Tucker could have followed Calhoun’s path

BOULDER» If Fisher DeBerry had his druthers, Mel Tucker would’ve followed in Troy Calhoun’s footsteps.

Another quirky narrative surrounding Saturday’s CU-Air Force game — the first between the two neighboring FBS programs since 1974, and the first for the Buffs and Falcons in Boulder since 1973 — is that DeBerry, at one time or another, recruited both Tucker, the Buffs’ first-year coach, and Calhoun, in his 13th season with the Falcons, to play quarterback for him at the Academy. Only Calhoun bit. “Mel was a good potential quarterback,” DeBerry said of Tucker, who, three decades earlier, caught the then-Falcons coach’s eye as a standout wishbone signalcaller at Cleveland (Ohio) Heights High School.

“I think Mel really liked the Academy and respected what we were doing. And then I think he had a lastminute opportunity to go to Wisconsin and that was closer to home.”

Tucker took a visit to the Academy but when Badgers coach Barry Alvarez swooped in with a scholarship offer, the future CU boss elected to cast his lot with the Badgers. Which, of course, denied him the chance to follow Calhoun, who’d joined the Falcons as a freshman in 1985 and became a starting quarterback for DeBerry the next season.

“The commitment concerns kids who are making (that) decision: ‘What if I go there and end up having a great college career and then I can’t play NFL football (right away)?’ ” DeBerry recalled. “’What if I don’t adapt to the military?’ It’s a big commitment and a big decision for a lot of kids. That’s what happened in Mel’s situation.”

In the long run, things worked out for all parties. From 1991-95, AFA averaged 7.4 wins and played in three bowls behind quarterbacks Rob Perez, Jarvis Baker and Beau Morgan.

Tucker became part of Alvarez’s first recruiting class in Madison, which became the core of a team that won the Big Ten in 1993, changing the course of that program’s trajectory for the next 25-plus years.

“Now, he doesn’t look like a quarterback,” DeBerry chuckled. “I told him (at a charity function last spring), ‘We’d have moved you to fullback. Or offensive tackle.’”