Oh, it will be a different Air Force football team, all right. And then again, it won't.

A lot less of Fisher DeBerry's old wishbone, triple option, fool-'em-if- you-can't-muscle- 'em offense, though it will be there some. Most prominently, there will be the shotgun, and the last time Air Force used the shotgun, Orville Wright was holding it.

"I don't know if there is an easy label for it," said Troy Calhoun, facing his first season as Falcons head coach. "Let's hope there's not an easy label for us."

Too late. We know about service academy football. Smaller. Slower. Smarter. And if you could take larger and faster, well, you would be Nebraska.

"Boeing doesn't make cockpits for 300-pounders," Calhoun said.

Never far from Calhoun's goals for his football team are the Air Force's goals for his football players. And the two would seem not compatible at all.

"Of course they are," Calhoun said. "What greater team game is there than football, and every cadet is working to be part of a greater team."

On the playing fields of . . . where was it, Eton? Now Colorado Springs.

Don't get Calhoun started on what it takes to make an Air Force player, or on the other hand, please do.

It is an impressive vindication of disadvantages, making failings sound as if any football team stocked with mere physical talent and brute gifts needs pity, not wonder.

"You always have got to play to your advantage," Calhoun said. "And with us, it starts with character.

"Always with Air Force football you get a team that plays with great effort and tremendous passion. And that's the way we'll play football."

Character. Effort. Passion. All good. All better in bigger, faster, meaner bodies.

"The way you win at Air Force is with attitude, with determination, with guys who are great competitors," Calhoun said. "Your players are bright with great personal drive."

The checklist grows even longer.

"Leadership," Calhoun said. "This might be the best leadership school in the world."

Here's what an outsider wants to be true, and not just because he has an honorable discharge from the U.S. Air Force. He wants all those intangibles to matter. He wants character to really be able to stop a short-and-goal, and certainly it is part of it.

He wants determination to at least be level with ability, but if one has only one and the other has both, he knows which way it is going to go.

He wants there to be a world where these words are not too strict, the ones actually carved in stone on campus: "We will not lie, steal or cheat nor tolerate among us anyone who does."

These all are attributes that certainly matter, and at Air Force, even in losses, they show. The Falcons simply do not quit, never have.

They might be outmanned, but they never will be outwilled.

Calhoun knew all of this when he was perfectly fixed as offensive coordinator with the Houston Texans, seasoned by the Broncos and Mike Shanahan. It was the siren that called the old Falcons quarterback to return to duty.

"We know the place, we know how much it has to offer a young person in terms of the quality of education and the opportunity to serve," Calhoun said.

"You go after guys who are bright-eyed and with a ton of heart. Ultimately, that's where your thoughts always have to be when you coach at the academy, on fortitude and heart and energy."

The formula has stood up well over the years because not Air Force, nor Army nor Navy, ought to really be able to compete with places with slighter concerns and with more flexible ethics. And yet they have and do.

And yet the same demands are there, to win, to please the alumni, even if the alumni are wearing stars on their shoulders and filigree on their hats.

"You'd better win," Calhoun said. "Winning matters when you think of what you're calling on these young men to be, you'd better win."

There have been only seven Air Force players drafted by the pros, only one - defensive lineman Bryce Fisher of Seattle - is in the NFL. Once-a-week warriors come from other places; everyday warriors come from places like Air Force.

"At the academy," Calhoun said, "it's got be pure will."

No doubt it will.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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