Can we please stop using the term “Warrior” when referring to football players?

I had the honor of working for the United States Army for seven years. I know true warriors; I watched men and women leave their families for 12-18 months at a time, to go to far off lands to fight and protect. 

And, I have been with families as they buried their warriors.

How many time have we hear coaches, players and analysts talk about football players’ “warrior mentality?” Sure, they're tough guys on the field, but they are also pampered and fawned over off the field. These athletes live in the lap of luxury, while our real warriors – our military – live in small on-base houses with sometimes barely enough money to adequately care for their families. I know soldiers who have deployed three, four, five times, whose families are on WIC because their salaries aren’t enough to sufficiently feed their family. Yet, the football players are the heroes.

Simply, one cannot compare the "warrior mentality" of a football player to a soldier because there is no comparison.

Our soldiers willingly put their lives on the line to protect our ideals and our freedom. Football players put their bodies on the line for a game. Both are mentally and physically grueling; but one does it for honor and duty; the other does it for fun and money.

Basic pay for a soldier averages somewhere around $40,000 a year. Basic pay for an Army private is just under $18,000, while a general (of which there are very few) makes into the low six figures. In the NFL, league minimum for a rookie is $405,000 a year, while the minimum for a player with 10 years’ experience is right around $1 million. That is the minimum – the average salary of an NFL quarterback is $3.4 million, the average for a wide receiver and linebacker is $1.8 million, and kickers and punters average $1.6 million – KICKERS AND PUNTERS!

Now, go up to a soldier, who has been away from his family for five of the last ten years, and seen his buddies killed and maimed, that the millionaire is a warrior. 

I know soldiers’ wives who gave birth to their children alone, and had to go through those first sleepless months by themselves; fathers and mothers who had to leave their babies, and come home to children who don’t even remember them; I have seen the pain on the faces of families whose warriors are never coming home.

I have watched planes full of soldiers take off to Iraq and Afghanistan, knowing that not everyone on that flight will come home. I have watched the families of deployed soldiers struggle to make it through everyday life while the most important person in their lives is living in a dangerous place, where people want them dead. I have also been lucky enough to witness the joy of families reunited, of fathers seeing their baby – who could be nine months old – for the first time.

These men and women are warriors. They put their duty and their country before all else. They put their lives in danger so that we don't have to. They are willing to die to protect our freedom. 

Football players are talented, physically-gifted freaks who are paid incredibly well because they are part of a product that produces billions of dollars in revenue each year. But they are not warriors.

The lure of the UFC

I used to be baffled by the lure of MMA. I thought it was gruesome, homoerotic (come on, you've all thought that), and I just plain thought it was dumb. But, I also thought that without actually watching it. But my husband is a big fan, and constantly puts on any UFC event that is on TV. At first, I groaned and complained every time he switched it on and, and flat-out refused to watch it. But each time I would watch a little more, and complain a little less. I still pretended like I hated it, just so he thought I was really giving him something by letting him watch it, but even that fell by the wayside the more I watched. After a few months, I was the one turning on UFC Unleashed, turning on Spike Wednesday nights at 10 to watch a new episode of The Ultimate Fighter, and I was even the one who suggested that we go to a bar a few miles from our house and pay $10 each to watch UFC 97.

Last week I interviewed Sgt. Nate Banks, a combatives trainer at Fort Stewart, who is getting out of the Army to join Greg Jackson's Mixed Martial Arts, one of the best MMA schools in the world.

If you are a fan of the UFC, you undoubtedly have heard of Greg Jackson, who has developed 10 world champions, and many of the athletes that train at his gym - Rashad Evans, Georges St. Pierre, Nate Marquardt, Keith Jardine - aren't little-known fighters.

But while Sgt. Baker may be in the minority of those training at such a prestigious academy (Jackson trains only about 32 professional fighters), he is part of an ever-growing population of Soldiers studying MMA.

MMA is a full-contact combat sport that allows a wide variety of fighting techniques from a mixture of martial arts traditions and non-traditions to be used in competitions. The rules allow the use of striking and grappling techniques, both while standing and on the ground. In MMA, and most famously the UFC, fighters often utilize parts of boxing, wrestling, Brazilian jiujitsu and muay thai kickboxing, among other disciplines.

Just 5 years ago, the UFC was an underground sport, often looked at by outsiders as gruesome, barbaric and sadistic, and even called "human cock fighting" by Sen. John McCain, among others. But today, after dropping the "no holds barred" label and adopting stricter rules, the UFC is now a billion-dollar enterprise that has up to 12 fights a year telecast on Pay-Per-View, each up to 1.5 million viewers paying $44.95 a piece.

The popularity of MMA isn't just in the civilian world; the Army began training its Soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, much like mixed martial arts, in 1995, when the 2nd Ranger Battalion began training in Modern Army Combatives, and the instruction has since spread at the grass roots throughout the Army.

Many Soldiers are currently training in Army combatives, and probably many of them are those 1.5 million (mostly male) viewers who pay to watch UFC fights each month or who tune in to watch The Ultimate Fighter on Spike. Most of the UFC viewers are males age 18-35, but I know for a fact that there are many underground female fans, because I wasn't the only one at the bar that night. I honestly think that anyone gives it a chance, you could get sucked in just like I did... but I still don't like boxing.

We need more people like Caleb Campbell

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=nfl&id=3371045

After I read that ESPN post a few weeks ago, I decided that I really wanted to put my two cents in, as someone who is close to the Army, and to football. So here goes...

Former United States Military Academy (Army) defensive back Caleb Campbell was selected by the Detroit Lions as selection #218 in the NFL Draft. For Campbell, basically, this means that he heads to Detroit instead of Iraq.

I was lucky enough to interview Caleb twice at the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia in 2005 and 2006, and I remember being very impressed by him - not primarily because his stature, which is very big for a Cadet (6-foot-2, 229-pounds), but by his maturity in the face of adversity and defeat (Army had lost on both occasions to Navy - and by lost, I mean BIG). To see how he reacted in the face of defeat - humbled, but strong. And though he took the loss hard, you could tell he knew it wasn't the end of the world. In other words, the perfect Army officer.

Campbell "embodies what the academy is all about, and that's what everyone in
this country should be trying to be," Millen said. "He's got skills, he's got
desire and he's going to get a great opportunity."

But Caleb is taking a different course that his fellow Cadets, for now at least. It is rare that a (former) cadet or plebe (from the Naval Academy) play in the NFL - it is even more rare for one to be selected in the draft, prven in the fact that Campbell was the first (and only) non-kicker in Military Academy history to be invited to the NFL Combine.

But Campbell going to the NFL isn't so cut and dry. The Army has regulations, and graduates of the Military Academy owe the Army five years of active service after their graduation in return for the free education they received.

So then, many of you may be asking how Campbell can even do this, go right to the NFL, since graduates of the Military Academy owe the military active service in return for their free education. Well, there is a very new Army regulation that offers its top athletes a side door to professional sports - West Point has implemented an alternative service option program that allows cadets to turn pro – and play – right away.

Cadets accepted into the program "will owe two years of active service in the Army, during which time they will be allowed to play their sport in the player-development systems of their respective organizations and be assigned to recruiting stations. If they remain in professional sports following those two years, they will be provided the option of buying out the remaining three years of their active-duty commitment in exchange for six years of reserve time." The Air Force Academy and Naval Academy do not offer such a program. Both academies require two years of active service upon graduation before presenting the option of swapping the final three years of active time for six years in the reserves.

So, if Campbell can get into the program, it's a simple choice, right? WRONG.

It seems like an obvious choice, that he would be thrilled that he doesn't have to go overseas... but for a man who chose to attend the Military Academy in a time of war, it certainly isn't so black-and-white.

Meanwhile, his former teammates and classmates all face the prospect of going to
war in Iraq, where more than 4,000 servicemen and women have been killed in the
war that's been going on for more than five years with no end in sight. Campbell
wouldn't hesitate to join them. "I didn't come to the academy to play football,"
he said. "I came to the academy to become an officer." He initially had
misgivings about passing up on the chance to lead a platoon."

Campbell CHOSE to attend Army, over many other schools, he knew that he would likely be going to war after he graduated. He didn't go to Army just to play football - he went to be a Soldier who played football on the side. Well, God gave Caleb athletic talent, and it is beyond that of almost anyone else who has ever donned a Army football jersey, and that in-and-of itself is a burden on Campbell's shoulders.

There are those who don't think he should get out of his active service, and there are those who don't think his recruiting mission equals that of what the other Cadets will have to do. While I agree that it isn't equal, I think the mission - recruiting - is just as important. In being a public figure, Campbell will help the Army in a very important, though different, way that he would have leading a platoon.

E:60 on ESPN did a package on Campbell before the draft... it's a good story, but I personally don't like the spin they took. it's almost like they're saying that is Campbell isn't drafted, he's heading to his death sentence in Iraq. Yes, he would likely, as a young lieutenant right out of West Point he would be heading overseas to Operation Iraqi Freedom or the Global War On Terror, but that is far from definite.

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3361402&categoryId=3060647

With the new Army regulations, Campbell, if he makes the Lions squad, will not be (literally) fighting for his country, but he WILL be actively serving the Army, through recruiting - and what young man thinking about going into the Army wouldn't listen to a professional football player, who also happens to be a Soldier?

It's not the typical Cadet route, but then again, Caleb Campbell isn't the typical Cadet.