Caleb Campbell & Lion's Dilemma: He's a Recruiter & It IS About Troop Morale

Having listened to and read up on the Caleb Campbell issue, and what the mass media calls “a move to help enlistment numbers,” it is time to get it right already. 

Let me take the time to apologize to some ahead of time, but this one hits close to home for this vet, whose brothers are "still in it to win it." I'm just another ignorant soldier talking about sports and the war, the exact same conversation is taking place on every base in the military.

Campbell isn't the first athlete to join the service: Joe Louis joined the Army as did Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams was a pilot in the Army Air Corpse, Hank Greenberg, Billy Southworth, Bob Feller, Billy Martin, Stan Musial, Smokey Bill Read, and Bobby Mercer among many others. They all make soldiers proud, and none; including Caleb, expected special treatment. 

Caleb Campbell was commissioned and signed a contract two years ago locking himself into military service, and pride for country until 2010.  He finished his officer training school and was told he would be eligible to play professional sports in accordance with the then Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

Having already listened to Mike Greenberg this morning on ESPN Radio trash the issue with his self-professed ignorance it is time to set the record straight, before full-blown media hysteria takes place on how evil the military is for not letting poor Caleb play a sport. 

Giving Greenberg a pass, he said that he thought that it was because keeping Campbell active might attract recruits to join up, and increase numbers. 

Now, to correct Mike, Lt. Campbell is a Recruiting Officer – look out Berkeley!  His job is to attain quotas of enlisted men and women, go out into the public; to state parks, to malls, and most of all to high school and college campuses to much the dismay of many. They recruit others to join during a War on Terror with two fronts; Battlefronts Iraq and Afghanistan; and are demonized for it too. 

He is not any closer to going over to Afghanistan or Iraq then he is of going to start as the new quarter back for Green Bay. This is all being sold you by way of some AP reporter who doesn’t know what it means to be a soldier, other than the fact that he is a hired mercenary reporting as he is told.

He probably has a guaranteed location in the states, while others suffer what is referred to as a “Wish List.” What would those he recruited think of him while over-there listening to him play games on the Voice of America Radio while in Baghdad driving a Hum V next to Curly-Joe?

One organization really said that "the NFL draft might actually save a soldier from the war," as if he didn't volunteer at all, and had no parental guidance-or will of his own.  Did the Vietnam draft just happen again and someone forgot to tell us? Maybe that publication was thinking that a game was acutally more important than issues outside the realm of sports - real issues that impact the world, per say. 

There once used to be "community drives" in support of soldiers past, maybe we could bring those days back and start by donating some microphones to scrap for our boys over-there.

Campbell said many classmates approached him with curiosity asking why he didn’t have to serve his term out.  The fact is, regardless of him saying he could have had the best of both worlds in serving/recruiting for the Army while playing for the Detroit Lions, it is a morale issue and Caleb got too big, too fast. 

It is way too public and now all the soldiers know about it, and unless they can release all those boys who have jobs waiting at home for them, than sorry Caleb-drop your rocks and grab your socks.

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