Bowl game is big business with patriotic fervor

[unhappycamper]

The annual All-American Bowl also is a recruiting tool for the Army.


Bowl game is big business with patriotic fervor
By Sig Christenson
Published: 12:06 a.m., Monday, January 10, 2011

Wearing a helmet with “virtual goggles” that show scenes from Baghdad, Don Herrick squeezed off rounds from the turret of a Humvee mockup as his son, Riley, stood by.

They were inside the Army Strong Zone’s Special Operations Adventure Van, which in some ways is like an amusement-park game with the sound of machine-gun fire mixing with the whir of “Little Bird” helicopters dropping commandos onto rooftops.

But for Don Herrick, an AT&T manager, it proved a humbling experience, the kind that offered a newfound appreciation for the life of GIs in combat.

“It was fun. I didn’t do so well. It’s definitely harder than what it looked like,” he said. “I shot our Humvee, so that’s not a good thing.”

At 42, Herrick is just a year over the Army’s enlistment age, and his son, 12, has a way to go before being old enough to enlist. But the Army All-American Bowl was looking for a few good men just like them over the weekend as it mixed football with its biggest recruiting event.