Dave Maloney, a former Auburn University track athlete and now the CEO a Houston-based Air Force contractor, has pitched to the U.S. military the idea of recruiting college athletes to enlist.
In a report from Sportico, the Scholar-Athlete Intelligence and Leadership Program (SAIL-P) would fund athletic scholarships at the college level in exchange for mandatory service by student-athletes
Department of Defense leaders and elected officials, per the report, are mulling the proposal over amid ongoing recruitment issues and a decreased eligible demographic for military service.
The program “has been pitched as a solution to inefficient recruiting within the armed forces—which spend billions on recruits who fail basic training—and financial unease in college sports, where athletic departments face increasing cuts to non-revenue teams like tennis and wrestling.”
It should be noted, however, college football and basketball programs would be excluded from the proposal, which does include NCAA, NAIA and junior college level athletes.
“We have funding challenges, and we’re looking at how to solve them,” Tanner Gardner, chief operating officer for athletics at Rice University, told Sportico. “But there’s a lot of inertia in college sports right now, and I have a hard time understanding how you’re going to convince student-athletes to commit to something other than an athletic scholarship.”
An NCAA spokesperson told Sportico the organization had no knowledge of the proposal.
Check out the full report here.
Mark Heim is a sports reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim.