Campbell Should Be Allowed to Pursue His Dream

West Point Grad Should Be Allowed to Take His Shot at the NFL

By John Feinstein
Special to http://www.washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 28, 2008; 11:53 PM

In this May 31, 2008, file photo, Caleb Campbell, right, who was drafted into the NFL by the Detroit Lions, salutes as he receives his diploma at the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Campbell will not get a chance to play football for the 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 But a subsequent Department of Defense policy has superseded the 2005 Army policy.
(AP Photo/Mike Groll, File)

In case those of you who attacked Army graduate Caleb Campbell for wanting to play in the National Football League missed it, here's another target for you: Oliver Drake. Until last week he was a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy who happened to be a talented pitcher.

Now, he's a minor league pitcher in the Baltimore Orioles system, having been selected by the Orioles in the 43d round of the June draft.

Let's rev up all the flag-waving, all the screaming about Drake shirking his duty and deserting his country, all the talk of him being a coward who is leaving his comrades-in-arms just so he can be a professional athlete.

Oh wait, what Drake is doing is okay because he chose to drop out of Navy before the start of his junior year, which any midshipman -- and any cadet at Army or Air Force -- can do without penalty. That's what Drake did: he saw a chance to live out a dream and he made the decision to go for it.

Guess what folks -- that's exactly what Caleb Campbell did.

Campbell didn't drop out of West Point after his sophomore year when he would have been free and clear of any military obligation. He stayed all four years, graduated and was commissioned as a second lieutenant along with the rest of his classmates. In 2005, the Army passed a rule which said, essentially, that if a cadet was an exceptional enough athlete to be signed by a professional team, he or she could pursue that career while serving as a recruiter for the Army.

Campbell was one of a handful of athletes -- there were already two baseball players and two hockey players in the program prior to him -- who appeared to benefit from that rule. This spring he was drafted in the seventh round by the Detroit Lions, who took Campbell with the understanding that he would be given a chance by the Army to make the team

As soon as Campbell was drafted, the screaming began. People at Navy and Air Force began complaining that Army might have a recruiting advantage if athletes knew they would be given a chance to play pro ball after graduating. "All we want is a level playing field," Navy Coach Ken Niamatalolu said.

A fair argument. Perhaps the Navy and the Air Force should have reconsidered their positions rather than complain about the Army trying a program that might benefit its graduates in a number of ways.

Far worse though was all the self-righteous screaming that Campbell was letting down his country because he happened to be a pretty good football player. In truth, Campbell didn't do anything different than Oliver Drake: He did what the rules allowed him to do. If you want to disagree with the rule, that's fine, but those who attacked Campbell were completely unfair to him in every possible way.

Even more unfair, though, was the Army's decision last week not only to end the program but to tell Campbell he had to report for active duty immediately. Basically, the Department of Defense bowed to pressure from people who have no understanding of why the program existed or what kind of people the young men in the program really are. When the initial decision was made in May to abandon the program because of public pressure, Campbell was going to be grandfathered in, the feeling being a commitment had been made to him -- and the Lions -- and the Army should not renege on that commitment.

Now, the Army has reneged on that commitment. As you might expect, Campbell took the news last week with grace and dignity -- and without complaining that the Army had been unfair to him. This is exactly what you would expect from an academy graduate. The number of men and women who survive four years at those schools who are not first-class people can probably be counted on one hand.

Of course, now people are talking about how classy Caleb Campbell is -- many of them the same people who were calling him a traitor and a deserter a couple months ago. He's the same person now as he was then. The only difference is that the Army let him down.

What the self-righteous super-patriots don't understand is that Campbell would have been more valuable to the Army had he made the Lions than he will be in combat. (By the way -- he won't be in combat this fall. He'll be coaching football at the Army Prep School. No doubt the country will be a safer place with Campbell coaching future cadets than it would have been with him playing pro football.) The two greatest recruiters in the history of the Naval Academy, without any question or doubt, were Roger Staubach and David Robinson.

In this May 2, 2008, file photo, Detroit Lions rookie safety Caleb Campbell runs through drills at the NFL football team's minicamp in Allen Park, Mich.

Staubach was so gifted as a quarterback that he was able to excel for the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL after serving four years ¿ including a stint in Vietnam ¿ after his graduation from Navy. Robinson served two years -- confined to a desk job because of his height -- before going on to a Hall of Fame career with the San Antonio Spurs.

If Campbell had made the Lions, every time he made a play, the TV announcers would have talked about the fact that he was a lieutenant in the Army, working as a recruiter. Because he's bright and articulate, he would have been a perfect spokesman for the Army and for West Point. His presence in an NFL uniform would have been a huge morale boost to those serving overseas and to those in uniform, not to mention the midshipmen and cadets at the academies.

The Army's decision to give him a chance was applauded by ex-players -- at Navy and Air Force as well as at Army. Knowing full well that the number of athletes who would be affected by this rule would be less than a handful at each school, they all know that it would help recruiting -- just as the rule that Oliver Drake took advantage of helps recruiting. The difference, of course, is that the rule that allows a student to leave the academy after two years is for everyone; this rule is for a tiny handful of those who are exceptional in a specific area -- in this case athletics.

The Army's decision to renege on Campbell and the four other athletes who were in the program is, unfortunately, part of a continuing pattern. Army hasn't had a winning football season since 1996, and the military leadership of the school -- both at West Point and in the Pentagon -- has made one mistake after another.

First came the decision to join Conference USA, a league that had exactly one school (Tulane) that was in any way similar to Army academically. The move was a disaster from Day One. Then came a bunch of military people deciding they knew enough about athletics to hire an athletic director ¿ in this case, Rick Greenspan. Not only did Greenspan arrive having already decided to fire football coach Bob Sutton (who had led Army to a 10-2 record in 1996), but he had also decided to bring his own guy, Todd Berry (whom he had previously hired at Illinois State). He fired Sutton, who had worked at Army for 17 years, on a street corner in Philadelphia, then hired Berry while ignoring others who were interested in the job -- including Jim Tressel and Paul Johnson.

Three years later, Johnson's first Navy team -- which went 2-10 -- crushed Army 58-12 in a game in which it was apparent that the Cadets had quit on their coach. Why? Perhaps they were tired of hearing Berry publicly blame them for his failures.

But both Greenspan and the military brass refused to fire Berry. That led to the worst college football season in history -- 0-13 -- a year later. Berry was finally fired midway through that season and Greenspan mercifully left for Indiana a year after that. At Indiana, instead of destroying a football program, Greenspan blew up the basketball team. Army football, meantime, still hasn't recovered from the Greenspan-Berry era.

In the meantime, Johnson, who couldn't get an interview with Greenspan, took Navy to five straight bowl games, five straight Commander-in-Chiefs trophies and six straight wins over Army -- the longest streak in the rivalry's history.

Only this fall, after four more failed seasons trying to run a pro-style offense, will Army return to the option offense that was successful for Jim Young and Sutton.

The decision to allow Campbell the chance to make the Lions appeared to be the first positive thing the military leaders had done for Army football in at least a dozen years. It was a smart decision and, if it had forced Navy and Air Force to follow suit, that would have been a good thing too. You see, what the flag-wavers don't want to understand is that, even in the midst of a disastrous war in Iraq and a war that won't end in Afghanistan, not everyone in the military is overseas. Some serve stateside in important roles -- recruiting in a time of war being one of the most important.

Had he made the Lions, Campbell would have been a great recruiter for the Army. He will no doubt serve the Army very well on active duty. The shame is that the Army didn't serve him or the country well with a decision that was both foolish and, more than that, cowardly. The Army should have stood up for Caleb Campbell in the same way it expects Caleb Campbell to stand up for his country.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/28/AR2008072803242.html