Air Force players reflect on unique experiences outside football at Mountain West Media Days

LAS VEGAS - Thor Paglialong refused. At first.
No way was he going to risk putting his 6-foot-4, 300-pound body through a series of tubes at the Department of Defense’s Fire Academy at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas.
“I said, ‘No, I don’t want any part of it,’” said Paglialong, Air Force’s preseason All-Mountain West center. “I didn’t think I could fit.”
But Operation Air Force, the program that took Paglialong on that three-week trip last summer, is about gaining unique experiences. So, Paglialong consented to the confined space training session.
“I think I got through it better than some of the smaller people, just because I could push through it with my toes,” he recalled. “They couldn’t really reach the bottom. It was difficult, but it was cool.”
Camby Goff, Air Force’s outside linebacker/defensive back (a hybrid position the team calls the “spur”) faced a similarly frightening proposition on his pseudo Air Force internship.
Goff’s second thoughts, however, came too late. He had already donned a K-9 outfit when a dog named Betsy, undergoing training in Enid, Okla., was released after him. The dog’s handlers had told Goff to run, so he started jogging at first. When Betsy placed him in his crosshairs, he panicked and began to sprint.
Betsy caught up.
“It was that name that scared me,” Goff said. “You don’t just name a dog Betsy.”
These were stories Paglialong and Goff shared at Mountain West Media Days as the Falcons’ player representatives in Las Vegas this week.
It’s no secret that Air Force is vastly different from its 11 conference peers, but the topics of conversations as they held court with members of the media were so varied from everyone else’s that it underscored the point with heavy emphasis.
Game analysis and insights from The Gazette sports staff including columns by Woody Paige and Paul Klee.
Sure, not everything from the others in attendance was football-only. Wyoming quarterback Andrew Peasely became a first-time father a few weeks ago. Utah State quarterback Cooper Legas runs a business installing epoxy on garage floors. But for the most part, the conversations remained football-centric.
Not so with Air Force.
“Probably the most-asked question is the typical day, the day in the life,” Paglialong said.
By the way, those days generally start at 6:30 p.m. and remain largely packed until homework is completed late in the evening. It’s a routine that has made Paglialong efficient at napping, when those rare opportunities present themselves.
“Even if I have 20 minutes, I’ll close my eyes for 15 minutes,” said the anchor of the line that helped the Falcons lead the nation in rushing for the third consecutive year in 2022. “I got good at napping. I didn’t nap at all in high school because I was never really tired.”
Of course, Air Force more than holds its own in football. The Falcons have gone 31-8 in their past three full seasons and are picked to finish second in the conference this year.
But across the board, it’s just different for Air Force. Other coaches spent much of their time discussing the impact of transfer rules and Name, Image, Likeness rules and legislation, but the academy doesn’t live in that world. They can lose players to the transfer portal but not take from it. And cadets are not eligible to earn income that might otherwise be available because of NIL.
But if you want an interesting story about a series of college experiences, find a cadet.
“They are unique experiences,” Air Force coach (and graduate) Troy Calhoun said. “I think most of them are going to be beneficial down the road; helpful in some way. Someone like Camby, if you’re going to be a commander one day, to have that kind of background and be able to share with your troops, ‘Here’s a heads up …’
“It can only help as a leader.”
Or, at the very least, it makes for an engaging conversation starter.