Fraggle145
5/26/2008, 02:23 PM
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?id=3405133
Service members get a taste of life in the SEC, ACC
By Ivan Maisel
Updated: May 26, 2008, 10:33 AM ET
Editor's note: Ivan Maisel is traveling with Auburn's Tommy Tuberville, Georgia's Mark Richt, Miami's Randy Shannon, Notre Dame's Charlie Weis and Yale's Jack Siedlecki on the coaches' tour of the Middle East. He will update this trip diary regularly starting on Tuesday and will take a deeper look at the journey beginning May 27.
Sunday, May 25
U.S. AIR FORCE BASE, SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Midway through the second half, Mark Richt turned to his co-head coach, Tommy Tuberville, and said, "Hey, coach, we're both pretty good on the road." It may have been a 112-degree Sunday on Memorial Day weekend, and according to the signpost in the middle of the base, the Georgia and Auburn coaches may have been 8,023 miles from the Sugar Bowl. But still, the Southeastern Conference won.
No grass? No problem for these coaches, who spent Sunday coaching flag football teams comprised of U.S. service members.
On the final day of the 2008 Coaches Tour in the Middle East, the SEC flag football team coached by Richt and Tuberville hung on to defeat the ACC team coached by Randy Shannon of Miami and Jack Siedlecki of Yale to win the UnderArmour Bowl, 14-12. The SEC had to knock down a two-point conversion with no time remaining to keep the game from going into overtime.
The game capped a day in which the coaches toured the home of the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing. They watched from the support vehicles that guided a U-2 aircraft as it took off and then they went into a hangar and signed a U-2 aircraft on its nose. They also got to eyeball a Global Hawk, an unmanned surveillance plane, and tour an AWACS plane that stood on the tarmac.
Near her station on the AWACS, 1st Lt. Laura Ott, Notre Dame '05, posed for a picture with Fighting Irish coach Charlie Weis. Ott began Sunday heartsick because she had been scheduled to go up on an 18-hour mission and would not be able to see Weis.
"I can't believe it," said Ott, who's from Gainesville, Fla, "the one day that Charlie Weis is here, we would be gone all day."
When she was walking to her plane, her crew told her to turn around because they had scheduled someone to take her shift.
When Army Pvt. Mattice Parks-McLean of Killeen, Texas, approached Siedlecki in the autograph line, he told the coach that he had attended his summer camp in 2006. He and several of his Shoemaker High teammates decided to go to Yale.
"His camp was great," said Parks-McLean, who played running back. "It actually had one-on-one instruction. The coaches helped us out. They were in our faces, pushing us more than we thought we could go."
Bulldogs running backs coach Larry Ciotti showed Parks-McLean how to secure the ball.
"I used to carry the ball like a loaf of bread," Parks-McLean said. "He told me to hold it to my chest and hold it with my hand instead of my fingers. It helped a lot."
After fumbling five times in his junior season, Parks-McLean didn't fumble as a senior. But he did blow out his right knee late that season. The recruiting calls dried up, so he joined the Army -- and played for Siedlecki.
"Two years ago, he was in the Yale Bowl playing a camp game," Siedlecki said, shaking his head. "Now he's here."
The flag football game took place on an 80-yard sand field that airmen created six months ago during their off-duty time. When Col. Dave Funk, the base commander, pointed out the field to the tour group from the front of the bus, and Weis asked, "Are we going to water the grass before the game?"
A few hours later, as the same bus brought the coaches to the field, someone announced that a coach needed to volunteer to serve as referee. Weis snapped it up.
"I'm going to screw the SEC," Weis said, looking for a reaction.
"It wouldn't be the first time," Tuberville shot back.
The game began a little after 5:30 p.m., with the sun low in the sky at about midfield. A base fire truck arrived to provide a generator for the portable game clock. In most games, the national anthem is played before the game. Here, the game screeched to a halt in the middle of the first 20-minute half when the national anthem came over the camp loudspeaker at 6 p.m.
In flag football halfway around the world, as well as in the SEC, the game comes down to talent. The SEC team included 1st Lt. Rob McMenomy, who played tight end at Air Force from 2002-05. McMenomy coached a base team to a flag-football championship here in March. His team at McGuire AFB in New Jersey is also a champion.
Each team scored a touchdown and missed a two-point conversion in the first 20-minute half.
In the second half, the SEC quarterback, Airman 1st Class Anthony Black of Quincy, Mass., threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Staff Sgt. Matt Drangstveit of Sioux Falls, S.D., with 5:27 to play. The two-point conversion proved to be the final margin. Black won the Game MVP Award.
When Black came off the field, Richt told him to stop and face him. Then the two-time SEC champion coach performed a chest bump with the Air Force enlisted man.
"For some reason, I felt comfortable," Black said. "I could talk to him one-on-one. When you see them on TV, you think it's so different. The things we were doing were the same things you did in high school."
Black couldn't convince himself of that regular-guy stuff. "I can't believe I just played football with that coach," he said "It's amazing."
When the ACC's two-point conversion failed, the SEC team lifted Richt and Tuberville up and carried them to midfield. Tuberville held up seven fingers. There are six months, by the way, until Auburn attempts to win its seventh straight against Alabama.
After a steak-and-lobster dinner with the entire base in the outdoor pavilion, the Coaches Tour 2008 was scheduled to leave at 2:45 a.m. local time, Monday to fly to Andrews Air Force Base. After meeting generals and fleet commanders, the coaches will be welcomed home in the White House on Monday afternoon by the commander in chief himself.
Friday, May 23
ABOARD THE USS NASSAU, AT SEA -- The USS Nassau runs on diesel that fuels two steam propulsion plants, if you want to be technical about it. But anyone serving on this amphibious assault ship, from the youngest seaman to the commanding officer, will tell you that what really fuels the Nassau is morale.
The combine and question-and-answer session gave military members at sea a taste of the football life.
The five college football coaches visiting American military personnel in the Middle East arrived at just the right time.
"We just got to the halfway point of this deployment," said Lt. Ike Stutts of Decatur, Ala. "You're excited to be halfway done, [but] you're really down. We have that [loss of] morale up. You have to worry that all anybody is saying is, 'Same thing today.' It's very 'Groundhog Day.'"
If you ever saw that 1993 film, then you understand why Friday became the day on the Nassau when the DJ interrupted the replay of Sonny and Cher singing "I Got You Babe." From the moment that the 2008 Coaches' Tour landed on the flight deck in a CH-53 helicopter, the same ol', same ol' ceased to exist.
"There are some pretty rabid fans on this ship," said Petty Officer 2nd Class Brian Edgar of Marietta, Ohio. "It's a pride thing. … For a lot of guys, that's how they define where they're from."
During the 24 hours on the Nassau, the coaches -- Mark Richt of Georgia, Randy Shannon of Miami, Jack Siedlecki of Yale, Tommy Tuberville of Auburn and Charlie Weis of Notre Dame -- toured the Nassau, signed posters and T-shirts in the crew mess Friday night and held a question-and-answer session in the hangar bay on Saturday morning.
The response from the 1,147 men and women on board resounded with joy and excitement. The only visitors they have received since they left their home base in Norfolk, Va., in February have been Navy brass.
When Seaman Paul Crosby spotted Weis in a passageway during the ship tour, his face lit up.
"I'm from Indianapolis!" Crosby said.
Weis, assuming he could bond with a fellow Indianan, offered his hand and said, "That's what I'm talking about! Give me a little something!"
Crosby, who's actually from Greenfield, Ind., may be a Fighting Irish fan. But he confessed to Weis, the former New England Patriots' assistant: "It's nice to like you finally. I'm a fan of the Colts."
The tour took the coaches from the well decks to the bridge of the ship that the Navy calls Top Gator. Afterward, the visitors stopped being tourists and started coaching again. Welcome to the Under Armour USS Nassau Combine, surely the first football combine ever held on the flight deck of an assault ship at sea.
The coaches did their best to make the flight deck look like a practice field, although you would have to squint real hard not to notice the 360 degrees of salt water meeting horizon. With small red cones, the coaches marked off a 40-yard dash, 20- and 60-yard shuttles and a three-cone drill.
"That's a pretty good setting for having a 40-yard dash," Tuberville said. "You can always have the wind at your back."
The no-skid flight deck might keep helicopters from bouncing and blowing about, but the 10 men who competed in the running drills slid around as if they had entered the French Open. Most of them looked like Master At Arms Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Sanders of Pensacola, Fla., a former high school wide receiver.
"I've always had a competitive spirit," Sanders said, "but here I'm 23. I'm getting into my has-been years."
Tuberville manned the starting line. Shannon operated the stopwatch at the other end. When Weis walked up, he shouted at Shannon, "I'm going to run the 40, Randy. Ready? Got a calendar?"
Airman Bryan Blackler of Waldoboro, Maine, took the 40 with a 4.98, the only sub-five time. Blackler, 21, said he won 12 letters in five sports, none of them football -- his high school didn't field a team.
After the running drills, the combine moved to the ship's weight room, where each participant did as many reps as he could of 185 pounds. When it ended, Airman Romaine Taylor and Seaman Courtney Taylor had tied for first place.
At the end of the Q and A with the coaches Saturday came the awards ceremony, with prizes ranging from Under Armour shirts to signed posters to signed footballs for Taylor and Turner.
Now that college football has overtime, there couldn't be a tie. Taylor and Turner were summoned to the front of the assembly, where Shannon refereed the playoff: a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Let the record show that Taylor won in the second round, paper covering rock.
Thursday, May 22
AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar -- We all have our heroes. For Sgt. 1st Class Curt Straub of Brunswick, Ohio, there is Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis.
The coaches spent Thursday signing autographs and meeting the troops.
"I met one of the biggest Notre Dame fans of all time," said Weis, who would have to be considered one of the leading judges of that species.
When Straub saw Weis at Camp As Sayliaha, he made the contestants on "The Price is Right!" look like Buddhist monks. Straub held his hands up to a TV camera and said, "Look! I'm shaking!"
Later Weis said, "he said, 'Coach Weis, this is the greatest day of my life.' I spent five minutes with some kid in the desert. Can you imagine?"
Straub not only met Weis, he used him to awaken his father from a deep, middle-of-the-night, American sleep.
"I got somebody on the phone who wants to talk to you," Straub said.
An Air Force captain at a question-and-answer session with the members of the 2008 Coaches Tour prefaced his question by saying, "You guys are my Brad Pitt. You guys are my Tom Cruise."
As the audience clapped and hooted, the captain added, "I would rather not talk to anyone else than you guys right now."
Yes, the coaches complete him.
The coaches -- Weis, Mark Richt of Georgia, Randy Shannon of Miami, Jack Siedlecki of Yale and Tommy Tuberville of Auburn -- visited military personnel at two bases Thursday, signing untold number of autographs, shaking hands and talking. It wasn't even the thousands of T-shirts that they gave away. Under Armour, the sponsor of the tour, sent 1,900 shirts to dole out to the service members.
Weis brought 5,000 to 6,000 thousand of the official Fighting Irish T-shirt from the 2007 season.
There is Siedlecki himself, when he answered a question drawing parallels between the leadership skills needed by coaches and officers.
"I cannot believe how proud the people, every guy here, how proud they are of what they're doing," Siedlecki said. "I'd love my football team, all 110 of them, to have the integrity and attitude that you guys have."
We all have our heroes, and with no disrespect meant to any of the hundreds and hundreds of service members whom the coaches entertained, I have found mine.
I found a Navy pilot who used to be a sportswriter.
I didn't know this Rick Dorsey, the Lt. JG Dorsey of P-3 3quadron VP-26 who came up and reintroduced himself to me in Memorial Plaza, the open-air tent where the coaches signed autographs and mingled Thursday night. I knew Rick when he worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. Dorsey graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, which is pretty much the Harvard of hacking. He covered plenty of SEC football and three or four Masters. He covered all the events that make my business fun.
In 2001 -- "Before Sept. 11," he said -- Dorsey decided to join the Navy, looking for a way to fund graduate school. He wanted to become a teacher. Instead, he got accepted at Officer Candidate School. So he's flying a P-3 patrol plane around the Middle East, helping to clear paths for ships in the Persian Gulf, helping the coalition forces on the ground.
"When you go out and clear a convoy and help it get from Point A to Point B, you're not going to see that on the news," Dorsey said, "that you helped somebody get their mail, their food. You flew and nobody died, that's a good day."
It's hard to believe that someone would give up sportswriting for securing freedom. But who am I to judge?
With all the Stephen Colbert in me, I asked Dorsey to admit that flying a Navy plane in the Middle East wasn't as tough as sportswriting. Dorsey started talking as if he had thought about it.
"They're both the same in that every day is so different," Dorsey said. "You go to a game and you don't know what to expect. You fly to an area and you don't know what to expect."
The more we talked, the more the sportswriter in him began to break out. He doesn't miss the deadlines.
"Every year, in the middle of March, I don't like being in the military," he said. "That's March Madness and the time leading up to the Masters."
He will rotate back to his base in Maine this summer, where he will reintroduce himself to Susan, whom he married last fall. As we began to say goodbye, his face brightened.
"In Augusta, this is the day when they open the course to the writers," Dorsey said. "I know this because every Thursday before Memorial Day, I got to play Augusta National."
Giving up a round at Augusta National to serve his country? You have your heroes. I found mine.
Continued...
Service members get a taste of life in the SEC, ACC
By Ivan Maisel
Updated: May 26, 2008, 10:33 AM ET
Editor's note: Ivan Maisel is traveling with Auburn's Tommy Tuberville, Georgia's Mark Richt, Miami's Randy Shannon, Notre Dame's Charlie Weis and Yale's Jack Siedlecki on the coaches' tour of the Middle East. He will update this trip diary regularly starting on Tuesday and will take a deeper look at the journey beginning May 27.
Sunday, May 25
U.S. AIR FORCE BASE, SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Midway through the second half, Mark Richt turned to his co-head coach, Tommy Tuberville, and said, "Hey, coach, we're both pretty good on the road." It may have been a 112-degree Sunday on Memorial Day weekend, and according to the signpost in the middle of the base, the Georgia and Auburn coaches may have been 8,023 miles from the Sugar Bowl. But still, the Southeastern Conference won.
No grass? No problem for these coaches, who spent Sunday coaching flag football teams comprised of U.S. service members.
On the final day of the 2008 Coaches Tour in the Middle East, the SEC flag football team coached by Richt and Tuberville hung on to defeat the ACC team coached by Randy Shannon of Miami and Jack Siedlecki of Yale to win the UnderArmour Bowl, 14-12. The SEC had to knock down a two-point conversion with no time remaining to keep the game from going into overtime.
The game capped a day in which the coaches toured the home of the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing. They watched from the support vehicles that guided a U-2 aircraft as it took off and then they went into a hangar and signed a U-2 aircraft on its nose. They also got to eyeball a Global Hawk, an unmanned surveillance plane, and tour an AWACS plane that stood on the tarmac.
Near her station on the AWACS, 1st Lt. Laura Ott, Notre Dame '05, posed for a picture with Fighting Irish coach Charlie Weis. Ott began Sunday heartsick because she had been scheduled to go up on an 18-hour mission and would not be able to see Weis.
"I can't believe it," said Ott, who's from Gainesville, Fla, "the one day that Charlie Weis is here, we would be gone all day."
When she was walking to her plane, her crew told her to turn around because they had scheduled someone to take her shift.
When Army Pvt. Mattice Parks-McLean of Killeen, Texas, approached Siedlecki in the autograph line, he told the coach that he had attended his summer camp in 2006. He and several of his Shoemaker High teammates decided to go to Yale.
"His camp was great," said Parks-McLean, who played running back. "It actually had one-on-one instruction. The coaches helped us out. They were in our faces, pushing us more than we thought we could go."
Bulldogs running backs coach Larry Ciotti showed Parks-McLean how to secure the ball.
"I used to carry the ball like a loaf of bread," Parks-McLean said. "He told me to hold it to my chest and hold it with my hand instead of my fingers. It helped a lot."
After fumbling five times in his junior season, Parks-McLean didn't fumble as a senior. But he did blow out his right knee late that season. The recruiting calls dried up, so he joined the Army -- and played for Siedlecki.
"Two years ago, he was in the Yale Bowl playing a camp game," Siedlecki said, shaking his head. "Now he's here."
The flag football game took place on an 80-yard sand field that airmen created six months ago during their off-duty time. When Col. Dave Funk, the base commander, pointed out the field to the tour group from the front of the bus, and Weis asked, "Are we going to water the grass before the game?"
A few hours later, as the same bus brought the coaches to the field, someone announced that a coach needed to volunteer to serve as referee. Weis snapped it up.
"I'm going to screw the SEC," Weis said, looking for a reaction.
"It wouldn't be the first time," Tuberville shot back.
The game began a little after 5:30 p.m., with the sun low in the sky at about midfield. A base fire truck arrived to provide a generator for the portable game clock. In most games, the national anthem is played before the game. Here, the game screeched to a halt in the middle of the first 20-minute half when the national anthem came over the camp loudspeaker at 6 p.m.
In flag football halfway around the world, as well as in the SEC, the game comes down to talent. The SEC team included 1st Lt. Rob McMenomy, who played tight end at Air Force from 2002-05. McMenomy coached a base team to a flag-football championship here in March. His team at McGuire AFB in New Jersey is also a champion.
Each team scored a touchdown and missed a two-point conversion in the first 20-minute half.
In the second half, the SEC quarterback, Airman 1st Class Anthony Black of Quincy, Mass., threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Staff Sgt. Matt Drangstveit of Sioux Falls, S.D., with 5:27 to play. The two-point conversion proved to be the final margin. Black won the Game MVP Award.
When Black came off the field, Richt told him to stop and face him. Then the two-time SEC champion coach performed a chest bump with the Air Force enlisted man.
"For some reason, I felt comfortable," Black said. "I could talk to him one-on-one. When you see them on TV, you think it's so different. The things we were doing were the same things you did in high school."
Black couldn't convince himself of that regular-guy stuff. "I can't believe I just played football with that coach," he said "It's amazing."
When the ACC's two-point conversion failed, the SEC team lifted Richt and Tuberville up and carried them to midfield. Tuberville held up seven fingers. There are six months, by the way, until Auburn attempts to win its seventh straight against Alabama.
After a steak-and-lobster dinner with the entire base in the outdoor pavilion, the Coaches Tour 2008 was scheduled to leave at 2:45 a.m. local time, Monday to fly to Andrews Air Force Base. After meeting generals and fleet commanders, the coaches will be welcomed home in the White House on Monday afternoon by the commander in chief himself.
Friday, May 23
ABOARD THE USS NASSAU, AT SEA -- The USS Nassau runs on diesel that fuels two steam propulsion plants, if you want to be technical about it. But anyone serving on this amphibious assault ship, from the youngest seaman to the commanding officer, will tell you that what really fuels the Nassau is morale.
The combine and question-and-answer session gave military members at sea a taste of the football life.
The five college football coaches visiting American military personnel in the Middle East arrived at just the right time.
"We just got to the halfway point of this deployment," said Lt. Ike Stutts of Decatur, Ala. "You're excited to be halfway done, [but] you're really down. We have that [loss of] morale up. You have to worry that all anybody is saying is, 'Same thing today.' It's very 'Groundhog Day.'"
If you ever saw that 1993 film, then you understand why Friday became the day on the Nassau when the DJ interrupted the replay of Sonny and Cher singing "I Got You Babe." From the moment that the 2008 Coaches' Tour landed on the flight deck in a CH-53 helicopter, the same ol', same ol' ceased to exist.
"There are some pretty rabid fans on this ship," said Petty Officer 2nd Class Brian Edgar of Marietta, Ohio. "It's a pride thing. … For a lot of guys, that's how they define where they're from."
During the 24 hours on the Nassau, the coaches -- Mark Richt of Georgia, Randy Shannon of Miami, Jack Siedlecki of Yale, Tommy Tuberville of Auburn and Charlie Weis of Notre Dame -- toured the Nassau, signed posters and T-shirts in the crew mess Friday night and held a question-and-answer session in the hangar bay on Saturday morning.
The response from the 1,147 men and women on board resounded with joy and excitement. The only visitors they have received since they left their home base in Norfolk, Va., in February have been Navy brass.
When Seaman Paul Crosby spotted Weis in a passageway during the ship tour, his face lit up.
"I'm from Indianapolis!" Crosby said.
Weis, assuming he could bond with a fellow Indianan, offered his hand and said, "That's what I'm talking about! Give me a little something!"
Crosby, who's actually from Greenfield, Ind., may be a Fighting Irish fan. But he confessed to Weis, the former New England Patriots' assistant: "It's nice to like you finally. I'm a fan of the Colts."
The tour took the coaches from the well decks to the bridge of the ship that the Navy calls Top Gator. Afterward, the visitors stopped being tourists and started coaching again. Welcome to the Under Armour USS Nassau Combine, surely the first football combine ever held on the flight deck of an assault ship at sea.
The coaches did their best to make the flight deck look like a practice field, although you would have to squint real hard not to notice the 360 degrees of salt water meeting horizon. With small red cones, the coaches marked off a 40-yard dash, 20- and 60-yard shuttles and a three-cone drill.
"That's a pretty good setting for having a 40-yard dash," Tuberville said. "You can always have the wind at your back."
The no-skid flight deck might keep helicopters from bouncing and blowing about, but the 10 men who competed in the running drills slid around as if they had entered the French Open. Most of them looked like Master At Arms Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Sanders of Pensacola, Fla., a former high school wide receiver.
"I've always had a competitive spirit," Sanders said, "but here I'm 23. I'm getting into my has-been years."
Tuberville manned the starting line. Shannon operated the stopwatch at the other end. When Weis walked up, he shouted at Shannon, "I'm going to run the 40, Randy. Ready? Got a calendar?"
Airman Bryan Blackler of Waldoboro, Maine, took the 40 with a 4.98, the only sub-five time. Blackler, 21, said he won 12 letters in five sports, none of them football -- his high school didn't field a team.
After the running drills, the combine moved to the ship's weight room, where each participant did as many reps as he could of 185 pounds. When it ended, Airman Romaine Taylor and Seaman Courtney Taylor had tied for first place.
At the end of the Q and A with the coaches Saturday came the awards ceremony, with prizes ranging from Under Armour shirts to signed posters to signed footballs for Taylor and Turner.
Now that college football has overtime, there couldn't be a tie. Taylor and Turner were summoned to the front of the assembly, where Shannon refereed the playoff: a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Let the record show that Taylor won in the second round, paper covering rock.
Thursday, May 22
AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar -- We all have our heroes. For Sgt. 1st Class Curt Straub of Brunswick, Ohio, there is Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis.
The coaches spent Thursday signing autographs and meeting the troops.
"I met one of the biggest Notre Dame fans of all time," said Weis, who would have to be considered one of the leading judges of that species.
When Straub saw Weis at Camp As Sayliaha, he made the contestants on "The Price is Right!" look like Buddhist monks. Straub held his hands up to a TV camera and said, "Look! I'm shaking!"
Later Weis said, "he said, 'Coach Weis, this is the greatest day of my life.' I spent five minutes with some kid in the desert. Can you imagine?"
Straub not only met Weis, he used him to awaken his father from a deep, middle-of-the-night, American sleep.
"I got somebody on the phone who wants to talk to you," Straub said.
An Air Force captain at a question-and-answer session with the members of the 2008 Coaches Tour prefaced his question by saying, "You guys are my Brad Pitt. You guys are my Tom Cruise."
As the audience clapped and hooted, the captain added, "I would rather not talk to anyone else than you guys right now."
Yes, the coaches complete him.
The coaches -- Weis, Mark Richt of Georgia, Randy Shannon of Miami, Jack Siedlecki of Yale and Tommy Tuberville of Auburn -- visited military personnel at two bases Thursday, signing untold number of autographs, shaking hands and talking. It wasn't even the thousands of T-shirts that they gave away. Under Armour, the sponsor of the tour, sent 1,900 shirts to dole out to the service members.
Weis brought 5,000 to 6,000 thousand of the official Fighting Irish T-shirt from the 2007 season.
There is Siedlecki himself, when he answered a question drawing parallels between the leadership skills needed by coaches and officers.
"I cannot believe how proud the people, every guy here, how proud they are of what they're doing," Siedlecki said. "I'd love my football team, all 110 of them, to have the integrity and attitude that you guys have."
We all have our heroes, and with no disrespect meant to any of the hundreds and hundreds of service members whom the coaches entertained, I have found mine.
I found a Navy pilot who used to be a sportswriter.
I didn't know this Rick Dorsey, the Lt. JG Dorsey of P-3 3quadron VP-26 who came up and reintroduced himself to me in Memorial Plaza, the open-air tent where the coaches signed autographs and mingled Thursday night. I knew Rick when he worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. Dorsey graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, which is pretty much the Harvard of hacking. He covered plenty of SEC football and three or four Masters. He covered all the events that make my business fun.
In 2001 -- "Before Sept. 11," he said -- Dorsey decided to join the Navy, looking for a way to fund graduate school. He wanted to become a teacher. Instead, he got accepted at Officer Candidate School. So he's flying a P-3 patrol plane around the Middle East, helping to clear paths for ships in the Persian Gulf, helping the coalition forces on the ground.
"When you go out and clear a convoy and help it get from Point A to Point B, you're not going to see that on the news," Dorsey said, "that you helped somebody get their mail, their food. You flew and nobody died, that's a good day."
It's hard to believe that someone would give up sportswriting for securing freedom. But who am I to judge?
With all the Stephen Colbert in me, I asked Dorsey to admit that flying a Navy plane in the Middle East wasn't as tough as sportswriting. Dorsey started talking as if he had thought about it.
"They're both the same in that every day is so different," Dorsey said. "You go to a game and you don't know what to expect. You fly to an area and you don't know what to expect."
The more we talked, the more the sportswriter in him began to break out. He doesn't miss the deadlines.
"Every year, in the middle of March, I don't like being in the military," he said. "That's March Madness and the time leading up to the Masters."
He will rotate back to his base in Maine this summer, where he will reintroduce himself to Susan, whom he married last fall. As we began to say goodbye, his face brightened.
"In Augusta, this is the day when they open the course to the writers," Dorsey said. "I know this because every Thursday before Memorial Day, I got to play Augusta National."
Giving up a round at Augusta National to serve his country? You have your heroes. I found mine.
Continued...