They Tackled Career Indecision by Taking Military Approach

Four-year Air Force veteran Derrick Rodgers threw out some free advice Saturday to 18-year-olds who haven’t chosen career goals.

Enlist.

“Definitely, I would recommend the military,” he said.

“When I was a teenager, all I wanted to do was play the trumpet. I had no discipline, I wasn’t going anywhere. So I joined the Air Force.

“Without the Air Force, I never would have gone this far in football. In fact, I might never have played at all.”

Rodgers’ story is similar to that of Errick Herrin’s, a Marine Corps veteran of the Gulf War who played junior college football at Mt. San Jacinto after his four-year hitch, and wound up playing linebacker at USC at age 25.

Once an aimless teenager on the streets of Akron, Ohio, Herrin said the Marines taught him focus and maturity.

“Football is a game. But in the Marines, they teach you to kill people,” he said in 1994.

“The younger guys at SC complain about how tough football practice is, and I want to laugh. In 13 weeks of basic training at Parris Island [S.C.] you basically learn how to shut up and do your job.

“I saw guys try to commit suicide by hanging themselves, cutting their wrists or taking pills. There’s nothing a football coach could do to me that would even compare to what I went through at Parris Island.”