College Football Countdown: Urban Legends

OK, I've gotten the ill-advised Urban Meyer headline urges out of my system now. That sorted, let's move on. I read Stewart Mandel's article in this week's Sports Illustrated about the spread option offense Urban Meyer and his staff plan to run this season at Florida.

I recommend you do the same. For those of you, like me, who love the Xs and the Os (as well as the sheer violent glee that comes from watching undergrads knock the Natty out of each other) it's a nice, but all-too-short article. That said, I'm going to be watching every Gators game I can this year. Between the increased competition in the SEC, and Chris Leak's draft prospects inflating like a bag of mayo-based slaw left out in the sun, it should be a fun year for the Gators.

(The article can be found online here, but it's subscription only.)

The reason I highlight this as part our ongoing occasional series, College Football Countdown, is because it demonstrates one of my favorite things about college football. The game rewards innovation. Never mind the structural reasons for this right now. But think about the NFL: Every team basically runs the same old tired scheme. The West Coast Offense (TM) was new at basically the same time as Trapper Keepers and Garbage Pail Kids. And yet two decades later, most NFL offenses feature some form of one-back, sideways-passing attack. This is not to dump on the NFL, the sport on which I was weaned. I love my NFL Sundays. (Those of you who know me have probably heard my aphorism that baseball is our national pastime and the NFL is our national obsession.)

But the NFL seems to be in kind of a coffin corner of talent. Defenses are so good and so fast, there's really only a couple proven ways to move the ball. Any deviation from the straightforward norm is likely to be punished.

NFL coaches also are working on a shorter time frame, with much more scrutiny from fans and media. This leads many to favor the kind of proven schemes that produce utterly boring, cookie-cutter football for nationwide broadcast. Laugh if you want, then imagine the punting unit trotting out on Sunday night football after an incomplete pass on 3rd-and-1.

The chief counter-arguement to this, of course, is the success of the creative and inventive schemes of the New England Patriots. ButI feel as though the Patriots aren't actually all that radical, except by the staid guidelines of the NFL. They're like pad thai on the menu at the country club. Bill Belichick, a decidedly Milton Waddams-esque coach in his Cleveland days, was unafraid to experiment by the time he took over the Patriots, and has been rewarded for it.

Now the bigger college football programs tend to be almost as fearful of innovation. Tradition is part of the whole package at schools like Michigan, Ohio State, Tennessee, Alabama and the like. Which is why you tend to see the newer, more off-the-wall schemes come out of smaller schools, where there's less to lose, and coaches might as well make a splash, rather than go take a loss running the same old I-formation.

Which is why Urban Meyer has found the perfect Football Factory school to develop his craft. Florida, of course, is the former home of Steve Spurrier, another fearless innovator. So the media and fan base welcomes an approach like this. Meyer's also got Leak at quarterback, a major advantage for any coach. But the most important thing I care about in all this is that Florida is going to be on TV almost every week, going against top-flight teams on a near-weekly basis.

I can't wait.