Recruiting is key to success for Air Force football program

If the Air Force football program was a house, then the 2007 season would amount to a paint job, new curtains and landscaping.

First-year coach Troy Calhoun made the house look much more attractive by tweaking the Falcons’ playbook, altering their approach to conditioning and re-arranging some players he inherited to squeeze out nine wins and a bowl berth.

But the framework of a college football program — the beams and struts that hold it together — is recruiting.

And in the years before Calhoun took over at the academy, that framework had begun to rot.

“This was probably the No. 1 project that I thought we had to completely revamp,” Calhoun said of recruiting. “We just made wholesale changes in the way we were going to approach recruiting.”

Calhoun realized how much recruiting had slipped in recent years when he looked at a list of the academy’s top prospects from three years ago.

Early in 2005, Air Force brought 55 high school seniors to the academy for official visits prior to National Signing Day, which is Wednesday this year. Just five of those 55 are in the program today. And only three were in Air Force’s two-deep chart during the 2007 season.

“That’s where it just hit me,” Calhoun said. “These are official visits. These are your best kids. ... We’ve got guys on (the list) that are student managers.”

The result is a dearth of top talent in the current junior and sophomore classes, next season’s juniors and seniors. Calhoun has noted multiple times that many freshmen will play significant roles during the next two years. After that, he hopes, no more than one or two freshmen will play significant roles each season.

“We’re going to become a more talented football team,” he said.

Last year’s recruiting class was cobbled together hastily after Calhoun was hired. So the high school class of 2008 will be the first true recruiting class for Calhoun and his staff. And Calhoun has called it “the key class” in rebuilding Air Force football.

Preliminary results come Wednesday. Most major college programs will announce lists of high school players signed to letters-of-intent.

Army, Navy and Air Force recruits don’t sign binding letters of intent. Air Force doesn’t release the names of its recruits until they arrive on campus in the summer due to the appointment process.

But many Air Force recruits will sign nonbinding certificates Wednesday in ceremonies at high schools across the nation, and others already have given verbal commitments.

Recruiting analysts are impressed.

“They have done a terrific job of revamping their efforts,” said Jeremy Crabtree, the national recruiting editor at Rivals.com, a Web site that analyzes and ranks recruiting classes.

Crabtree said before Calhoun took over, the Falcons’ recruiting classes included “guys that we honestly never had heard of before.”

No more.

Crabtree mentioned two players who are rated as three-star (out of five) players by Rivals.com who have committed to Air Force — defensive tackle Kebin Umodu (6-foot-2, 244 pounds) and offensive linemen A.J. Wallerstein (6-4, 274).

Umodu chose Air Force over several other Division I schools, Crabtree said. And ESPN.com, using data provided by Scouts Inc., ranks Wallerstein as the No. 22 guard in the country.

“So definitely there is a step up in the caliber of kid they’ve recruited the last couple years,” Crabtree said.

Making it a priority

Recruiting has figured prominently in many of Calhoun’s decisions at Air Force.

The recruiting ability was a key factor in Calhoun’s choices for assistant coaches. Nine of his 13 assistants are academy graduates, which he said helps them significantly in recruiting.

Players and their families “believe me and trust me, because I did it,” said cornerbacks coach Charlton Warren, a graduate.

Warren also serves as the Falcons’ recruiting coordinator, a title Calhoun created so recruiting efforts would be better organized and one assistant would be the point man for NCAA regulations.

Calhoun also has emphasized the need to devote significant time to recruiting year-round, stressing relationships and better evaluation.

According to Blane Morgan, Air Force’s co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, one of the reasons Calhoun simplified practices and offensive and defensive schemes was to give assistants more time to recruit during the grind of the season.

“Evaluation is extremely important, and he’s put an emphasis on that, which is time consuming,” Morgan said. “That’s something that’s certainly been an emphasis — giving us time to evaluate and make contacts and call coaches.”

Morgan estimated he spent five to 10 hours on recruiting per week during the season. That increases dramatically in the offseason. And the staff’s efforts have been noticed.

“At the Nike training camps, every single time, Air Force people were there,” Crabtree said. “You couldn’t say that about too many staffs nationwide.”

Other changes Calhoun made include evaluating and contacting players earlier in their careers. Air Force now starts a letter-writing campaign to recruits in the spring of their junior years.

Calhoun also changed the logic behind where his assistants recruit, placing a greater emphasis on areas where the academy traditionally has had success and putting assistants in charge of areas with which they have some sort of tie.

“Now I’m recruiting where I grew up,” Morgan said of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. “A lot of guys are recruiting the area where they’re from. You automatically have an in, especially in a place like Texas, where it’s a good ol’ boy network.”

During official visit weekends, Calhoun requires coaches to return from the road so they can be on campus with recruits. He’s sought the help of coaches’ wives for official visit weekends. While recruits are hanging out with players at night, coaches and their wives accompany the families of recruits to dinner.

“You get (the wives) involved with the parent and the parent knows, ‘You know what, I would like for my son to be around this place,’” Calhoun said. “And I think it helps break down some of the perceptions about the academy.”

Calhoun also has had help this year from Tim Fyda, a 1979 graduate of the academy and former football player, who volunteered to fly Calhoun to recruiting visits on his Learjet. It allowed Calhoun to make more visits and travel more efficiently.

Using Fyda’s plane also saved some money. Air Force’s football program spent approximately $250,000 of its $3.6 million total operating budget on off-campus recruiting and on-campus visits last year. Calhoun said he expected to spend about the same amount on recruiting this year.

What about the war?

The war in Iraq is a common subject when visiting recruits’ homes.

“Especially Mom,” Warren said. “Mom’s like, ‘Is he going to have to go to war?’”

The answer must be honest, Warren said.

“You can’t say, ‘No, you’re not going to war,’” Warren said. “Because you very well may. ... Depending on what you’re doing in the Air Force, if you’re flying an airplane, and there’s some bad things going on, then you may have to fly an airplane and drop some bad things on bad guys.”

However, Warren adds his story — nine years in the Air Force and he hasn’t had to do anything like that.

“They’re probably never going to ask me, ‘Hey Capt. Warren, go man a rifle and go to Iraq,’” he said.

Even during peace time, however, service academies must clear unique hurdles because of demands placed on students. As with discussing the war, Warren said coaches need to be “up front and honest” about the off-field demands — from rigorous academics to strict rules to uniforms to basic training.

“Because the thing is this — if you don’t be honest with a kid totally, they will not stay here,” Warren said. “They’ll get off that bus and say, ‘What in the world have I walked into?’”

Results

On Wednesday, recruiting services will rank schools’ 2008 classes.

But the true value of the classes won’t be known until two or three years from now.

Calhoun is anxious to see a list of the players he’s brought on official visits this year in the fall of 2010. He wants to see a lot more than five still in the program.

“We’re going to bat at a much higher average,” he said. “We’ve just got to get where 2½ years from now, I want this number in the 20s.”

If they can get there, the Falcons’ house will be a lot more stable.