Army, Navy, Air Force: Running a Different Option : Recruiting Strains : Qualified Athletes Hard to Come By for Service Academies
The country’s three major military academies--Army, Navy and Air Force--are looking for more than a few good men.
They’re looking for a lot of great men and women.
John Kerr, assistant football coach and recruiting coordinator for the Naval Academy, calls it the “whole-person concept.” This is a set of general guidelines that all of the service academies use to recruit prospective cadets and the one Kerr follows when searching for players.
The service academies are looking for high school students with 3.5 grade point averages or better and combined (verbal and math) Scholastic Aptitude Test scores of 1,050 or higher. They’re looking for students with leadership qualities--ones who are heavily involved in extracurricular activities.
“He has to be a pretty upstanding kid,” Kerr said. “Otherwise, he won’t even be considered.”
But finding those blue-chip football players who can meet the admission requirements for the service academies can be a difficult task.
“You may have a kid who is an All-CIF player, but the first thing we look at is whether or not he can qualify,” said Jim Bowman, who is in charge of recruiting for all sports at the Air Force Academy. “Immediately, that eliminates a lot of Division I football players.”
Fulfilling the academic and extracurricular requirements is only part of the lengthy admission process that can sometimes impede the recruitment of a football player.
A student also must write to a representative from Congress to secure a nomination. He must pass an in-depth, six-hour military physical, during which a recruit can be disqualified for such problems as asthma or colorblindness.
If he receives a nomination, passes the physical, is qualified academically and has excellent character references, his application will go before an Admissions Board for appointment.
Some outstanding football players who are qualified don’t consider the academies, however. When a student commits himself, he or she has a five-year obligation to serve as an officer after graduation.
That’s going to hinder almost anyone who plans to play professionally.
“You can look at Roger Staubach (who starred in the NFL after a Navy career) and say it didn’t hurt him, but you can’t convince a 17-year old with dreams of playing pro football that it’s not going to be a problem,” Kerr said. “I’m sure the top-quality football player who wants to play pro ball won’t even take notice of us.”
Recruiting may seem more difficult at the service academies, but it’s handled no differently than it is at any major college. Like any school, the academies accentuate the positive such as free education, room and board, a monthly stipend of about $450 and the guarantee of a job for at least five years upon graduation.
“We have to find kids, present facts, stay in touch with them and show them the place, just like any college,” said John Simar, Army’s assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. “We probably subscribe to the same list of top 100 players that UCLA and USC does.
“We just have to find out who can handle the academics, who can play major-college football and who can fit into West Point.”
Once the academies find a qualified player, coaches go after him with the traditional letters and phone calls. Football recruiting budgets at the academies, which, including personnel salaries, are in the $150,000 range, are comparable to those at most colleges but a little less than those at major football schools. UCLA, for instance, spends about $225,000 a year (including salaries) on recruiting.
Of the 95 players each academy brings in on official recruiting trips, approximately 50%, commit, assistants at each school said.
“We’ll never get the big, 260- pounders, but we can take the 210-pound kid and, if we’re lucky, get him up to 245,” said Carl Ullrich, Army athletic director. “We’re developing them over four years.”
Don’t feel too sorry for the academies, though. They seem to be doing just fine. Air Force is undefeated (9-0) and ranked fifth. Army is 7-1, and Navy is 3-5 but boasts one of the country’s best running backs in Napoleon McCallum.
So, how do they do it?
“Most of the time, we’ll go after roughly 50% of the athletes we think are tops,” Kerr said. “The other half we get through word of coaches, who have outstanding student-athletes they think can play for the academy. There are a lot of good football players who go unnoticed. Finding them and getting them interested in the academy is our job.”
McCallum was one of those who went unnoticed. He was the fourth-leading prep rusher in the Cincinnati area, but was more interested in wrestling than football.
He wasn’t heavily recruited, but his desire to become an astronaut led him to the service. He enrolled at Navy, where he led the nation in all-purpose yardage in 1983 (216.8 yards a game) and finished sixth in the Heisman Trophy voting.
In McCallum, the Navy obviously found a pretty good man.
DR, NANCY OHANIAN / For the Times
