Monday, November 5, 2007

Hall, Harrison Earn Honors

Air Force senior receiver/running back Chad Hall and junior kicker Ryan Harrison were named the Mountain West Conference’s Offensive and Special Teams Players of the Week, respectively, on Monday for their performances in the Falcons’ 30-10 victory over Army on Saturday. Harrison shared his award with San Diego State punter Michael Hughes.

The 5-foot-8, 180-pound Hall, who earned the honor for the third time this year, broke the school record he set three weeks earlier by rushing for 275 yards and a score. In addition, Hall hauled in three passes for 19 yards and returned three punts for 39 yards, and his 333 all-purpose yards also broke a school single-game record.

Hall already has the most all-purpose yards in a season in Air Force history (1,961), and he needs 373 rushing yards to break the school single-season mark of 1,494 set by Beau Morgan in 1996.

Harrison, meantime, made all three of his field-goal attempts – from 35, 56 and 40 yards. The first-year starter, who is 14-for-22 on the year, is the only player in the nation to have made three field goals of 50 yards or more this season. Harrison also averaged 42 yards on two punts and kicked off seven times with four touchbacks.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations to two fine players. In my opinion, they are two of the best at their postitions ever to play at Air Force. Jake, I am interested in your insider's view. I'm just curious: Don't you think both Hall and Harrison could have easily played at other Division I schools? What about others? Fowler maybe?

Anonymous said...

Regarding the previous comment: of course Hall and Harrison could have played at other D-1A schools. I don't know what the motivation of this comment is, but all of the Air Force starters could have played at other D-1A schools. Air Force recruits solid D-1A football players, so I don't understand the basis of that comment. It's not easy to gain admittance to the Academy, but there are plenty of very good football players that are knocking at the door, wanting to play for the Falcons.

Anonymous said...

there are very few players who would start at most BCS schools. Fowler, Rabold and Decker are about it.

Anonymous said...

I don't know what you mean by "motivation" for my comment. I was just curious because my understanding is that due to the recruiting obstacles that Air Force has, they often have undersized, slower athletes. I have heard that the military has maximum size requirements that make it very hard for academies to recruit certain athletes, and the academic requirements create another issue. Troy Calhoun has been quoted many times this year discussing the overall smaller size and slower speed that his players have. He was even quoted this week saying that we will be playing a team this Saturday that never showed interest in any of the players on his current roster. I believe excellent athletes are at the academy, and maybe I'm misinformed, but I have heard that many of them come to Air Force because they were overlooked by other Division I schools.

jake.schaller said...

As Troy Calhoun said earlier this week, ND didn't even evaluate any of AF's players -- let alone recruit them.
So AF often has smaller, slower, less-athletic athletes, but they win by playing harder, making less mistakes. Sometimes, however, they are guys that can play anywhere, they are just overlooked for whatever reason (typically size and 40-yard dash time).
I think Hall and Harrison could play pretty much anywhere as could Fowler, Rabold, Chris Thomas, Reggie Rembert (eventually), Nick Charles and Travis Dekker. I'm sure there are some others that I'm spacing on.