Football coach Troy Calhoun’s comments comparing the BCS to the “old Soviet Presidium” continue to get national headlines.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle and CBSSports.com used them as a jumping off point for this column.

Air Force center Phillip Brown has left the academy. Brown would have been a junior in the fall.

Read my story about it here.

I spoke Tuesday with men’s basketball coach Jeff Reynolds about several subjects, including a possible game against CU (not happening). That and some other notes are covered in this story that appeared in today’s edition of The Gazette.

A few things that didn’t quite fit in the story:

–Reynolds’ overall thoughts on the spring: “I thought we had a good spring. Guys worked really hard. Very focused. Energy level was good. I thought we got bigger and stronger in the weight room, and I thought our skill set improved.”

–I asked if Reynolds looked for anything in particular from his players – attitude, for instance:

“Our attitude’s always been good,” he said. “Our guys have always worked hard. Unlike what the rumor mills are, our kids aren’t disenchanted, our kids aren’t upset with the state of the program. They know the program is going through a stage that no one could prevent because we can’t take transfers, we can’t take junior college players, we have to take true freshmen and consequently they’ve worked really hard and the program’s making progress.

“I look across the country and look at our league and inevitably we can’t change the process that we’re going through right now. We just can’t do it because I can’t go get a transfer from Minnesota or a transfer from Ole Miss or a junior college All-American. I can’t do it. The best I can hope for is bringing freshmen from the prep school. And if I can get those guys to come up here, in reality they’ve had a year to get bigger and stronger and older, and that’s sort of the life blood of the program, and it’s how the program got good years ago. We have six guys coming up from the prep school this year.”

–I asked Reynolds if this season’s nonconference schedule would be more competitive. He said, “I don’t know what you mean by competitive.” So I said, “Better teams.” (Air Force’s Ratings Percentage Index – a mathematical equation that determines strength of schedule – was ranked 252nd in the country shortly before the start of conference play last season. The other eight MWC teams had rankings between 39 and 158 at that time).

Reynolds then said, “I don’t know what you mean by better teams.” So I said, “Teams with better records.”

“I don’t know how good they’ll be this year,” he said. “For example, we scheduled two teams last year that had a much better record (in 2007-08) than they ended up having (in 2008-09).”

Reynolds said Norfolk State was one of those teams (16-15 in 2007-08, 13-18 last season).

“Your question is a very difficult one because it’s hard to project” how good teams will be, Reynolds said. He mentioned DePaul, for instance, which went winless in the Big East last year to the surprise of many.

I submit there will be surprises every year. Though I’m not sure about “very difficult.”

Anyhow, I asked if the Falcons would have some bigger-name teams come to Clune this season (last year’s home nonconference schedule was brutal, containing, among others, Northern Illinois, Wofford, Texas-Pan American and Texas Southern).

“We’re never going to have big-name teams come in here,” Reynolds said. “The years we were good, we had maybe one.”

However, Reynolds said if the teams from which he has firm commitments come through with contracts, then the Falcons would face three teams that would rank in the top 50 of current RPI rankings. That’s the most the Falcons have had, he said, in the last two years.

–Reynolds said he encouraged guard Saj El-Amin to play football. (El-Amin will attempt to play receiver for the Falcons in the fall.)

“There was a lot of speculation out there that we kicked him off the team,” Reynolds said. “I told Saj, ‘Don’t worry about that stuff.’ Because 99 percent of the people don’t know what’s going on in our program. Saj wanted to try it, and our whole staff was behind it.”

–Finally, columnist David Ramsey reacted to the news about Air Force not facing CU on his blog. You can find that post here.

I also feel this is a good time to apologize to our award-winning columnist for calling him “a lunatic” in a comment on his blog because of his NBA thoughts. As Ramsey pointed out in his post today, I should have learned to be more kind during my time as a student at Notre Dame. So I’d like to rescind that comment. Let’s go with “mildly insane.”

Air Force has made some changes to its football uniforms for the 2009 season. I haven’t seen them yet, but I got the details from Dan Siermine, who is in charge of equipment at the academy. It seems one benefit will be players’ numbers will be much easier to read. That’s great news for me way up in the press box.

Here are the changes:

Pants: No more silver pants at home. Air Force will wear white pants at home and on the road. There will be a blue lightning bolt outlined in black (about eight inches long) going down the sides of the pants. The bolt will match the bolt on the helmets.

Jerseys: The Falcons still will wear blue at home, but instead of having silver numbers outlined in white, they will have white numbers outlined in black. On the road, Air Force will wear white jerseys with blue numbers outlined in black (instead of silver outlined in blue).

I can kind of picture the changes, and I think the unis will look a bit cleaner and the numbers will be sharper. If I get photos, I’ll post them.

I received Phil Steele’s 2009 College Football Preview magazine recently. I think it’s hands down the best and most comprehensive of all the college football preview mags.

I’m looking forward to going through it line by line, but I’ve already checked out his Mountain West Conference forecast. Steele has Air Force tied for fourth in the league with UNLV and behind, in order from the top, BYU, TCU and defending champ Utah.

He’s got three Falcons listed in his individual national rankings: Senior Nick Charles is the 30th-ranked guard, senior Chris Thomas is the 40th-ranked strong safety and junior Ken Lamendola is the 56th-ranked inside linebacker.

Steele puts all three of those guys on his first-team All-MWC squad along with senior defensive tackle Ben Garland. Junior Reggie Rembert made the second team as a cornerback and the third team as a punt returner. Senior tackle Chris Campbell also made the third team. Senior guard Peter Lusk and junior tailback Savier Stephens are honorable mention selections.

In his unit rankings, Steele places the Air Force offensive line 21st in the country.

You can now follow Air Force athletics on the social networking site Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/GoAirForceFalcons/107749364240), YouTube (www.youtube.com/GoAirForceFalcons) and, yes, Twitter (www.twitter.com/AF_Falcons).

The comments Air Force coach Troy Calhoun made on Thursday about the BCS resembling “the old Soviet Presidium” have been getting national attention. I’ve seen them referred to in several publications, including the New York Times.

I liked this take by Matt Hinton on his Dr. Saturday blog. And I especially liked the poster.

After a week of writing about baseball, bars and junk food at the College World Series in Omaha, I was able to dive right back into Falcon football yesterday at the Colorado Springs Sports Corp.’s annual football kickoff luncheon.

Here’s a story I wrote about the luncheon (includes AF coach Troy Calhoun’s must-read comments on the BCS); here is a story that updates AF quarterbacks Tim Jefferson and Asher Clark; and here is David Ramsey’s column on getting a CU-Air Force scheduled.

Some other notes …

–As mentioned last week in The Gazette (here), senior-to-be Saj El-Amin, a guard on the basketball team, will attempt to play wide receiver for the football team in the fall. El-Amin played receiver and defensive back in high school and said he’s been toying with the idea of playing football since he was at the prep school.

So, does he have a chance to contribute?

“I think there’s a chance,” Calhoun said Thursday. “I think the thing that he’s going to have to do, though, is in the first 10 days, he really, really is going to have to make an impact. He’s got a great attitude, he’s a good worker, he’s an older guy and – you’ve heard me say it – I like playing with guys that are going to be seniors at the academy, just because I think their focus and their attention is different than what it is when they’re freshmen. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out for him.”

Quarterback Tim Jefferson has thrown the ball around with El-Amin this summer and said Thursday that El-Amin “definitely has the physical tools” to play this year.

“You look at him, he looks like a football player that’s been playing basketball the last couple years,” Jefferson said. “He still has a little bit of shaping up to do. He can still work on his hands, work on his footwork. But he’s been away from the game for a while, so you can expect that.”

–Calhoun said he hasn’t yet decided if he would move any of his returners from offense to defense or vice versa.

“I think there are a couple guys that we may,” he said. “It’s something we’ll decide here over the next four weeks. I don’t think a lot of guys. I think where guys finished in the spring is pretty much where they’re going to play.”

Calhoun said he wants to get to where his players have ample time to settle in at a position. He said perhaps playing a few positions on one side of the ball would be feasible, but “when you’re flipping guys back and forth from offense to defense, that’s tough.”

–Calhoun, on Utah’s 13-0 2008 campaign: “One, it’s a huge stamp, again, of the validity of the strength of the (Mountain West) Conference, because you saw in that (Sugar Bowl) game (against Alabama) how they dominated. And yet there were conference games that they had to play that were even closer than what they experienced in the Sugar Bowl. And to their credit, they won every single one of them too.”

–Calhoun compared TCU, talent-wise, to the Memphis basketball team in that the Horned Frogs simply re-load every year no matter how many blue chip players they lose.

It appears as if Air Force has secured an early verbal commitment for its next recruiting class. The Daily Herald reports fullback Mark Weisman of Stevenson High in Illinois has said he plans to attend the academy.

Here’s a blog post from Gazette columnist David Ramsey. I found it insightful and right on the mark.