Army Football in the news

All I can say is.....

If an AROTC cadet at my son's school gave one drop of alcohol to a minor, let alone a visiting high school student, they would be disenrolled, lose any scholarships, and most likely have to pay back any scholarship to date, with no chance of ever receiving a commission from any branch of the service. This has happened in the not to distant past.
 
Jcleppe said:
All I can say is.....

If an AROTC cadet at my son's school gave one drop of alcohol to a minor, let alone a visiting high school student, they would be disenrolled, lose any scholarships, and most likely have to pay back any scholarship to date, with no chance of ever receiving a commission from any branch of the service. This has happened in the not to distant past.
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Or other cadets if they were overweight by 6 pounds or slightly off on a PT Test.
 
MedB said:
Some version of the D1 athletics at SAs debate comes up here repeatedly. And often times there are detailed facts shared that debunk many of the standing myths; not "bad behavior" gotcha articles but facts (independent studies, quotes from SA athletic insiders themselves, NCAA's own metrics, etc).

* Prep schools aren't a redshirt factory - refuted
* Recruited athletes graduate at same rate - refuted
* Recruited athletes go into operational AFSCs at same rate - refuted
* Admissions criteria/success expectations are identical for athletes - refuted
* Prepster recruited athletes have same honors/discipline rate - refuted
* D1 athletics at SAs are revenue positive - refuted

So... Are D1 athletics central to the core mission of our SAs? Maybe. The ancillary benefits in terms of public relations, marketing, pride, etc are undoubtedly tremendous. But perhaps the debate should be held on the REAL cost/benefit basis instead of continuing to cling to myths.
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The problem with using all the metrics that the anti-sports crowd loves so much is that those same metrics also reveal the inefficiency of having service academies at all.
 
Jcleppe said:
All I can say is.....

If an AROTC cadet at my son's school gave one drop of alcohol to a minor, let alone a visiting high school student, they would be disenrolled, lose any scholarships, and most likely have to pay back any scholarship to date, with no chance of ever receiving a commission from any branch of the service. This has happened in the not to distant past.
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That's great anecdotal evidence based on an impossible finite argument.

The reality is that ROTC life is plenty lenient, and a great many underperformers and marginal candidates make it through that system. To hold up what might happen in some AROTC unit, were this scenario to occur, is meaningless. The myth is in the belief that all the facts are in your hands in either case.
 
We, the United States of America, have a cultural problem with competitive athletics which exist as a high paying professional occupation. For the sake of this post, I am going to refer to any sport which exists at a professional level as a commercial sport.

I am not surprised there was a scandal involving football or any other commercial sport. What amazes me is that it wasn't discovered sooner. There isn't a year that goes by without some sort of professional, college, or high school incident.

Any and all behavior at the professional level is discounted because the athlete in question is "important to the team. We can't have a winning season without the convicted felon, the illegal drug user, the wife/girlfriend beater, etc.." So the message sent down by the pros is that "any and all behavior is tolerated as long as we have a winning season." In other words, whatever it takes to win. The ends justify the means.

Kids aren't stupid. They see the message. They want the lifestyle, fame and money that goes with being a professional athlete. Unfortunately, some of these kids have parents and coaches who share this "what ever it takes, look the other way attitude." Some of them grow up with this attitude from the first time they pick up any kind of ball to play. They grow up learning if they are not winners on the field, then they are losers and unworthy. For some of them, their entire self worth is tied into the score of a game. So whats some illegal drinking, some extra hoochie, exchange of cash, when winning is involved? They are special! They must win! They compete!

This is a pervasive issue. As such, it really isn't surprising the some of these kids and attitudes end up in a service academy. I am sure there will be similar issues in the future, human nature and society being what it is. Until we as a society start addressing this problem, we are going to continue to see this type of incident crop up year after year among all age groups across the country.

So what can a service academy do about this to help prevent future incidents? How can it better weed out athletic applicants? Is harsher punishment the solution? Is more stringent recruitment requirements necessary? Perhaps a more in depth assessment of an athlete's psychological profile? Is it have higher expectations and standards for coaches - better screening of coaches? Have military personnel more involved with the sports teams (monitoring, etc.)? Maybe civilians shouldn't be coaches at an academy, but must be military personnel?

I honestly don't know. But I think it is something that needs to be looked into.
 
I think you will have Scandals in any institution. Sometimes we human beings are not always the most honorable of creatures. You have things like the point shaving scandal, Penn State, BlackSox 1919. Remember you do have many others who devote time and effort and do the right things. People of honor and devotion. They usually go under the radar.
 
It seems to me that many on here are trying to turn this into a hurricane when it is really a tempest in a teapot. LTG Caslen's letter - http://www.usma.edu/news/Shared Doc...'s Statement to Colorado Gazette Article.pdf- spells out in a fair amount of detail what happened & what the punishments were, and despite the original news reporting- this doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. I know that, especially on these forums, we all like to think of the Service Academy cadets as some kind of collection of the near holy, but reality: they are a bunch of college kids, and they do college kid stuff. And they should be punished accordingly, and it looks to me like they have been and the institution acted appropriately. Now there may be serious issues with the relative priorities associated with athletics in the US, but that really doesn't seem to be the issue here in my opinion. I can think of, and have seen, lots of circumstances where ROTC cadets and midshipmen got breaks and allowances for actions associated with college life- so I would not be too quick to decide that anything other than crappy judgement on the part of a few Cadets and faculty advisors was involved here, and even less swift to be calling for some massive disciplinary response based on news stories which have a way of glossing over some facts in order to highlight more lurid possibilities.
 
cga82 said:
Why?

We do with all you offer up.

Personally I don't care which way you lean on this.
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Keep in mind THIS is the edited version of scoutpilot's reply. For Bruno to edit a fellow Army officer's post....it couldn't have been pretty.
 
All right folks- let me make this clear- there will be no more commentary about other posters on this thread or any others. This is a legitimate topic that can be intelligently discussed with varying points of view- but commentary about each other will not be allowed, nor will the hijacking of the thread in order to provoke reactions from other posters. You have plenty of legitimate points to make about this article/ incident/ general topic- keep the thread within those boundaries.
 
Comparing the Academies to other Universities does not hold water. The Academies are funded solely by tax dollars and do not charge tuition. While public Universities receive some funding from the states they also charge tuition. And they also answer to the taxpayers in their state.

While many on here feel the Athletic program is important for the mission of the Academies (and I agree) I'm less comfortable that the rest of the taxpaying public would see it that way. And if there continues to be these type issues coming out we may just get to find out....

On a side note I read the response from USMA. Not sure I get a warm fuzzy on the following line:

This trip resulted in incidents of misconduct, which included underage drinking at a bowling alley within the Mall among members of the team and several recruits, and other questionable behavior.
 
Rocko said:
Comparing the Academies to other Universities does not hold water. The Academies are funded solely by tax dollars and do not charge tuition. While public Universities receive some funding from the states they also charge tuition. And they also answer to the taxpayers in their state.

While many on here feel the Athletic program is important for the mission of the Academies (and I agree) I'm less comfortable that the rest of the taxpaying public would see it that way. And if there continues to be these type issues coming out we may just get to find out....

On a side note I read the response from USMA. Not sure I get a warm fuzzy on the following line:

This trip resulted in incidents of misconduct, which included underage drinking at a bowling alley within the Mall among members of the team and several recruits, and other questionable behavior.
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No arguement on the difference of the USMA and other colleges. You would want the highest standard for those who defend our country. i just think people make mistakes and sometimes are drawn to do bad things(Sayerville HS Football Team 5 miles from me occurred last month). They don't always follow the rules(Wall Street where I worked for 25 years). Maybe I am numb about it. I almost expect it. I am also not shocked when it is swept under the rug(Penn State). This one has a ways to go so I will at least for now give them the benefit of the doubt. There are many associated with the USMA sports programs that do good things, work very hard and with honor. These scandals really hurt a lot of other uninvolved good people.
Talked to dad tonite, he said he would not play in and left the 1951 Summer League(Non NCAA) games against some of his old friends connected with the Point Shaving Scandal. Some had been to his parent's house in years past. He never forgave them.
 
MemberLG said:
We can't argue with what could be if don't field D1 sports team, as we have D1 sports teams.

Don't get me wrong as if it was up to me, I would has SAs play each other twice a year and call it a season. But, it's not up to me. Given a mission to have D1 sports programs, each SAs are doing what they can and since I don't a better solution they get my tacit support
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Just saying, USCGA is a D-3 School for football (barely) and we seem to do just fine with producing officers. Granted its for a different service and all, but why is it REQUIRED that the other SA be D-1?

Certainly I can say that the CGA hasn't had issues like this with recruiting athletes...

I guess my point is, I don't think the SA's need to be D1 to accomplish their missions.
 
USCGA13STN said:
Just saying, USCGA is a D-3 School for football (barely) and we seem to do just fine with producing officers. Granted its for a different service and all, but why is it REQUIRED that the other SA be D-1?

Certainly I can say that the CGA hasn't had issues like this with recruiting athletes...

I guess my point is, I don't think the SA's need to be D1 to accomplish their missions.
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How many people in America know there's a Coast Guard Academy, compared to the other SAs?
 
MedB said:
Pima,

Again just to clarify... The D1 sports program at USAFA (and other SAs) are net losers financially.

There have been lots of posts on this (by self and others) citing multi-year investigative journalism studies, studies by Forbes magazine, NCAA's own reports, and even the numbers (or lack thereof) from the SAs themselves and more. No matter how you slice it, there are only a small handful of college FB programs that return net profit.... USAFA and the others are not on that short list.

When you look at the "all in" costs vs revenues you realize (like all of the investigations have revealed) that these programs are subsidized to tune of 10's of millions of dollars. The fact that these subsidized by various funds and reassigning of costs across non-IC accounts does not change this fact.

So you really do make some awesome points (as usual, btw! :wink:), but just wanted to point out that justifying these programs based on the mistaken assumption (myth) that they generate net profit is probably not the best case to make.
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I think it is likely that the football programs at Army and Navy do make money, if only because of the payout for the Army-Navy game. Hear me out on this one. The studies I've seen assume that that Army and Navy have 80-100 guys on scholarship at $50,000+ per person -- remember, the academies have big rosters. But although they are "on scholarship" in a sense, there is no out of pocket expense for scholarships because of course they get the same deal as other cadets/mids: four years and a college degree in return for the five years service obligation. So if you take away the idea that every athlete at a SA is on a full scholarship -- from girls' soccer to men's lacrosse to men's basketball to men's football -- then the expense side is very different. And I think the football programs are bringing in real world cash that does subsidize the non-revenue sports.

Maybe I'm wrong and those studies aren't imputing scholarship costs, but I think they are.
 
scoutpilot said:
How many people in America know there's a Coast Guard Academy, compared to the other SAs?
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The USAFA is a Div 1 school, and there are loads of people who have no idea it exists. I have to explain that it is like the military academy at West Point, but it is for the Air Force. So being a Div 1 doesn't necessarily generate the "name recognition" that some might think.

There are loads of colleges out there I never heard of who have Div 1 sports. How many people knew about Gonzaga until it made the road to the final 4? I never heard of it until then. And there are loads of other D1 colleges who don't have that "name recognition."
 
scoutpilot said:
That's great anecdotal evidence based on an impossible finite argument.

The reality is that ROTC life is plenty lenient, and a great many underperformers and marginal candidates make it through that system. To hold up what might happen in some AROTC unit, were this scenario to occur, is meaningless. The myth is in the belief that all the facts are in your hands in either case.
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I'm not even sure I understand this.

I just gave an example of one ROTC Battalion, I have no idea how other Battalions would handle the situation.

Not sure what would be a finite argument, this happened at son's Battalion and the cadet was disenrolled, not sure what the myth or belief would be.

ROTC certainly does not have a monopoly on marginal cadets or under performers, although I agree that some slip through the system. Not even sure what would be considered meaningless, underage drinking, (Yes, if caught) or supplying alcohol to a minor is cause for disenrollment at his Battalion, they have been briefed, we have been briefed what could and has happen.

I certainly did not intend an argument, it was just a comment on what happens at one ROTC Battalion, all the facts are not in my hand regarding other Battalions.

USMA investigated, and came up with the punishment they deemed fair, case closed.
 
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