Coaches visit Ramstein

By Jennifer H. Svan (Stripes.com) –

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — Houston Nutt wasn’t the only nut in the crowd.

A visit by six NCAA Division 1-A college football coaches, including Nutt of Ole Miss, filled the bleachers in the Southside Fitness Center on Friday afternoon with sports fans of all ages — some a bit nuttier than others for their favorite team.

The more serious enthusiasts were easy to spot. Buy Cialis Online Without Prescription Tech. Sgt. Henry Ayala’s family was decked out in burnt orange, including tiny 1-week-old Trevian in a Texas Longhorn onesie that he barely filled.

“He came two weeks early, so he came just in time to see Mack Brown,” said Trevian’s mom, Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Ayala.

But it was Trevian’s 32-year-old dad, wearing a big grin, who seemed most excited to rub elbows with the Longhorns’ silver-haired head coach. A military brat who landed in Arlington, Texas, as a teenager after his father retired from the service, Henry Ayala had Brown sign a 4-year-old box of Wheaties commemorating the team’s 2005 college championship.

“There’s still cereal in here,” Ayala said, shaking the box he had his dad send him from Texas.

Brown and Ohio State University’s Jim Tressel drew the longest lines of the day. They sat at a long table strewn with team memorabilia, flanking coaches Jim Grobe of Wake Forest, UCLA’s Rick Neuheisel, Troy Calhoun of the Air Force Academy, Nutt and former Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville.

The coaches’ stop at Ramstein was the first on an eight-day, overseas tour sponsored by Morale Entertainment and Armed Forces Entertainment. This was the second year for the visit, back by popular demand, according to Col. Edward Shock, chief of Armed Forces Entertainment at the Pentagon.

The coaches volunteered their time, while the military picked up the tab for their transportation and other travel-related expenses, Shock said.

After Ramstein, the coaches were to visit Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, and then several bases in Iraq, where at one location they are going to coach a flag football game between Army and Air Force players. At a base in Djibouti, they will hold a mini-combine, Shock said.

“It’s a very interactive tour between the coaches and the troops,” Shock said.

At Ramstein, people had the opportunity to talk with all the coaches, get their autographs and have photos taken with them. The coaches also gave out their respective college’s T-shirts — and inked their signature on all sorts of interesting sports souvenirs thrust before them by eager fans.

“I got a shirt, a book, and I got my (Ohio State) lunch box signed,” said Master Sgt. Robert Williams, 39, with a hearty laugh, “so I make sure I take care of that.”

Of all the Buckeye fans lined up to see Tressel, the Hagemann family in their various-sized team jerseys were most noticeable. And they had stories to back up the uniform. Army Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Hagemann, 29, and his wife, Debbie, drove almost two hours from Wiesbaden with their two young sons. That was nothing, however, compared to the trans-Atlantic flight they made to watch Ohio State play — and lose to — Florida in the national championship title game two years ago, they said. The couple from Columbus, Ohio, got engaged in “the Shoe” — the Buckeyes’ stadium — and 3-month-old Dylan met Tressel Friday wearing a red Ohio State bib.

“We’ve got about a dozen of these at home,” Hagemann said. “I wanted him to wear the one that says ‘I slobber scarlet and gray,’ but that one was dirty.”