By Dennis Dodd
SportsLine Senior Writer

There is never a bad recruiting year at Air Force.

Every fall a new crop of the nation's best and brightest come to the foot of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, Colo., yearning to be pilots, astronauts and flight engineers. Uncle Sam cooperates by providing a free education in return for a five-year post-graduate commitment to the Air Force.

That is the central mission of the United States Air Force Academy. But somewhere in the modern pursuit of excellence you have to mention football. That's because the central mission of Saturday afternoons in Colorado Springs is to establish a ground game to go along with air superiority. The 40-year-old Air Force program arguably reached an all-time high in 1998. Wednesday was the first national signing day following what many think was the best season in Air Force history.

The Falcons finished 12-1, beat Washington in the Oahu Bowl and were ranked 10th in the final coaches poll. Its coach Fisher DeBerry was the Fellowship of Christian Athletes coach of the year.

How much better can it get? DeBerry, about to start his 16th year as coach, does more with less than any coach in the country. Wednesday should have been a cause for celebration. Winning begets winning recruiting. Right?

SORT OF. THERE WAS NO DEBERRY press conference Wednesday. The official list of recruits won't be known until August. More on that later.

In the case of Air Force, success is always determined in the skies. If football follows along, so much the better. But it's not imperative. Chad Hennings flew A-10 tank killers in the Gulf War before winning three Super Bowl rings with the Dallas Cowboys. Ask Hennings which accomplishment was more important.

DeBerry finds out which players he can recruit instead of necessarily recruiting who he wants. Prospective cadets must have a 3.3 cumulative high school grade-point average and at least an 1,100 SAT score. They must get a recommendation to the academy from their congressman. There are height and weight limits for prospective pilots. There are no redshirts.

Before considering any of it, prospects must agree to a five-year Air Force commitment upon graduation.

"That eliminates 99 out of 100 players," said Jim Bowman, an associate athletic director at the academy who has been there since the doors opened 42 years ago.

Try those entrance requirements at Ohio State, Miami or UCLA. The trick is that DeBerry has his program up among those elite programs despite the ground rules.

Fisher DeBerry can only recruit players who have a 3.3 cumulative high school GPA and at least an 1,100 SAT score. (Allsport)

"OUR FACILITIES, WHERE WE'RE LOCATED, the educational opportunities, the guarantees after college -- there's nothing in the country that can match that," DeBerry said.

True, Air Force sells the wild, blue yonder. DeBerry, though, can legitimately sell impossible dreams. Over the past two years, Air Force (22-4) has the same record as Nebraska. In 15 years, DeBerry has won three WAC titles in a league dominated by BYU.

It's not a fluke. Army and Navy have the same recruiting restrictions mandated by the government but haven't had near the success of Air Force. DeBerry is 22-6 against the two other service academies. The Falcons recruit, play against and beat like-minded academic institutions Stanford, Rice and Notre Dame.

While the rest of college football frothed at the mouth over Wednesday's prospects, Air Force calmly went on with its mission. The school won't announce its commitment list until early August when all the recruits are enrolled. By then they will have passed a strenuous physical exam that includes a test for perfect vision for all aspiring pilots.

That's only the beginning. Air Force's football recruits are cadets first. Two weeks in August are spent in nearby Jack's Valley in the legendary Basic Cadet Training. Those who don't make it wash out and a revised commitment list is released.

YOU CAN SEE WHY WEDNESDAY was no big deal. There's still a long way to go before a cadet succeeds on the field.

That's where DeBerry comes in, because continuity means something. He can trace his coaching lineage at Air Force back to Bill Parcells. It was Parcells who coached the Falcons in 1978. Convinced after a 3-8 season that the program could never be successful, Parcells quit to go to the New York Giants as an assistant.

But Parcells left a legacy that lives today. He hired Ken Hatfield from Florida as quarterbacks coach. Hatfield replaced Parcells and hired DeBerry away from Appalachian State in 1980. Four years later DeBerry was head coach. Two years after that, he was national coach of the year when the Falcons went 12-1 in 1985.

Thirteen teams have won at least eight games in Air Force's history. DeBerry has coached nine of them.

Witnesses to his practices say they are some of the most efficiently run in the game. Coaches are able to interact with players during only the lunch hour and a two-hour practice from 3:30-5:30 p.m. The rest of a players' time is taken up learning how to defend the country instead of the goal line.

If there is a secret it's that DeBerry has been able to plum talent from Colorado and Texas. Thirty-nine of the players on last year's roster were from those two states. But Air Force is leaving the WAC next year for the Mountain West Conference. Four of the WAC's Texas schools will be left behind.

"WE RECRUIT SO HEAVILY in Texas," DeBerry said. "It's so good to go to Texas and say, 'Look, man, you come to school at the academy, and you're going to play in your home state two times, at least, every year."

There are advantages. The myth is that Air Force has a talent deficiency, that DeBerry takes raw pilots and magically turns them into seasoned football players. If that was ever true, it's changing. Last year, Air Force landed linebacker Matt Mai, a Le Mars, Iowa native who turned down Notre Dame, Nebraska and Iowa. Graduating senior cornerback Tim Curry played in the Hula Bowl last month.

The talent pool is theoretically limitless because everyone on campus is on scholarship thanks to the federal government. The NCAA allows Air Force extra recruiting visits because it is recruiting pilots first and players second.

Air Academy Prep School, sitting right on campus, more or less helps players get eligible. Those who can't get in the Academy immediately after high school can take courses at the prep school for a year. The prep school's football team runs the same system as DeBerry and plays top-notch junior colleges in Kansas and Utah.

It's a support system unlike any in college football. But it's a post-football vocation unlike any in college.

Dennis Dodd is a senior writer in CBS SportsLine's Kansas City bureau.