A Top-Flight Outfit : Air Force, Which Uses Real Students, Is Undefeated, Ranked Way Up There

“Oh, beautiful!”

In 1893, Katharine Lee Bates stood atop a mountain here and uttered those words. Then she rode her mule to the bottom and, inspired by the purple mountain majesties to the west and the amber waves of grain to the east, wrote a hit song.

“Oh, beautiful!”

Now, 92 years later, people, especially bowl scouts, are uttering the words again, not because the mountains here are still purple but because the Air Force Academy’s football team is 9-0 and ranked 10th in the nation.

From sea to shining sea.

Really, there are few college football programs that could make America prouder. Air Force players rise at 6:30 each weekday morning, eat a hearty breakfast with their 4,000 or so schoolmates and get to class on the double.

“It’s not like we can wake up at 10 and not go to class if we don’t want to,” defensive back Scott Thomas said last week. “Are you crazy? Are you insane?”

They are here on a mission, in school to become the future leaders of this country. Pro ball? Ha! After graduation, they’re committed to serve their country for five years, and never has a player made the transition from national defense to NFL defense when that fifth year was over (Roger Staubach of Navy and Dallas Cowboys served four years).

They say, though, that Thomas, the defensive back, has a chance.

“No way,” teammate Dwan Wilson said. “In five years, he’ll have a beer belly.”

These same players have defeated Notre Dame four straight years. The Irish might break out the green jerseys for next season’s showdown, but that probably wouldn’t faze Air Force in its drive for five. Before the 1984 game in South Bend, a new Falcon assistant from a small school appeared nervous on the sidelines, but Wilson told him: “Relax, Coach. We always beat Notre Dame.”

They always pray, too. Coach Fisher DeBerry begins and ends football games with a sermon, and if a player has a personal problem, the team prays for his intention.

“I’ve seen the power of prayer,” DeBerry said. “I’ve seen the results in some of the lives we’ve prayed for. I’ve seen the healing. Some of our players’ parents were ill, for example, and they improved after our prayers.”

The players dig DeBerry. Ken Hatfield hired him as an assistant in 1980, and when Hatfield left to coach Arkansas after the 1983 season, Air Force swiftly named DeBerry his replacement. The team, told of the news during a meeting, stood and clapped.

They’re as polite as can be, too, since they are trained to call their elders sir.

Cadets also ask: What the heck is an NCAA violation?

“SMU? TCU? No one talks about it here,” Wilson said. “No one worries about it here.”

Said Hatfield from Arkansas: “It’s the purist intercollegiate program in America.”

And it’s 9-0.

How did these boys spend their summer vacation? They went to POW school.

Their instructors took them up a mountain, isolated them, refused to feed them and locked them up. Inside, they inflicted pain upon them. They put them in boxes. They told them: “Escape if you can, for this will train you to be a better leader.”

Wilson and Thomas teamed up. They had a plan. When the instructors went inside their hut, Thomas said, “Hut, hut, hike!” and they took off. First, though, they had to come up with shoe laces, since the instructors had taken theirs so it would be hard to run. Thomas found some scraps of string, tied them together and voila!

They scaled a barbed-wire fence, turned on the football speed and made good on the escape. Thomas spiked his boot.

So big deal if they’re down, 21-0, in a football game. Big deal if their line has to block people 25 pounds bigger. Big deal if it hurts. It can’t be worse than POW camp. It can’t be worse than basic training. It can’t be worse than missing Monday Night Football because you have to study.

Thomas said: “When things get tough, we don’t start crying and belly-aching, because we’ve had it tough for four years now.”

That, in part, explains the 9-0.

Compared to everything else, football is not bad.

The sign says: “United States Air Force . . . Welcome to YOUR Academy.” A cadet at the security gate salutes you. Just beyond him is a billboard with a home football schedule. Only the Army game is capitalized.

Farther up the road, there is a field house. Next door are 28 tennis courts, and next to them is an intramural gym with a rifle range, a boxing ring, 27 racquetball courts, a pool for water polo, and four weight rooms. In the field house are a hockey rink, a basketball court and an artificial-turf football field surrounded by a track.

Cadets are everywhere. Each student must participate in either a varsity sport, an intramural sport or in physical education.

At 3 o’clock, a bus rolls down the hill, carrying a load of football players. “Phew, it’s good to be here!” they say. But they can only stay until 6. Rules are rules.

In those three hours, they will tape, have a chalkboard session, practice, lift weights, shower and dress. They’ll hop back on the bus, eat and then study. The average cadet carries 21 hours a semester.

“I’ve got six classes right now, and three of them are engineering classes,” linebacker Terry Maki said. “It stinks. It really stinks.”

On Thursday nights, though, they gather to watch television.

“We all watch ‘Cheers,’ ” said defensive lineman John Ziegler. “It’s tradition. And it’s almost mandatory. It’s not uncommon for six or seven guys to be in one room watching. Actually, we may start watching ‘Moonlighting’ too. It’s a new show, and I hear it’s good. Of course, if you have a test, you can’t afford to watch both.”

Most days, from 5 to 6, the school’s superintendent, Gen. Winfield Scott, watches workouts. He is a former player, having backed up Glenn Davis the year Davis won the Heisman trophy at Army.

“All intercollegiate sports, if properly coached, are a great training ground for youngsters to become officers,” said Scott, wearing a pin that said: “Beat San Diego State.”

“Sports, especially team sports, come closer to training our youngsters to become warriors and winners than any other laboratory. But only if the coaching staff teaches the right ideals.”

After 6, the coach, DeBerry, keeps on working. Wouldn’t you if your average player was 6 feet and 180 pounds?

The problem here is that 70% of the incoming freshmen have to be pilot qualified, which means they must have perfect eyesight and can be no bigger than 6-4 and 230. During football season, players can bulk up. By graduation, though, those who want to be pilots must be down to 230 again.

By the way, music is allowed in the weight rooms--Van Halen’s “Jump” was blaring this one day. That’s a small sacrifice for the academy to make, considering that strength is the only way Air Force players can make up for their lack of size.

Similarly, DeBerry uses the wishbone because he needs a ball-control offense to keep his undersized defense off the field. Besides, his small linemen have a difficult time pass blocking, and his quarterback, Bart Weiss, is afraid of third and long because he can’t throw very long.

There are positives, though. Never does DeBerry have to run films back over and over, considering that his players are intelligent enough usually to get it right the first time.

Plus, assistant Cal McCombs said: “Our strength is commitment and intelligence. We don’t have breakdowns. We’ll get outsized, but we’re a bunch of fighters. When you play against a service academy, you’ll get 60 minutes of hard-fought football.”

Here are some of those Air Force fighters:

The quarterback: Weiss is only 6 feet and 172, from Naples, Fla., recruited by no one. “I was gonna go to the Ivy League. Dartmouth, you know. But I came here.” He took over last season when the starter, Brian Knorr, injured a shoulder. Today, he averages 100 yards a game rushing, but throws just 11 passes a game.

The fullback: He’s the workhorse. Last year, it was Pat Evans’ job, and he gained 1,000 yards. But he injured a knee in training camp this summer, and now Johnny Smith, whom DeBerry says has the perfect fullback build, is the starter.

“Gee whiz,” McCombs said. “Fisher won’t recruit a fullback bigger than 5-10. He wants kids who can sneak by those big defenders.”

The hitter: He’s linebacker Terry Maki, who blocked a field goal in the Notre Dame game that led to the clinching touchdown. Raised in Libby, Mont., he worked on his dad’s Christmas tree farm, but was obsessed with wrestling, not football.

“My dad wanted me to come here, so that’s the main reason I’m here. I didn’t listen to my dad enough as a kid. I was kind of a rebel. So I figured I might as well listen to him once.

“I walked on here. But I didn’t have confidence. I just was really disillusioned about college football. I didn’t think I was good enough to make it. But I found I could beat out all-state kids from Texas.

“As far as school, I was lucky to get in. My grades were terrible in high school. I mean, I put football and wrestling ahead of school in high school, and I still do. I don’t want to be an engineer, and I’ve got to take those courses.”

The athlete: It’s Thomas, the safety and kick returner. He’s from San Antonio and wanted to go to the University of Texas, but ‘They weren’t in the market for 6-foot, 170-pound white boys,” Thomas said. His dad had gone to Air Force, and Thomas wanted to be a pilot.

“I still love the Texas baseball team, but I’ve forgotten about their football team,” he said. “It’s funny. When I was growing up, I wanted them to win every week. Now, I’d just as soon see them lose every week.”

The coach: DeBerry’s father divorced his mother when Fisher was a year old. He was 12 when his father died. His mother and grandfather, Ollie Fisher, supported the family, and young Fisher was taken care of by his grandmother, Mrs. Ollie Fisher.

They lived in Cheraw, S.C. Population there is 5,654, which makes it a whole lot bigger than Society Hill (848) to the north and Ruby (256) to the west. When DeBerry could look both ways and make it across the street all by himself, he practically lived at a nearby park.

“He was always the last one to leave the ballpark,” his grandfather said. “One day, he came in and said: ‘You think it’s worth it?’ I said: ‘No, I don’t, but I reckon you do.’ ”

After he masterminded the wishbone offense as an assistant at Appalachian State, Hatfield hired him.

He brings tutors along on trips so players can study on the plane.

“He’s the most positive, optimistic individual I’ve ever met,” said Col. John Clune, the athletic director.

The Force is with it, man. Cotton and Sugar Bowl scouts were in for last Saturday’s game with San Diego State. They were wined and dined. Tom Wicker, the president-elect of the Sugar Bowl committee, swigged his beer and said: “If they stay unbeaten, the Sugar Bowl will be very interested.”

Then Air Force went out and won, 31-10, running up the score with a touchdown in the last 20 seconds. The Bowl scouts left smiling.

Army is next on the schedule, however, and it’s Air Force’s most important game of the year since they say their goal is to win the Commander in Chief’s trophy, signifying supremacy among the service academies. Air Force has already beaten Navy, and the players say they owe Army for last year’s 24-12 loss.

After the Army game, the Falcons will go to BYU for a game that will determine the Western Athletic Conference championship. DeBerry said that the commander’s trophy is more important, but Thomas said: “I don’t (agree). The Army, Navy, Air Force rivalry . . . it’s good and fun, but I’d rather beat BYU. I want to win the conference. Enough of the commander’s trophy. BYU always wins. It’s getting old.”

Getting a little cocky here? In the press box last Saturday, it was announced that Penn State, also undefeated and untied, beat Boston College, 16-12.

“Ugh,” an Air Force backer said. “Another four-point win. Penn State isn’t any good.”

They were saying this at Air Force.

Well, Air Force has been to three straight bowls now, and something is going on. Before that, there weren’t many highlights. The academy was opened in 1955 and played its first varsity football schedule in 1957. That year, the University of Miami had been scheduled to play at UCLA, but had a flu epidemic the week of the game. Air Force filled in and lost, 47-0.

Yet, in 1958, the Falcons had a 9-0-1 record and went to the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day. They went to the Gator Bowl in 1963 and the Sugar Bowl in 1971, but mostly those were hard times for the Falcons. As the war in Vietnam raged, the public had little interest in service academies.

Now, said Jim Bowman, Air Force recruiting coordinator: “You’ll find kids who want to be a pilot or a naval officer or follow the tradition of an Eisenhower. It all starts, I think, with President Reagan. And it also might have started with the win of our hockey team at Lake Placid.

“These kids matter. Maybe Notre Dame alums who are so disappointed wouldn’t feel so bad if they realized that these are the same people who’ll be defending our country. If they stopped and realized that, they might sleep better.”

Still, the turning point, specifically at Air Force, occurred when Hatfield sent his athletic director a letter, saying, basically:

--We have to recruit nationwide and get as many as 200 players because we have so many kids who leave the academy early.

--We have to let some marginal students in, kids who may be 10 points below the accepted entrance scores.

--We have to give the coaches more time with the players.

--We have to tone down the schedule because we don’t have the strength to play big teams week after week.

Hatfield was accommodated.

Look what’s happened.

Unfortunately, Colorado Springs doesn’t care. Notre Dame and Army draw 52,000, but games against other opponents draw in the low 30s.

Let’s go to the man on the street:

“They ought to support them, and they don’t,” said Dick Mertens, a Colorado Springs banker. ‘I can’t figure it out.”

Said Dr. Thomas Dalsaso: “There’s too much other things to do. There’s mountain climbing, fishing, skiing.”

The Air Force explanation: ‘Our alums don’t live here. They’re in Turkey, in Greenland, in the Pentagon.”

But . . . “America should love this team,” McCombs said. “These kids have made a five-year commitment to defend their country, so they’ll certainly defend any goal line.”

From sea to shining sea.