking. Officially, DeBerry retired. But according to rumor, he chose to quit rather than be forced to fire any of his assistants. One way or another, though, he was gone. Air Force athletic director Hans Mueh was then left with the unenviable task of replacing an institution. Fortunately for him, Air Force had essentially been grooming several potential successors over the years, as some Air Force graduates were allowed to begin coaching careers while on active duty. One of those graduates was Houston Texans offensive coordinator Troy Calhoun.

Calhoun played quarterback for Air Force and graduated in 1989. He spent his first two seasons after graduation as a GA on Fisher DeBerry’s staff. Calhoun returned to the Air Force Academy in 1993 and took over the role of recruiting coordinator as well as coaching the JV team’s offense. When fellow Air Force assistant Jim Grobe was named head coach at the University of Ohio in 1995, he brought Calhoun with him to be the quarterbacks coach. Calhoun added the title of offensive coordinator two years later, and had the same role after following Grobe to Wake Forest in 2001. In 2003, Calhoun started his NFL career with the Denver Broncos. Then, in December 2006, he accepted Mueh’s offer to replace Fisher DeBerry as head coach at Air Force.

The first question that everyone asked of Calhoun is what he planned to do with the Falcons’ offense. Ken Hatfield had installed the wishbone in Colorado Springs when he took over the Air Force job in 1979, and some form of the wishbone/ flexbone/ broken bone/ fishbone (whatever you want to call it) option offense had been in place ever since. Calhoun played in that same offense, but had moved away from it under Grobe and in his NFL career. Many (if not most) service academy fans believe that to win at a service academy you need to run an option-based offense, so it raised a few eyebrows when Calhoun’s comments after being hired appeared to indicate a shift away from that. Instead, Calhoun wanted more of a run-pass balance, and a running game that would have a feature back averaging about 20 carries a game:

I think you still have to run some option. It’s tough to defend, but we have to find ways to get more predetermined carries. You can find the guy who is a pretty darn good player and start to feed that guy the ball 20 to 22 times a game. And a good one only gets better. He starts to get into a little bit of a rhythm, feeling a knack for a cut or where a hole might start to open.

Then, ultimately on offense, you have to be balanced. Defenses are bigger, they move much better and because of that, they are going to clog up some spaces if you don’t make them work all 53-plus yards widthwise and go ahead and push the ceiling a little bit down the field. We’re going to be a balanced offense.

Armed with this new philosophy, Air Force quickly jumped to a 3-0 start at the beginning of the season. That 3-0 record, however, was more in spite of this new offense than because of it. The Falcons got a little lucky in their first few games. They played Utah the week after the Utes lost both quarterback Brian Johnson and running back Matt Asiata in their season opener at Oregon State, and still needed a goal-line stand at the end of the game to win. TCU made some baffling coaching blunders in the 4th quarter at Air Force after dominating through most of the game. And South Carolina State just stinks. Not surprisingly, the luck didn’t last. Air Force followed up their 3-0 start with double-digit losses to BYU and Navy.

To Troy Calhoun’s credit, he adjusted. While Air Force’s defense had been playing well all season, the offense wasn’t getting it done. Sometimes they just weren’t productive, while other times they gained a few yards but made critical mistakes in execution with turnovers and penalties. Basically, Calhoun had bitten off more than his offense could chew. Shaun Carney wasn’t quite the passer he was hyped up to be, he didn’t have anyone to really throw to, and the offensive line just wasn’t built for pass protection. Rather than insisting on the whole square peg in a round hole strategy, however, Troy Calhoun went back to doing what Air Force did best– running the football.

Calhoun’s rededication to the running game paid off. Air Force won 6 of their last 7 regular-season games by an average of nearly 20 points. They probably should have won the one game they lost, too, committing 5 turnovers to fall 34-31 at New Mexico. Going into the Navy game, Air Force was averaging 223 rushing yards per game, 11th in the country. By the end of the year, they were 2nd in the country with 299 yards per game. Calhoun’s revamped offense earned him Mountain West Coach of the Year honors, put Chad Hall in position to be named Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year, and gained the team a berth in the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth (a 42-36 loss to Cal). They might have been lucky at the beginning of the year, but by the end of the year luck had nothing to do with it. With a new approach on offense and the best of the three service academy defenses, Air Force was playing good football.

At 9-4, Air Force had a better season than just about anyone could have predicted. The challenge now will be to maintain that success, and it doesn’t look promising in the short term. Of their 474 yards of offense they racked up against Navy, 430 were gained by seniors. The heart of the Air Force defense was their linebackers and secondary, and 6 of 8 starters are graduating from those units as well. High turnover is nothing new at service academies, as players usually have to be developed over 4 years and rarely make an impact as a freshman or a sophomore. But losing this particular class is more critical than usual. When Paul Johnson used to talk to the Foundation, he was very frank about how he was doing in recruiting against Air Force. In his first year, he didn’t win a single head-to-head recruiting battle with them. This group of graduating Air Force seniors are the last remnants of that recruiting class. Johnson won more and more recruits from Air Force as the years went on, eventually dominating them the way they used to dominate Navy. That means that Navy looks to be more talented relative to Air Force with each passing year until Calhoun has a chance for his own recruiting to take hold. Once that happens, it’s doubtful that either team could expect to rule head-to-head recruiting like they used to; but things will get worse for the Falcons before they get better.

Calhoun and Hans Mueh have more or less admitted that the immediate future for Air Force isn’t terribly bright. Before hiring Calhoun, Mueh warned him that he would have “thin senior classes for the 2008 and 2009 seasons.” Calhoun himself said that he expects it to be three years before he has the juniors and seniors that he wants, and that the next two Air Force teams might be two of the youngest in school history. Calhoun also said that he expects to use two quarterbacks next year, with Shea Smith splitting time with a yet-to-be-named player who is likely to become the quarterback of the future. It’s tough for young teams to win. For young service academy teams, with their already undersized and less-hearalded players taking on talented teams with redshirted, 22-year old men… Well, nothing’s impossible I suppose, but some things come pretty damn close.

Without having the kind of talent that Troy Calhoun needs to run the offense he originally envisioned, don’t expect Air Force to change much schematically next year. If there is a ray of hope for the Falcons, it’s in the trenches. Three of the five offensive linemen who started against California will return next season. Air Force won’t have the big-play scoring threat of Chad Hall next year, but they might be able to control the line of scrimmage well enough to put together a few long, clock-eating drives that will help the defense. I doubt it will be enough to get to 9-4, though.

Troy Calhoun’s first year replacing his old coach was a success. A repeat performance might take a little more time.