Coast Guard Academy football coach Bill George, being inducted into the Ithaca College Athletic Hall of Fame on Friday night as a member of the Bombers 1979 Division III national championship team, figured out how he was going to handle the honor.

Because his own team plays a homecoming weekend game Saturday against Curry, he was going to sit at Coast Guard and make a video.

“With the two flags behind me, wearing this tie (red, white and blue) and looking like President Obama,” George said Wednesday.

Then he decide that life is sometimes fleeting. This was too important for a video. He now plans to drive to Ithaca for Friday’s ceremony, about six hours, then make it back for Coast Guard’s game at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.

George, in his 16th season at Coast Guard and the program’s all-time wins leader with 51, was a first team All-America pick at center and a co-captain for Ithaca during the 1979 season, his senior year. He also won a national championship as an assistant coach at Ithaca during the 1991 season.

He was inducted into the Hall of Fame as an individual in 2000, but missed the ceremony. He’s also a member of the Glens Falls (N.Y.) High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

Ithaca’s three national championships came under the late legendary coach Jim Butterfield, for whom Ithaca’s football stadium is named. Butterfield, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, won three national championships and finished second four times.

It was only after arriving at Coast Guard, George said, that he found the atmosphere there had something in common with that of Butterfield’s teams.

“It was all about the family atmosphere,” said George, whose team is 2-3 this season headed into the game with Curry. “Jim Butterfield had a strong emphasis on family. A lot of what I heard Jim Butterfield preach is a lot of what I’ve heard about Coast Guard. That’s all he talked about, ‘family, family, family.’

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve noticed that when you listen to these admirals speak, a lot of it is about family things. I had no idea it would be like that.”

It’s no coincidence then, that George’s affections lie not only with his own family — he resides with wife Nancy, 4-year-old daughter Lila and father Casper in Salem — but with his Coast Guard players.

“After 16 years of being here, I think of this place more (than his days at Ithaca),” George said. “I feel a strong bond to guys who have played here for me. I feel more sentimental about guys that have played for me.”