Hey, we got ourselves a Bowl!

Academy accepts bid to Armed Forces Bowl

11/27/2007 - FORT WORTH, Texas (AFPN) -- U.S. Air Force Academy officials have accepted a bid to play in the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl on New Year's Eve at Fort Worth, Texas.

The Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl, an ESPN regional television owned-and-operated event, will be aired at 11:30 a.m. CST on ESPN, live from Amon G. Carter Stadium.

The previous four Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl games have been played on December 23 with the University of Utah defeating the University of Tulsa 25-13 last year.

"We are thrilled to have the Air Force Academy as the Mountain West Conference's representative in the 2007 game," said Tom Starr, the executive director of the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl. "With our military theme, what better way is there to honor the armed forces by having an Academy play in our game. With nine wins and a strong finish to their season, the Falcons will bring an exciting brand of football to Amon G. Carter Stadium on New Year's Eve."

With three-straight wins and six victories in their last seven games to end the 2007 season, the Falcons are the first school since the inaugural Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl game in 2003 to enter the Amon G. Carter Stadium game with more than seven regular-season wins. The Academy is currently 9-3 this fall after posting a 55-23 win at home Nov. 18 over San Diego State.

The 9-3 record is Air Force's first winning season since posting a 7-5 mark in 2003. The Falcons' six wins in Mountain West Conference play is their most ever and best league record since finishing the 1998 season with a 7-1 record in the Western Athletic Conference.

Read the rest on Air Force Link

Go Air Force!

Air Force Academy Chapel, by Walter Netsch/ SOM, at Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1956 to 1962. Photo by William A. Yokel. © William A. Yokel, available from Artifice Images

(say what you will about the architecture of the place - for some reason, everytime I see the damn chapel, all I can think of is this music.  You couldn't march during Noon Meal Formation to it though)

You know, I think everyone who's ever gone to the Blue Zoo (or Hudson High or U. of Squid for that matter) goes through different "stages" of love and hate relationships with the place after they've left it.  The earliest phase is wearing the college sweater or t-shirt of ANY SCHOOL BUT the one you went to (though the haircuts and early lack of socialization tends to give it away).  Some folks loved every minute of it (no lie).  Some folks wonder if going there was the worst mistake they ever made, some never question it, some would do over again if they had to...

(sidebar: PUDS:  n: urban legend, "Post-USAFA Dream Syndrome" - surprisingly widely reported event prominent in the first year or two post graduation, where the patient suffers a "dream within a dream", straight out of the movies.  The individual "awakens" in his or her old dorm room, usually to the sound of reveille or "calling minutes" with the delusion that a) he's still a cadet and has been having one funky-ass dream or b) "something happened" some admin foul-up or whatever, they have to repeat some or all of their Academy experience.  It is usually the later which causes a cold sweat-inducing rapid transition from sleep to full awareness.  The former might be better classified as a nightmare, as it can go on for what seems like hours before the "cadet" realizes his dream state and wakes himself up.  "Vision Quest" this is not.)

I'll be honest, it was only in the last two years or so that I wanted to get myself some football memorabilia (sweater, the standard stuff), hang up some old photos, my class print, and take updated pictures of the place again.  Meeting antitool (our erstwhile new full-time contributor) when I was up there for eye surgery and getting a "old decrepit veteran's" tour of the place while I reminisced on the "brown shoe days" was a hoot, though I really doubt antitool found it so ;)

Also, your opinion of the place has a lot to do with what you

1) think the role of intercollegiate NCAA sports should be at a federal military service academy

2) how you perceive the tug-og-war between preparing military officers for service and providing a degree-granting college education

3) believe about how the place conducts military training;  whether it succeeds "in spite of" or "because of" the way it's done, or some combination thereof

I've got plenty of opinions on how I would run the place, naturally.  I'm proud as all hell I went and graduated.  These days I don't dwell on the past so much, and seeing the Falcons return to some football prominence in the last year has stirred up some nostalgia, especially with a reunion beginning to circle overheard....

I still get hives everytime I go through North or South Gate though.

Comments

[antitool]

Good post. There is much truth in this entry. I'm still in the first phase, but often find myself defending the place against ROTC FAGs (It's a technical term. Check their service records/SURFs. That's how they read under "Source of Commissioning".)

My worst USAFA-related nightmare is, strangely enough, not a PUDS episode. It consisted of dreaming about spending some meaningful time with a certain brunette, and then waking up to find an interior wall of Vandenberg Hall three inches from my face. I was still in my dorm room, and very pissed off.

For a cheap laugh, awake a grad with a mix of "Welcome to the Jungle", by Guns N' Roses and "Reveille", accompanied by whistles, screaming, and pounding.

Don't ask me how I would run the place. The answer would be long, complex, and somewhere between the Grandes Ecoles of France, the Foreign Legion, a certain training facility in the Bavarian Alps (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j9_wyb7hzk), and the Foreign Service Institute. But that's just me.

Football at USAFA is still a huge waste.

[MOGS]

"For a cheap laugh, awake a grad with a mix of "Welcome to the Jungle", by Guns N' Roses and "Reveille", accompanied by whistles, screaming, and pounding..."

If you so much as even think of trying to pull that one within TWO STATES of me I will kill you.