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  1. #1
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    Default Army Safety Caleb Campbell - NFL Bound?

    http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/...60647&n8pe6c=2

    "As much as I support our soldiers, if you don't have to be one, I would suggest you not be one." Found that pretty galling. Thoughts on West Point's policy?

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    Council Member Hacksaw's Avatar
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    Default Blame the sin not the sinner

    I have a somewhat unique perspective on life at service academies... I was once a zoomie, but left before incurring a committment because I had some reservations about the whole cadet system... Later I enroled in Army ROTC was commission RA and later taught at USMA. I recently retired...

    I saw pieces of the special on ESPN last night and looked at my wife who had a frown. When asked why, she responded that she didn't care that USMA had a Division I Football Program... He was appraised of his choices, and that he made a choice two years prior. I tend to agree with my wife, she possesses more wisdom than I.

    However, I find far more fault with the Academy and the thinking behind the loophole. Some ideas are eternal, the underpinning ethic of service to nation is among the first of many that USMA is supposed to nurture in Cadets. That fact that USMA may get a better recruiting class and benefit from some short term PR gains do not favorably compare.

    Hey, he's 21-22 years old being offered a chance to play NFL football, the shame is no so much that he's opting for a chance at fame and fortune. Rather its that USMA forgot one of its core values.

    That's all I have to say about that..

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    We could speculate on the pro prospects of guys with names like Blanchard, Davis, Pete Dawkins and Bill Carpenter . I seem to remember a guy named Mike Silliman getting drafted out of USMA by the Knicks, back in the 60s--he did his obligation first as I remember. Also a certain Navy hoop star did at least a hand wave at being a Naval Supply Officer while double dipping in the NBA honey pot. And then of course there is this:
    Roger Thomas Staubach. . .1963 Heisman Trophy winner. . . Four-year Navy service preceded pro play. . .Noted for last-minute heroics, guided Dallas to four NFC titles, Super Bowl VI, XII wins. . .MVP in Super Bowl VI. . .All-NFC five years . . .Career stats: 22,700 yards, 153 TDs passing; 2,264 yards, 20 TDs rushing. . .83.4 NFL passer rating best ever at time of retirement. . .Four-time NFL passing leader. . . Born February 5, 1942, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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    Council Member Stan's Avatar
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    It's no mystery that the ARMY produces the best disciplined athletes, bar none. And, we consistently kick the Navy's Alpha every year (even bowling on base ).

    But, are these the kind of folks prepared for armed duty we'd like by our side when the Sierra hits the fan ?

    Perhaps the Alternative Professional Option is a good idea after all.

    Army cadet-athletes now have options to pursue professional athletic opportunities thanks to the U.S. Army’s Alternative Service Option program. If cadet-athletes are accepted into the program, they will owe two years of active service in the Army, during which time they will be allowed to play their sport in the player development systems of their respective organizations and assigned to recruiting stations. If they remain in professional sports following those two years, they will be provided the option of “buying out” the remaining three years of their active-duty commitment in exchange for six years of reserve time.
    This reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons in which Bart has a vision of the future. In this vision, Lisa has been elected President and needs to raise taxes due to a budget emergency. Fearing the unpopularity of a tax increase, she decides to call it a “refund adjustment.” “Alternative service” is the same kind of euphemism. Let’s be real, here; playing ball full-time for two years while shaking hands at a couple of recruiting events isn’t exactly the first thing that comes to mind when people think “service.”
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    I'm an old grad myself, and my first reaction was negative. Even as a dyed-in-the-wool Army football fan, it seems a little distasteful that the institution would prostitute itself for the sake of a few more wins on the field, or that the taxpayers would foot the considerable bill for educating the Falcon's next cornerback. Moreover, there are cadets who are world-class fencers, musicians, etc., who don't get the opportunity to pursue their dreams by getting out of their active duty obligations.

    But...I don't think the guys in charge at the Academy have lightly made this program available to athletes, or that they did it simply to win football games. I believe they think this will raise public awareness of the Academy, that winning football actually does increase the quality of the incoming classes and encourages many to apply who might not otherwise have done so, and that it will benefit the Army in the long run. If they are right - and it's a big if in my mind - then it will be worth losing the services of two or three lieutenants every year.

    In the 19th century it was not uncommon for Academy grads to go directly into civilian life; the purpose of the Academy was different then, and maybe it's time to rethink its ultimate purpose now.

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    Council Member Hacksaw's Avatar
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    Default Respectfully agree to disagree

    Eden,
    I appreciate your thoughtful response and could nod my head through much of the logic...

    - Losing 2-3 2LTs per year will not make a big dent in that year groups population.
    - Yes this will raise awareness of the academy.
    - Back in the day some grads went straight into civilian life, but its role has changed.

    Concur on all... but

    - Service to nation as a cornerstone ethic has not changed, and this is, if not a nation, an Military at War.
    - Not sure that the awareness this type of attention gains is the image the Academy needs. Unlike pop culture icons, not all publicity is good publicity.
    - The Academy has changed, despite its most nostalgic yearnings, it is no longer a hard science institution (sorry AOG). USMA provides a liberal arts education to its graduates - and that is dead on what its graduates require to lead in the contemporary environment.

    I am not a wax nostalgic about the good ole traditions of Hudson High, but the last core ethic that the Academy should bend away from is its mission to graduate leaders committed to life of service to the Nation. Some things should remain non-negotiable - this is one.

    This policy is a BAD decision.

    There is an aporpo saying that you can't blame a dog for being dog... Well you can't blame a 21 yr old for being a 21 yr old, I think Caleb Campbell will regret this decision. The USMA education does not end on Miche Field on a Spring Day, it continues as they struggle to apply the lessons they learned.

    Funny, I usually become less riled about a topic as time passes... This one just makes me more disappointed by the hour.

    That's really all I have to say about that.

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    Council Member wm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hacksaw View Post
    There is an aporpo saying that you can't blame a dog for being dog... Well you can't blame a 21 yr old for being a 21 yr old, I think Caleb Campbell will regret this decision. The USMA education does not end on Miche Field on a Spring Day, it continues as they struggle to apply the lessons they learned.
    I remember walking by a stone as I walked out of Army home football games on Saturdays (usually after witnessing another drubbing at the hands of some major college power like Cincinnati or Worcester Tech). That stone had a bronze plaque on it with the following quotation from MacArthur:
    On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days and other fields will bear the fruits of victory.
    With all of the big time sports infrastructure improvements at USMA around what used to be the greensward called Howze Field (not to mention places like Shea Stadium, Doubleday Field and Target Hill Field (aka North Athletic Field), I wonder if that stone is still there. If it is, I wonder whether the Army Athletic Association (AAA) staff makes use of it to remind its young student atheletes that they are officer candidates first and foremost.
    Cadets draw a paycheck and get an education for free because the nation expects them to "provide for the common defense" as the Preamble to the Constitution says.

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    Council Member Hacksaw's Avatar
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    Default Here Here

    Agree WM

    Just can't figure out why USMA would decide to build a way out for grads... If for no other reason, just the wrong message to send to the Corps
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
    In the 19th century it was not uncommon for Academy grads to go directly into civilian life; the purpose of the Academy was different then, and maybe it's time to rethink its ultimate purpose now.
    True, but this had more to do with the state of the Army at the time than any conscious decision on the part of the Academy. Graduates took brevet rank, and had to wait (often for extended periods) for a vacancy in a regiment to occur. They could be assigned in brevet rank, though. In other cases it was opportunists who took the education and then resigned as soon as it was practical to do so.

    West Point in the 19th century often found itself forced to defend its very existence, as there was some popular resentment and suspicion directed at ANY standing military organization, let alone a "mini-Prussia" sitting on the Hudson...
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

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    He got picked up by the Detroit Lions in the 7th Round.

    Meanwhile his peers will be visiting me and other TRADOC establishments this summer getting ready to lead real Soldiers into armed combat with people trying to kill them.

    IF he makes it through training camp without getting cut, I hope he can live with himself when his first classmate is mourned at West Point after giving their life for their country. This guy has zero credibility, zero personification of the Army Values, and exemplifies everything that is wrong with officer selection right now.

    If I have a young hotshot E5 who is good at baseball and goes up to the Braves open tryouts next year and makes it, is he going to get out of his contract? I doubt it. And that's wrong.

    If he gets hurt and has to come to the force, he'd better not be my ADA officer. He'd get cut from my team.
    Example is better than precept.

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    http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=4416326

    Updated: August 22, 2009, 5:05 PM ET
    Campbell's bobsled hopes improve
    Associated Press
    Caleb Campbell is still in the Olympic bobsled picture.

    Campbell, the U.S. Army soldier and West Point graduate drafted by the Detroit Lions last year before being told his NFL career needed to wait, finished 10th Saturday at the U.S. Bobsled Federation's push championship qualifier in Lake Placid, N.Y.

    He's no cinch for the Vancouver roster, but Saturday's times likely earned him a spot in the national team trials, starting in Lake Placid in mid-October. Campbell said two drivers have already asked him about joining their teams.

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    I'm resurrecting a five year old thread here, but its better to recycle than to waste, and the old discussion provides background to the article:

    Washington Post, 23 Feb 14: West Point is Placing Too Much Emphasis on Football
    Internal studies conducted in the past decade show that, once at West Point, recruited football players are more than twice as likely to fail courses, more likely to leave the Army early and less likely to be promoted to higher ranks in the Army compared with their non-recruited counterparts. There are exceptions, of course…...Yet the aggregate numbers demonstrate that loosening academic standards runs counter to the academy’s mission to prepare each graduate “for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army.”

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    Reopened for a nauseating postscript:

    Greenspan wouldn't get into specifics. But Campbell, the gridiron Cadet who was called back to West Point, did. Before his 2008 graduation from Army, as his effort to go pro (behind the Academy's ASO exemption) was becoming national news, he received an anonymous handwritten letter. "I want you to muster up the balls to walk over to the West Point cemetery and stand in front of each headstone of recent graduates who were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan and tell them that you are going to face just as much pressure as they did," it read. "I doubt you'll do that. You'll kiss them off like you're kissing off your classmates."

    The trolling might've broken Campbell, now 32, if he hadn't also been so strongly backed. "People can scrutinize, but they were not sitting at a round table with two-, three-, four-star generals," he says. "And then there were all my superior officers from the United States Military Academy, giving me advice, telling me what I should be doing. And I'm just saying, 'O.K., I'll go for it."

    In the end, though, perhaps it was better for Campbell that he was called back to West Point. That year the Lions became the first NFL team to lose 16 games in a season. For the next two years he operated on the fringes of the Robinson Rule—first as a grad assistant on the West Point coaching staff, then as a bobsledder in the Army's World Class Athlete Program (an Olympic and Paralympic training ground), then in officer school at Fort Sill, in southwest Oklahoma.

    In 2010, upon satisfying his active duty obligation, Campbell circled back to Detroit, signing a one-year contract. Relegated to special teams, he played three games before being cut in '11. From there he bounced from Indianapolis to Kansas City—sabotaging himself, he says, at every stop. "I was so afraid of being exposed as this person that didn't have what it took to make it in the NFL," he recalls. "But if I can sabotage my career, I'll always have an excuse on why I didn't make it. I can sleep at night saying, well, if I would've studied, I guarantee I would've made it in the NFL. At the end of the day I just didn't have the balls to quit."

    In August 2012 the Chiefs put Campbell out of his misery, serving him a final NFL pink slip. He resettled in Buffalo, found work with a marketing and design firm and joined a church just across the Niagara River, in Fort Erie, Ont. There, he would become so rehearsed in sharing his testimony—a soul-searching allegory—that he would respin it into a side career as a motivational speaker.

    Not surprisingly, Campbell, because of his Army experience, views the abandonment of the Robinson Rule more diplomatically than most. "For us to continue to have the maximum influence [as an institution], I think it's pivotal that we are able to recruit better athletes," he says. "For us to be able to compete at the Division I level, it's necessary for us to recruit."
    http://www.si.com/more-sports/2017/0...ary-connection

    The whole article is worth reading, in a bad way.

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