Serving Uncle Sam

Imagine a U.S. military and civil service comprised of large numbers of former college athletes. A
fellow named Dave Maloney already has and thinks that it could address several concerns. The military struggles to attract and retain quality candidates, and is in many ways exhausted after two decades of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Meanwhile, college athletics is in the midst of seismic change owing to court rulings that permit athletes to make money from their abilities, as well as pandemic-related cuts to hundreds of Olympic sports programs at schools all over the country. There’s also a choking level of student debt that has reached $1.75 trillion, according to Forbes. 

Enter Maloney. 

He proposes a plan in which the Department of Defense foot the bill for athletic scholarships in sports other than football and basketball, in exchange for some yet-unspecified obligation after athletes leave school – military, civil service, government support, whatever. He frames it as a “21st century pathway to service.” 

Maloney points to a 2018 report by the Heritage Foundation, based on Pentagon study, that 71 percent of young Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 would be ineligible for military service, with the primary reasons inadequate education, obesity and criminal records. As opportunities for Olympic sports athletes diminish after high school, and the cost of education skyrockets, any potential scholarship aid for those who wish to continue to compete can be a lifeline. Former college athletes, in turn, provide a driven, disciplined, educated, physically fit group of candidates for military or public service. 

Win-win, as Maloney sees it. “The Department of Defense just went to Congress with its initial budget for next year,” Maloney said in an interview with the sports business website Sportico. “It’s the largest budget ever, and yet we’re seeing a decrease in our technological capabilities, and we’re seeing a decrease in any interest in service. What does that tell you? Talented people don’t want to work at decaying institutions. You’ve got to gut-punch it.” 

Indeed, the Pentagon requested a $773 billion budget for fiscal year 2023. That includes $1.32 billion in “recruiting and advertising” costs for the four major branches of the military, as well as billions more in training. In comparison, the 100-plus public FBS schools spent $653 million on scholarship costs outside of football and basketball in 2020-21, according to Sportico’s financial database. In other words, the money’s available, if the Pentagon and the NCAA are willing to reconsider and alter standard practices. 

Maloney’s idea hasn’t been stuffed into a wingnut corner of the basement because of who he is and what he does. He’s a former track athlete at Auburn who owns a Houston-based software and analytics company that is a contractor for the Air Force. He began circulating the framework of his plan last fall through the Pentagon and Congress himself and through several paid advisors, including retired four-star Army and Air Force generals and a retired Navy vice admiral. No current high-ranking government or military officials have endorsed his idea, but he hasn’t been dismissed out-of-hand. 

When Sportico described the plan to Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, he said, “We happen to have one of the more vibrant ROTC programs in the country, so we’re already involved in the military. I have about 101 questions, but would I listen? Sure.” Reggie Love, an advisor to former President Barack Obama and ex-Duke basketball player, told Sportico, “We have not changed the process in how we build out new talent for the military in quite some time. So even if this is not a successful venture, forcing us as a country to have a deep philosophical review of where we’re going and how we get there is always helpful.” 

As always, the devil is in the details, and among the many questions are: what manner of service? Active duty military or non-combat support? Would scholly recipients have a say about their path? How and to whom is aid awarded? Is it left to individual sports programs and coaches, or would the Department of Defense want control? Do women’s sports and Title IX considerations figure into the equation? How would DoD funding, whether large or supplemental, affect scholarship limits? Remember that the NCAA permits only a fraction of the scholarship numbers for Olympic sports related to their roster size. Baseball has only 11.7 scholarships for a roster of 30 or more. Men’s soccer and wrestling are allowed a max of 9.9 scholarships, lacrosse 12.6 scholarships with rosters at least twice that size. Men’s tennis gets 4.5 scholarships, women’s tennis eight and field hockey 12. Most Olympic sports athletes are only on partial scholarship, if they receive money at all. Would Pentagon scholarship money take up the total amount for athletes who commit to post-graduate service at some programs, and thus exclude those who said ‘no thanks’ and only want to compete and attend school?  

Maloney also believes that the DoD and Federal government could benefit from the billions of dollars that colleges spend identifying and recruiting prospects. They also could benefit from the abundant youth recruiting services that rank everyone from wrestlers to baseball players to lacrosse players to track athletes and volleyball players nationally and in their states, and which are often invaluable to college recruiters. 

Maloney

Coincidentally, which is to say not coincidentally at all, Maloney’s company, Orchestra Macrosystems, is capable of aggregating info from high school sports recruiting databases to give the Feds and DoD a one-stop shop about athletes and potential candidates, maintain up-to-date info on kids, coordinate messages from college coaches and Federal recruiters, and as he puts it “leverage the recruiting prowess of NCAA coaches and recruiting budgets of NCAA schools to engage high school students possessing the physical, academic, and leadership qualities sought by the federal government and collegiate sports programs alike.” 

Larger questions beyond logistics and execution of Maloney’s ideas might run along the lines of: As a society, do we really want to dangle the promise of higher education and athletic participation in exchange for military or government service? If the lack of qualified candidates is as potentially dire and the threat to national security that some in the military describe, why not shelve the volunteer force and re-institute the draft? Since we’re no longer in a direct shooting war, what are our actual personnel needs? I expect no de-emphasis on our military, conflict or not. Given the money spent and those that benefit from it, our nation’s history and makeup, and our preoccupation with WMD here and abroad, and the places we might use them, that battleship has sailed. Maloney's plan may not carry, but don't be surprised if something similar comes down the road.