DOWNSIZING WILL BE KEY TO SUCCESS

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Feb 6, 2008 | by JAKE SCHALLER

Air Force football coach Troy Calhoun is banking that quality will trump quantity.

He wants a smaller team so players get more repetitions and instruction in practice and thus develop better.

In years past, there often were more than 200 players on the Air Force varsity and junior varsity teams. Calhoun wants that number to be closer to 110. And to help get there, he's reducing the number of players the academy recruits. Calhoun said he aims to recruit one player for each position yearly -- plus a handful more -- for both the academy and its prep school.

There are concerns about reducing the size of the team, however. Having more players increased the possibility of finding a sleeper. It also ensured Air Force would have plenty of players after the inevitable defections of some cadets from the program or the school altogether -- more of an issue at a service academy because of off- field demands.

But Calhoun said both of those potential problems will be avoided with better evaluations.

He is stressing meticulous review of tape to make sure all players who are brought in are good enough to get on the field. His staff is initiating contact with recruits earlier and spending more time educating them on exactly what they will encounter at the academy so there is less chance they will leave early.

"I thought if we did more of our work up front in the evaluation and identifying guys early, you'd feel so strongly about the kids that I thought retention would be excellent," he said.

Recruiting coordinator Charlton Warren added that having too many players at each position can scare recruits away.

"Kids want a chance to play at some point," Warren said. "What kid wants to come when they see you have 15 quarterbacks committed?"

That's no exaggeration. Calhoun was one of 18 freshmen quarterbacks at the first day of practice at Air Force in 1985.

That won't happen while he's coach.

"It'd be different if I didn't think we could find the right kids," he said. "I just think we can find the right kids and three years from now a good chunk of them still are going to be around."

SPLIT DECISION

Air Force coaches recruit for two teams: the academy's and the academy prep school's.

Coach Troy Calhoun has said he wants to recruit about 25-28 players for each team.

Though some think of the prep school as a farm team, the players at the prep school are eligible to be recruited by other schools. Calhoun cannot choose which recruits go to the prep school and which to the academy, said Rolland Stoneman, the academy's associate director of admissions. That is determined by the recruit's academic composite score.

"We can't recruit a kid and if he's academically qualified to come straight into the academy, we can't say 'We want him to spend a year at the prep school,'" recruiting coordinator Charlton Warren said.

Coaches can guess from a recruit's transcript whether he would go directly into the acad emy, and that can tailor who they recruit, Warren said.