MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Announcers, using that certain cliché, get it wrong all the time.

Football is not a war; the game is not a battle. If you lose a football game, you work harder in practice, buckle your chinstrap a little tighter next Saturday and go after the next opponent.

If you lose a war, tomorrow vanishes -- you go home in a coffin with a flag draped over it.

Bryan Logsdon figured at some point, when he joined the Navy July 19, 2000, there was a chance he would experience war.

But college football? Never.

Crazy how things have worked out for the man who will be 28 later this month. He already has experienced war and now is entrenched in the college football experience.

"You want to look around for role models?" West Virginia coach Bill Stewart said. "Well, here you go right here."

• • •

"Where haven't I lived?" is how Logsdon met the question about where he was from.

A military brat whose father retired from the Navy, Logsdon and his older sister bounced from outpost to outpost. A small sample: He was born in Italy, spent his freshman year of high school in Colorado, his sophomore year in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., then went back to Colorado -- to a different school than in his freshman year -- for his junior year of high school.

Finally, he settled down a bit, moving back to Berkeley Springs for his senior year, where he played basketball. He never played high school football.

Mom was afraid the 6-foot-5, 160-pound high school kid would get smashed by the bigger boys.

Where football struck fear, a career in the military -- because of its familiarity -- did not.

Logsdon, like his dad, headed for the Navy soon after graduation.

"Knew I was going to do it when I was 15 or 16," he said. "It was the best choice, really."

So another whirlwind began, as he rose to petty officer second class and, as he said, "saw about 20 different countries before I was 25."

Logsdon was a cryptologic maintenance technician on the USS Normandy and the USS Enterprise.

He also saw combat duty and multiple deployments to the Persian Gulf during Operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, but that's where the conversation about his military service ended because, "we were supporting the SEALs," he acknowledged, "so I can't say anything more about it."

After six years, Logsdon was eligible for an honorable discharge and accepted, applying to West Virginia University and for a spot in the West Virginia Army National Guard in July 2006. He got into both -- using the GI Bill to pay for school, where he majors in sociology.

• • •

That skinny, much-traveled high school kid had grown into a 6-5, 253-pound man, with his feet firmly planted in Morgantown in the spring of 2007 when a crazy notion arrived in his head.

"I wanted to try out for the football team," Logsdon said. "I just thought I could do it."

The NCAA has no upper age limit for student athletes as long as they meet eligibility requirements.

Rich Rodriguez was the coach at the time, and it was Logsdon's first time on a football field.

Rodriguez was gone after the 2007 season; Logsdon did not last that long.

"I made it through some of the stuff. I didn't quit, that is for sure, but I just wasn't in the football shape I need to be in," Logsdon said. "So, when it came time, when they were posting the sheet with the names on it for the walk-ons who made the team, my name wasn't there. I got cut."

A football dream dashed forever?

Hardly.

Logsdon used last year -- in between his studies and time in the National Guard, which he has since left -- to work out at a fitness facility to get bigger, stronger and faster.

He came back out for the team this past summer with his focus on making the squad as a walk-on tight end/fullback.

This time, he made that list of walk-ons.

"It just shows what you can do if you buckle up your boots and really set your mind to doing something," Logsdon said. "If you get told, 'no,' once, you can't let that stop you. I just worked a little harder and went back there hoping to get another opportunity."

The opportunity to be part of a college football family is his. He is listed as a redshirt sophomore fullback/tight end on the school's athletic Web site.

Logsdon dresses for some home games, is not on the travel squad and largely spends his football career hammering away as a member of the scout team at practice, sometimes at fullback, other times at tight end or defensive end, simulating the opponent.

No matter.

"All this man has ever done in his life is work hard, serve his country and do everything the right way," Stewart said. "He is a person you don't need to be around all that much to know he's got your back. This is a man who has done all the right things in his life, he lives the right way, so it has to be an advantage to have someone like that around your football team."

Offensive lineman Don Barclay, like Logsdon, is a redshirt sophomore, but he is 7 years younger than his classmate. Barclay understands what Logsdon means to the team.

"Bryan is looked at with a lot of respect," Barclay said. "No one on the team has gone through what he's gone through. When we think times are hard for us on or off the field, you just have to suck it up, because nothing is as hard as what he's managed to do."

• • •

How will this end?

Will there be that moment when Logsdon plays in a game?

For his part, Stewart offered, "You betcha, at some point I would like to get this young man into a game. The time has to be right, but, yes, we'd love to get him in there."

Playing in a game is not something Logsdon thinks about much. He goes about his business, going from his off-campus apartment to class and then practice, acknowledging that college is not all that tough after the rigors of the military.

Someday, he wants to be a teacher and -- get this -- a football coach. For now, what about those thoughts about playing in a game?

"I don't try to live in the clouds," he said.

"I know who I am and I'd do anything just to help out the Mountaineers' football team."

Someone should let him know he already has.

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