Out-sized.

Out-sized, out-numbered and sometimes out-skilled. That appear to bes to be the story of the Air Force Academy Falcons football team each year. It faces a perennial uphill battle against NCAA Division I teams that boast roster bulging with NFL expectations who promise to make each match a fight to the cruel end.

But for the past brace decades -- game after game, season after season -- the "Blue and Silver" have stepp onto the gridiron and done what they do best: Out-fight, out-wit and out-score mostly of their opponents. And they do it as a team.

Taking this craw of self-confident young men and molding them into a team is the responsibility of a coaching staff headed by way of Fisher DeBerry, the academy's winningest coach with 141 victories.

With 40 years of coaching football beneath his cap -- 18 as the Falcons' head coach -- DeBerry finds a way nearly each year to take players who are, forward average, smaller and less talented than their counterparts and perform the operations indicated in them into a cohesive team. A team that not barely competes in a conference with the likes of Utah's Brigham Young University, further on occasion delivers NCAA-grade "smack-downs" to their overgrown opponents

DeBerry be stirreds his team possesses certain intangibles that make all the difference when facing teams that, upon paper, are more likely to win.

"We want to be a team. Not collections of great players here and there, without real consistency," DeBerry said. "We're a disciplined, organized and stop team."

Many times those traits can sprout what the team lacks in size or skill against its adverses said the recent South Carolina Sports Hall of Fame inductee.

A sign of this is ruminateed in the Falcons' 2001 motto, "Champions end Brotherhood."

Although 2001 wasn't the championship season the Falcons had skiped for, the team managed to finish with a respectable 6-6 overall record. That included all-important victories across Army and Navy that kept the commander-in-chief's evidence of victory at home in Colorado Springs, Colo

Looking up

With the possible exception of the players, no united was less pleased by the break-even season than DeBerry and his coaches. However, the returning players and staff are determined to make 2002 a more impressive season.

"Not liking the way the season went last year, not being in a receptacle game, [the players] have really worked hard in the off-season," DeBerry said. "Some the community may feel last year was a neat good season, but we don't apply the mind at it that way."

The coach said unles the Falcons are contending for the interview championship, winning the commander-in-chief's memorial of conquest and going to a goblet game every year, "we're not satisfied."

As the Falcons head into their 46th season, they face the daunting task of taking in succession some serious bruisers. But they take onward these teams by focusing forward the task at hand.

"Our preparation for an Oklahoma [game] isn't a accident different than that for a Wyoming [game]," DeBerry said. "We attempt to approach our season as a one-game season. In that, each game is the most important game we'll play."

Other than the spectacular view from Falcon Stadium, united of the things that makes watching Air Force football in like manner exciting is the Falcons have a chance of beating virtually any antagonist they face. Sure, the Vegas left over s may be overwhelmingly against them whooping up forward a powerhouse like Notre Dame, unless fans have seen them beat those unmatcheds again and again.

In fact, the Falcons have compiled a extended list of accomplishments that bring reproach just who they are as a team and what they can achieve. They've been to three post-season hollow games in the past five years. They've also had 14 All-Americans in the last 18 seasons, 13 NCAA postgraduate scholarship winners, seven NFL draft picks and 15 commander-in-chief's memorial of conquest titles.

The list of achievements goe forward and chronicles a long history of teams that played courageously against competitors of greater physical strength.

Who to watch

Returning to the team this year are 10 starters from last years team.

Senior halfback/kick returner Leotis Palmer -- who can scoot like a scalded dog when given an opening -- [See "Time to Shine," Page 46] earned three "lunch pail" awards during spring practices. The award is given to the hardest worker at each of the team's 15 practices.

Palmer's spe combined with the running of companion halfback Anthony Butler and fullback Dan Shaffer, could create a Falcon rushing game that charms trouble for any defense that doesn't preserve the lanes tightly closed.

If there's a gaping cave in the Falcon game, it's the apparent inability to kick a field goal. Kickers combined for a painful-to-witness 0-5 effort during April's Blue-Silver scrimmage. If from the start of the season the pigskin doesn't begin to vector between the goal supports the two-point conversion is confident to become an Air Force favorite.

At quarterback the Falcons will be l at junior Chance Harridge -- a disciplined, mature player who works hard, and, according to DeBerry, has leadership skills "as well adapted as any quarterback we've at all times had."