It's a sad day for me, I really loved the way that DeBerry's Air Force teams played, they were a tough and determined team, that was also very exciting to watch run his variation of the old Wishbone offense. Some of my favorite college QB's played for De Berry, Dee Dowis and the Morgan Brothers lead the list. Some of my favorite memories were of the Colorado State games, usually played on Thursday night, and more than once in the snow. Colorado State was a traditional college team, big burly linemen on both sides of the ball, bigger players for the most part at every position. But USAFA always gave them a battle and more often than not won the game. It had to be frustrating for them (or any opponent) to know what was comming but not being able to stop it, even though you didn't really have to worry about the pass. His teams upset Texas in the Bluebonnet Bowl, Ohio State in the Liberty Bowl, had a couple of wins over Notre Dame. In fact the win in '96 might have been the straw that broke Lou Holtz and caused him to go ahead and retire. However he hasn't had a wining season for several years now and with some of the things that have plagued him like his comment on needing more black players and the flap over his Christian banner in the lockeroom, all probably ended up figuring in his retirement. I imagine that he was not encouraged to stay on another year. I wonder what will happen now, will the Air Force go another direction with the team. Interestingly his old boss, Kenny Hatfield, after initial success with the 'bone at Rice started to lose and also became embroiled in some controversies over his public comments on Gays. Rice fired him and brought in a new young group and they installed the Spread Option. I wondered how long it would take these new guys to get the passing offense going with a bunch of players recruited for the wishbone. But it only took about 4 games after that they just took off and a Rice WR is an All-American. I'll be interested to see if Air Force goes out and gets a young coach who runs some variation of the Spread. Terry
I believe that DeBerry has the distinction of being the highest payed government employee. (That of course doesn't include what members of Congress get "off the books" and foreign operatives and puppets get from Uncle Sam.)
Air Force will not be the same without him. As an opponent, I am glad to see him go. As a fan of college football, as Terry stated, I am sad to see him go. His offense was extremely difficult to stop as several teams found out, or already knew, this year.