So now that The Gazette has announced its all-time Air Force football team — a dream squad with 25 of the best players in academy history — we’re left with a question:

Who should coach them?

Only six men have served as head coach at the academy, so we’ll go through them one-by-one, until we have our choice.

• L.T. “Buck” Shaw posted a 6-2-1 record in 1956, the academy’s first varsity campaign, but served only one more season.

• Perhaps the biggest name nationally among former Air Force coaches is Bill Parcells, who went on to fame in the NFL, leading the New York Giants to a pair of Super Bowl victories and the New England Patriots to a Super Bowl appearance. But the “Tuna” lasted just one season at Air Force, and the Falcons went 3-8 in 1978 under his watch.

• When The Gazette does another all-time Air Force team in 15 or 20 years, current coach Troy Calhoun might be the choice to head the squad (if he stays around for a decade or so and continues to pile up winning seasons and bowl appearances). He injected life into a slumping program and has guided it to a 25-14 mark and three bowl appearances in three seasons.

But that’s just a start, and he’s yet to win the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy.

• Ken Hatfield brought option football (and an option football guru named Fisher DeBerry) to the academy and revitalized the program. Air Force went 13-40-2 in the five seasons before he took over, but Hatfield’s teams steadily improved, going 2-9, 2-9-1, 4-7, 8-5 and 10-2 (with a victory over Mississippi in the Independence Bowl), respectively, in his five seasons from 1979 through 1983.

For that he deserves mention.

• But there really are only two choices: Ben Martin and Fisher DeBerry.

It’s easy to make a case for Martin, who is known as “The Father of Falcon Football.”He coached the team that put the Falcons on the national map — guiding the 1958 squad to a 9-0-2 mark (the academy’s lone unbeaten campaign) and an appearance in the Cotton Bowl. He took the Falcons to two other bowls (the 1963 Gator and 1971 Sugar). And during his 20-year tenure his teams beat a veritable who’s who of great college football programs — Oklahoma, UCLA, Washington, Nebraska and Oregon, to name a few.

But in the end, we had to go with DeBerry.

He had the longest tenure (23 years) and the best record (169-109-1). He posted 17 winning seasons and went to 12 bowl games. He was named Western Athletic Conference Coach of the Year three times (1985, 1995 and 1998) and was the national Coach of the Year in 1985.

He dominated the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy competition, going 35-11 against Army and Navy. His teams won or retained the trophy in 15 of his 23 seasons, including 13 times in a 14-year stretch from 1989 to 2002.

He turned in two of the best seasons in academy history — the 12-1 campaigns in 1985 and 1998. He beat Notre Dame, Texas and Ohio State.

But his impact on Air Force football goes well beyond all that.

While Martin relied on a passing game, DeBerry created the blueprint for success at an academy in modern times — a strong, option-based rushing attack, good defense and playmaking special teams.

He became — and in many ways still is — the face (and Southern-fried voice) of Air Force football. And, most importantly, he convinced his too slow and too small players to believe they could compete with the best teams in college football.

And they did.

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