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The United States military is considering a plan to fund athletic scholarships at the college level in exchange for mandatory service by student-athletes, according to a report by Sportico. The proposal, which is being discussed by Department of Defense leaders and elected officials, comes amid the military's ongoing recruitment issues and a shrinking population of Americans eligible for military service.

The idea to recruit from college athletics was proposed to military officials by Dave Maloney, a former athlete at Auburn who is now a military contractor. Maloney's proposal, dubbed the Scholar-Athlete Intelligence and Leadership Program (SAIL-P), would both supply the Department of Defense with a steady stream of healthy, physically-fit young Americans while also rescuing college athletics in danger of elimination due to budget cuts, such as tennis, wrestling and lacrosse.

NCAA football and basketball programs would be exempt from the proposal.

While advocates of the plan suggested that SAIL-P would allow schools to fill scholarship gaps and fund thousands more college athletes, others expressed skepticism about the proposed recruitment concept.

"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 stated that the organization had no knowledge of the proposal.

It should be noted that the U.S. military already offers funding to college athletes through scholarship programs at its service academies. In addition, college athletes interested in military service are also eligible to join Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) programs at their respective schools.