There was a ripple in the upcoming NFL draft class last month when the federal government funding bill (often called various things involving the word “omnibus”) initially forbade service academy athletes from deferring their five years of mandatory military service if they wanted to start a pro career. The bill was eventually changed before its passage to grandfather in athletes who enrolled before June of 2021, which means Andre Carter II—a linebacker from Army who projects as a second-round pick—is good to be drafted. For others, though, the option to defer service is going away.
It’s an odd question, the one of professional sports for service academy athletes. On one side, if you’re going to have sports at the service academies in the first place, you’re going to be somewhat limited in your competitive potential should the option to play professionally after graduation not exist. On the other, sports aren’t why the service academies are there, and with height restrictions and other training restrictions in place on all cadets and midshipmen, there are already physical limits on whom these schools’ coaches can recruit. Are service academies limited in their athletic competitiveness? Of course. Does that matter? I don’t know.
The thing that was lost in the Andre Carter conversation was what, exactly, the history really is on this. Every time we hear about a player from Army or Navy or Air Force going pro, we’re told its historic, and it is historic. But it’s not unique. It’s happened for decades.
Back in the 1960s, Roger Staubach served, even spending a year in South Vietnam. He served from his graduation in 1965 until 1969, when he resigned his commission and joined the Dallas Cowboys.
In the 1980s, Napoleon McCallum served, and for a season he both played and served, running for more than 500 yards for the Los Angeles Raiders while stationed on a boat home ported in Long Beach. After the Navy transferred him up the coast (and out into the Indian Ocean), this arrangement ended, but he returned to the Raiders once his service was complete.
Around the same time, David Robinson got an exception. I can’t find if he was the first to get this exception, but he got one while McCallum and Air Force (and eventual Cowboys) defensive tackle Chad Hennings did not. Robinson’s situation was odd. Navy had recruited him for basketball after a late high school growth spurt, but nobody realized the growth spurt would continue, and Robinson quickly passed the height limit for serving at sea. When faced with the decision on whether to transfer before his junior season, then—when the obligation would have kicked in—Robinson not only was weighing his basketball future, but what he could even do within the Navy itself. Eventually, the Secretary of the Navy offered a compromise which commissioned Robinson as an officer in the Civil Engineer Corps and left him with only a two-year service requirement, which he fulfilled before moving to San Antonio and joining the Spurs.
For a while, there was an approach where athletes were required to spend two years on active duty before they could pursue pro sports, and there was briefly an “Alternative Service Option” classifying pro sports as a form of active duty (there’s a helpful writeup from Mike James on a lot of this stuff here). Ashton Carter, Secretary of Defense in the Obama Administration, allowed a route to fulfill the service commitment in the reserves, which is what Keenan Reynolds did, but Jim Mattis changed it back to at least two years of active duty. Then came the change, pushed by Donald Trump, to allow athletes granted a waiver to defer their active duty service. Now, the two-year requirement is coming back.
Again, I don’t think it’s our place to have too strong an opinion on this, but I’ll offer a few thoughts:
The first is that consistency would be nice. These kids deserve to know what they’re getting into.
The second is that using college kids as a political football is gross. Don’t turn this into a play for votes.
The third is that two years is a long time, but not prohibitively long for ever making the professional ranks. Plenty of football players go pro two years later because of redshirting and injury.
Beyond that, we’ll leave the debate to those within the military community.
Farewell, Kevin Warren
Kevin Warren is leaving the Big Ten to become the Chicago Bears’ president and CEO, and it’s a big deal, changing the course of the Big Ten and the Chicago Bears. What that doesn’t mean, though, is that it’s particularly good or bad for either. It might be, it might not be, all we know is that it’s different. Warren always came across as a weird guy in his actions with the Big Ten, and he wasn’t there for particularly long, serving fewer than four full years. Now, he’ll run the Bears. Good luck to all parties, I guess.
Should We Believe in UConn? What About Alabama?
UConn lost another road game last night, dropping to 2-3 in that category and to 0-3 in their last three attempts, now having lost to all three of Xavier, Providence, and Marquette, who are joined by Creighton as the Big East’s UConn challengers. Is it disaster for the Huskies? No. But it does provoke the question of whether this team has some obstacle preventing them from winning big games. Those have been the three biggest games this season. Yes, they beat Alabama; Yes, they beat Iowa State; Yes, they beat Creighton. The Creighton game was at home, though, and the games against Alabama and Iowa State were in quiet gyms in Portland against teams who’d yet to get hot. UConn has lost its three biggest games, the defense has started to slip, and that’s concerning.
Meanwhile, Alabama toyed with Arkansas in Fayetteville, and Arkansas’s too good a team for it to be reasonable to toy with them. At one point, the Hogs pulled the deficit down to one possession and Alabama answered with three straight threes, utterly burying Eric Musselman’s team, which now sits 1-3 in SEC play. (And is still pretty good!) Alabama’s been making splashes, but this grabbed our attention in a new way.
It’s hard to fully believe in the Crimson Tide, even with them having beaten Houston, who’s probably the best team in the country. They turn the ball over a lot. They rely heavily on the three-point shot and free throws. They don’t rebound particularly well on the defensive end. And yet, their numbers are all good. Their offense grades out better than Tennessee’s on KenPom, even with the Vols improving on that end recently. Their defense is rated better than all three of UCLA’s, Kansas’s, and UConn’s right now, and we’ve been calling those three teams the ones well-rounded enough and good enough and consistent enough to believe in a national championship. Alabama’s in the conversation. They’ve earned that much.
To square our own little circle, we’re reshaping our categories as follows:
Champions Who Wouldn’t Surprise Us: Houston, Tennessee, UCLA, Kansas
Houston and Tennessee would each be favored by about three points right now against UCLA and Kansas, and that’s kind of a lot. Tennessee also did pummel Kansas head-to-head, and with their offense improving (but still not great), we don’t want to take them too lightly. The fear with Houston and Tennessee both is that the offense will have too bad of a night at the wrong time, but they’re better enough than UCLA and Kansas—who appear less prone to catastrophic nights and more multi-dimensional, which provides some insurance when you need to win six straight games—that we can’t have them below their peers here.
The Questioned: UConn, Alabama, Purdue
UConn needs to win a big game. Purdue’s defense is better than last year’s, but it’s a lot like Tennessee’s offense where the relativity of that is doing too much work. Alabama has some proving left to do.
Good, Not Great: Texas, Saint Mary’s, Ohio State, Arizona, Virginia, Gonzaga
Welcome to the list, Gaels. Please explain to us what was going on with you in November.
Saint Mary’s has losses to Washington, New Mexico, and Colorado State on its team sheet, and none of those were on the road. Saint Mary’s is just 1-1 against likely tournament teams. Saint Mary’s is mediocre at scoring the basketball.
Still, Saint Mary’s has a fierce enough defense to beat anybody on any given night, which is part of why they were able to hold Houston to 53 points in Fort Worth and a lot of why they’re up into the KenPom top ten, which is only present-tense and can be easily overstated in its importance but is still important. Saint Mary’s is a good team.
Ohio State and Arizona and Gonzaga are all in similar molds where they’re a lot of fun and have some spectacular individual talents and just do not play a lick of defense. That leaves them right around Saint Mary’s in quality.
Virginia plays an odder style of basketball, but the result is a fairly well-rounded product. They’re doing an adequate job of scoring, an adequate job of defending, and a great job of neither.
Finally, Texas. Texas is dealing with tumult. Texas is a little all over the place with their recent results (they allowed 116 to Kansas State and 46 to Oklahoma State in a five-day span, and they scored 103 and 56 in those games so it isn’t just the defense). Texas is also 14-2, with wins over Creighton, Gonzaga, and three Big 12 teams who aren’t named Texas Tech and therefore are currently likely to make the tournament. They aren’t great. They’d be an underdog against all three of those “questioned” teams above. But they’re in the picture. One way to think about these six? They could, like we said of Saint Mary’s, beat anybody on any given night. One great game from them wouldn’t surprise us. We just don’t see them doing it six times in a row in March, from what we can tell right now.
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Viewing schedule for the evening, second screen rotation in italics:
College Basketball (a selection)
- 7:00 PM EST: Michigan @ Iowa (ESPN2)
- 9:30 PM EST: Gonzaga @ BYU (ESPN)
- 11:00 PM EST: Utah @ UCLA (P12N)
NBA (best game)
- 7:30 PM EST: Boston @ Brooklyn (TNT)
NHL (best game)
- 7:00 PM EST: Dallas @ NY Rangers (ESPN+)
