So much has been written and spoken for nearly 50 years about the time Muhammad Ali refused induction into the armed forces, I hesitate to mention anything about it here.

Awww, but I will anyway.

The Champ’s death Friday saddens me beyond measure. I’ll be grieving for a long time.

I do want to set the record straight, though, on what I believe has been a mischaracterization of Ali’s refusal to be drafted.

It’s been reported that he did so in 1967 out of conscience. He had converted just three years earlier to Islam. He told the Houston draft board he couldn’t serve in the armed forces because of religious conviction, that he couldn’t carry out orders to kill other human beings.

I get that.

What has not been discussed in all the commentary about Ali’s death, though, is that he could have filed as a conscientious objector and still served in the armed forces — in a non-combat role.

No Pentagon bureaucrat in his or her right mind ever would send the reigning heavyweight boxing champion of the world — especially someone such as Muhammad Ali, for crying out loud! — to any training center to be schooled in the combat arms: infantry, armor or artillery.

I served in a basic training company in Fort Lewis, Wash., with a young man who was a conscientious objector. When we completed our boot camp training in October 1968, he got orders for artillery school in Fort Sill, Okla. He hit the ceiling. The last time I saw him before I departed for aircraft maintenance school in Fort Eustis, Va., he was marching into the orderly room to file a protest over the orders he received. I hope he got them changed.

Muhammad Ali would have been given a special assignment, much as Joe Louis received when that former heavyweight champion saw duty during World War II. The Army was full of clerical jobs or other rear-echelon assignments that would have kept Ali far from harm’s way.

Now, having said that, I do not know what was in Muhammad Ali’s heart when he said “no” to being inducted. It well might have been a broader statement against the Vietnam War, that under no circumstances could he don a military uniform while the nation was engaged in all-out war in Southeast Asia.

If that were the case, well, I respect that, too.