The National Guard has launched a review of its advertising relationship with the National Football League amid allegations that some military officials paid for game-day tributes that spotlighted service members and thanked them for their service.

"This is something that we're going to look into and take appropriate action after we've discovered exactly what happened," Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday.

The internal review comes after the New Jersey National Guard faced criticism for paying the New York Jets to provide game-day features on stadium video boards recognizing several New Jersey National Guard soldiers who attended the games with their families.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., called the deal an "egregious and unnecessary waste of taxpayer dollars."

The Defense Department, mostly the Army National Guard, paid the NFL more than $5.4 million from 2011 to 2014, according to a report in the Star-Ledger newspaper in New Jersey.

One team, the Atlanta Falcons, received more than $1 million in DoD funds, according to the federal documents.

Kurt Rauschenberg, a National Guard spokesman, downplayed the review. "They review the contracts every year to look at the current situation and the way forward," he said Tuesday.

Many of the Guard contracts with the NFL involve local state-level Guard units that handle their own recruiting contracts and community outreach, Rauschenberg noted.

At issue is the line between unpaid community outreach and cash-for-services advertising and marketing efforts.

The military services and the reserve components frequently conduct community outreach, which typically involves noncommercial activities such as stadium event flyovers with military aircraft or military band performances.

Recruiters, on the other hand, have multimillion-dollar budgets for advertising that help them to meet their annual accession goals.

"What appears to have happened in this case is ... that maybe some in the recruiting world, in an effort to execute their recruiting mission, may have crossed over into the outreach side a little. This is something that the National Guard is going to review," Warren said.

About Andrew Tilghman

Andrew Tilghman is the executive editor for Military Times. He is a former Military Times Pentagon reporter and served as a Middle East correspondent for the Stars and Stripes. Before covering the military, he worked as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle in Texas, the Albany Times Union in New York and The Associated Press in Milwaukee.

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