Great post. And excellent use of SA . . . in one of the few remaining places where they still exist.
Here's a good article written about the USAFA's Head Coach, Troy Calhoun, it's kind of long, but IMO, it's
well worth reading the article;
Perhaps no coach in America has experienced the extreme opposite poles of football culture quite like Troy Calhoun.
One minute, Calhoun was highly regarded as a hot NFL offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach with the Houston Texans (2006), who spent time as an assistant to the head coach with the Denver Broncos (2005) and had incredible success in college football as offensive coordinator at Wake Forest (2001- 02). At that period in time, Calhoun was widely considered one of the NFL’s up-and-coming offensive minds.
The next thing he knew, Calhoun was unexpectedly overcome by the pull of a former love in desperate need. An entity he still felt deeply attached to, the calling triggered passion he felt embedded in his very DNA. It was a call for help he could not resist.
So in 2007, Troy Calhoun accepted the job as head football coach of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado.
The Air Force Academy was a place Calhoun knew well. Both he and his younger sister are graduates of the academy, where both excelled academically and athletically in their time as academy cadets.
Calhoun’s had a terrific run of success at the Air Force Academy (121 - 78). Looking back, Calhoun says the transition was much harder than he thought it would be. After the years he spent coaching in the NFL, coming back to the culture of Air Force Academy sports was a bit of a shock to the head coach.
“Coaching in the NFL, and then becoming head coach of the Air Force Academy was more than a little bit of a 180-degree turn,” says Calhoun. “It’s akin to the difference between noon and midnight.
“The Air Force is my true passion and I love coaching here. But the beautiful thing about coaching professional football in the NFL is that you have a completely level playing field from which you can build your team.
“In the NFL, everybody has the same salary cap, the same roster size, utilizes the same system that is in place to draft collegiate talent and everyone abides by essentially the same code of conduct. NFL football is ‘even-steven’ all the way.
“It is what makes the NFL the incredible league that it is, and an amazing coaching environment to work in – it’s competitive and there’s tremendous parity.”
According to Calhoun, the major difference-makers for NFL coaching success stem from things like work ethic, creativity and finding other ways to be resourceful. The coach adds that focusing on those attributes can overcome the physical parity of the pro league and can help you win more games.
Recruiting athletes to play college football at the Air Force Academy is a challenge. The Falcon’s academic standards rival non-scholarship Ivy League schools or a school like Stanford University – with the caveat of a 5-year commitment to serve your country as an Air Force officer upon graduation. It takes a special young athlete to want to play football for the Air Force Academy.
“First off, it’s tough getting into the Air Force Academy,” says Calhoun. “So when we recruit potential candidates as football players, the first thing we look for is a student-athlete with exceptionally strong academics.
“Potential Air Force Academy recruits need at least a 3.5 GPA with a 25 ACT or a 1200 SAT score in two parts, math and critical reading.
“During their time at the Air Force Academy, a cadet will take two levels of calculus, two levels of physics, two levels of chemistry, astronautical engineering, aeronautical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and more.
“In their first 40 days in the academy, they get up at 4:30 am every morning and go through basic training – where there is not a football involved.”
Calhoun says that only covers some of the requirements that a cadet needs to commit to. Other aspects of Air Force Academy life, such as wearing a regulation uniform every day, being clean-shaven, wearing your hair cut short, having no piercings or rings – are all mandatory things that potential recruits must be willing to do, just to remain at the academy.
Despite his success at the Air Force Academy, Calhoun says he made some classic coaching mistakes when he first took over the program. One area in particular he cites as poor decision-making was in selecting a style of play that he wanted to run, rather than implementing schemes that best fit the Falcons’ personnel and athletic situation.
“I came to Air Force wanting to utilize the offensive system I had previously used with success in the ACC at Wake Forest,” says Calhoun. “In 2002, during my time as offensive coordinator, Wake Forest averaged 408 yards-per-game offensively. We ran a league-best 990 plays and only had 16 turnovers that year.
“The thing I was most excited about, though, was to add-in some of the offensive concepts we had used during my time with the Denver Broncos and Houston Texans in the NFL.”
Calhoun says it wasn’t long before he realized that there were some big differences in the athletes he had on his roster – especially when it came to size and movement issues – which made it tough to implement the offense as he had envisioned.
“It became clear that the physical limitations in athleticism would hamper our ability to execute the offense,” says Calhoun. “On top of that, we also had restrictions in the time we had available for team meetings, which I had not anticipated.
“In terms of available meeting time, at the Air Force Academy, we have 90 minutes to practice and 45 minutes to meet – which wasn’t long enough to cover all the concepts that I wanted to teach.”
The more the Falcons’ coach thought about it, the more he realized that his NFL coaching days had spoiled him.
“In the NFL, we had all-day practices, extended team meetings, post-meeting walk-throughs, and then the coaches would all meet at night for hours on end to talk about the day’s work and plan the next day,” he says.
“So here I was, trying to implement those same NFL pro-level offensive concepts into an Air Force football program that operated on limited practice time. e Air Force Academy has higher priority matters that come before football practice.”
Calhoun says it’s a lesson to all coaches who take over a head coaching position with a new team. “You must learn and quickly adapt to the structural differences in an organization when going from one football team to another. I learned that lesson the hard way,” he says.
The Falcons are now one of the most successful progams in College Football. In the past 3 full seasons, Air Force is 31 - 8. There's not a team in the nation that wants to see the Air Force Falcons on their schedule.
Article by Mike Podoll
www.ncaa.com
