I don't know if there are many football fans here. I'm a huge Chicago Bears fan. Tough sledding last year but maybe we'll be back this season! Maybe not. I love the sport.
During the NFL draft this year, there was a sidebar human interest story. A guy named Caleb Campbell played at Army last year. He was drafted by the Detroit Lions this season, an NFL football team.
As USA Today said today:
Caleb Campbell will not get a chance to play for the Detroit Lions because of a change in military policy. Campbell was a seventh-round draft pick for the Lions in April. At the time, Army policy would have allowed the West Point graduate to serve as a recruiter if he made the team.
But a subsequent Department of Defense policy has superseded the 2005 Army policy.
In a letter to Lions president Matt Millen dated Wednesday, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jonathan P. Liba wrote that Campbell has been ordered to give up professional football for "full-time traditional military duties."
Liba wrote that 2nd Lt. Campbell may ask to be released from his active duty obligations in May 2010.
Liba said Campbell was allowed to enter the draft "in good faith."
I'm one of those dopey NFL fans who watches the draft every year. I was pulling for this guy and hoping someone would pick him up and give him a shot at making it in football. It was a cool scene when he was picked.
Nobody can say for sure if he'd have made the team or not. Nobody should speak for him, including me, when it comes to how he feels about entering Army service rather than getting his shot to play professional football. On this matter, only his opinion is relevant. I'd bet he's disappointed.
But the rest of us do have a right to look at this "promise" broken and call it what it is, yet another example of how traditions and rules go out the window when they conflict with the needs of this administration. Let's be honest, it's God Damn pathetic they can't afford to follow through on this and let this ONE guy take his chances with the NFL before he serves. Are recruiting targets being missed so badly that this one man is going to make an impact on "winning" the war?
And how shortsighted. If Caleb made the team and served as a recruiter in Detroit, Michigan... He'd have a positive impact on recruitment; I can guarantee it.
UPDATE: According to Caleb Campbell, the Department of Defense decision-makers "left me in the complete dark. No one said a thing to me on campus last week about anything changing. Nothing."