Stephen Trimble flags an Army solicitation for an “NFL Tour Package” to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The tour would coincide with the Super Bowl in the first week of February. Trimble reports:
The contract requires the vendor to deliver three active or recently retired NFL players, who must have played three seasons at any of the following “key” positions: quarterback, running back, kicker, defensive safety, defensive linebacker, or wide receiver. NFL lineman, consider yourselves dissed. Even the kicker outranks you.
I wonder whether there wasn’t a more practical reason for excluding offensive lineman from the trip–feeding an offensive linemen for the week isn’t cheap. And you have to figure they’ll be flown around by helicopter. With the average weight of an NFL lineman somewhere on the order of 318 pounds–well, would the troops be happier to see one Orlando Pace step off that chopper or three cheerleaders. It also seems a bit ageist to limit the the tour to “current” NFL cheerleaders, I can think of at least one worthy exception.
