{"id":135116,"date":"2022-12-21T07:30:37","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T12:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=135116"},"modified":"2022-12-20T20:01:10","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T01:01:10","slug":"academy-grads-cant-play-pro-until-they-serve-ha-j-k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=135116","title":{"rendered":"Academy grads can’t play pro until they serve! Ha, J\/K"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Soon-to-be Second Lieutenant Special Treatment (#34)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We’ve talked on this topic before<\/a>, and it was not a controversial position. If you’re attending a US military service academy, you’re getting a free education, a guarantee of a commission, and even get paid for the privilege. In exchange for all those taxpayer dollars, graduates are expected to serve Uncle Sam.<\/p>\n

For those particularly gifted in sports (mostly football, but occasionally other sports), they are often allowed to get out of or defer their minimum active duty service commitment so that they can be drafted onto a pro ball team. Obviously this means they can earn the maximum amount of money (a starting third-string pro baller will make several times more than he will as an O-1) off their talent. Of course, Mr\/Ms\/Mx US Taxpayer isn’t getting much of a return on that investment. Particularly if they come back from the league physically battered and used up. It’s the United States military’s job to take 22 year-olds in perfect physical health and destroy them physically and mentally!<\/p>\n

Jim Mattis, when he was SecDef, instituted a rule that any academy grad would need to first see out their service before going pro. Just like all the other cadets\/midshipmen. It’s abundantly logical. It’s what they agreed to when they signed with the school. The policy\u00a0was rolled back, but Congress codified the rule (though only requiring a two year active duty term) this year. Here’s what they wrote into the law on the topic;<\/p>\n

\u201cService academy appointments are a zero sum game,\u201d lawmakers wrote in explanatory language for the bill. \u201cEvery appointment that goes to a graduate who does not complete his or her active-duty service obligation to pursue professional athletics could have been awarded to many other qualified young people who would have happily served their country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the House and Senate approved the language, and President Joe Biden is set to sign the authorization bill into law later this month.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then #34 up above happened. By many accounts he’s first round NFL draft worthy. He might even be the highest NFL drafted USMA graduate ever. If only the military wasn’t a hindrance for his chance at football greatness.<\/p>\n

So here we are, with Congress having settled it. He’ll have to serve (as he agreed to) But wait! There’s more. Of course Congress has seen the error of their ways. They were dangerously close to not\u00a0<\/em>wasting taxpayer money.<\/p>\n

Tucked into the massive government funding bill unveiled by congressional lawmakers early Tuesday morning is language that would allow athletes from the service academies to receive a waiver and defer their active-duty service in order to play professional sports.<\/p>\n

That has been the rule for the last few years, and was a factor in Carter\u2019s decision not to transfer from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to another school two years ago. Now a senior, Carter is seen by some sports analysts as a potential first-round pick in next April\u2019s NFL draft.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s a small bit of victory for fiscal responsibility and fairness to\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>cadets\/midshipmen;<\/p>\n

Instead, they included language in the omnibus funding bill unveiled this week that would allow any academy students who enrolled before June 1, 2021, to continue under the old waiver rules, and mandate two years of immediate service only for students set to graduate in 2025 or later.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So we got that going for us. Which is nice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve talked on this topic before, and it was not a controversial position. If you’re attending … Academy grads can’t play pro until they serve! Ha, J\/K<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}