College Football Mythology 101

Urban Myth #1

The spread option offense is going to revolutionize college football and change the way teams recruit quarterbacks. No longer will a need exist for Peyton Manning-esque quarterbacks who are six-feet, four or five inches tall and weight 240 lb. pocket passers. Now, each and every team will need a lithe quarterback who can run like a gazelle and provide a modicum of a passing attack. This is complete media hype, and if the majority of college coaches actually adhere to this popular philosophy, there will be some sad-ass football fans across the nation. Lots of this speculation is based around two factors. The first factor is that Tim Tebow just won the Heisman Trophy and his team, the Florida Gators, are defending BCS National Champions. The Tebow-led Gators lost three games this year. The major difference between last year's team and this year's team is that the majority of last year's defense moved on to the NFL. Analysts always discuss the difficulty of defending against the spread, but apparently LSU, Georgia and Auburn had little problem accomplishing this task.

The second factor rests in Michigan's hiring of Rich Rodriguez, who has performed well at West Virginia with a Pat White led squad. White is about six feet tall and weighs about a buck eighty-five. Now, he moves to skipper the Big Blue, who should be quarterbacked by ryan Mallet, a six-feet, seven inches Texan, who was considered the second best quarterback coming out of high school and who already has gained valuable game experience as a freshman. So, Michigan is going to bench Mallet for Rodriguez's qb of choice? It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out, but my guess is that Rodriguez will need to hire or keep a good defensive coordinator and recruit some defensive talent to keep Michigan near the top of The Big Ten in upcoming years.

Essentially, the fanatacism of turning to the spread offense is a fad reminscent of the wishbone craze of the late 1970s and early 80's. Ten years from now, a few coaches will run it, but most schools will opt out of the fad once their teams start posting more notches in the loss column.