Just saw that clip of DeBoer on Finebaum talking about momentum and I had to change the channel for a second. Not because I dont like the man but because I got to thinking about something we have completely lost in this sport and it is the option game. You watch teams today run these spread zone reads where the quarterback tucks it and runs sideways and they call it an option. That is not the option. I remember sitting in Legion Field in 1990 watching us run the wishbone under Coach Stallings and seeing those fullbacks hit the hole at full speed with no hesitation. That was real football. No analytics, no tracking data, just a quarterback reading a defensive end and making a split second decision that could change the whole game.
We had a guy named Siran Stacy back in those early 90s teams who could take a simple option pitch and turn it into a 60 yard touchdown before you even finished your hot dog. The defense knew what was coming and they still could not stop it. That is the beauty of the option. It is not about tricking anybody. It is about being tougher than the man across from you and executing better. You do not need a $20 million NIL collective to run the option. You need offensive linemen who can pull and lead block and a quarterback who is not afraid to get hit. We won national championships in 1978 and 1979 running that same basic concept and nobody complained about the offense being boring.
Now every team in the country runs the same spread offense with the same RPO tags and the same mesh concepts. You watch Oregon and Texas and Ohio State and it all looks the same just with different uniforms. There is no variety anymore. No identity. When we played Tennessee in the 90s you knew they were going to run that option with Heath Shuler or Peyton Manning handing it off and you still had to stop it because they executed it perfectly. That was a chess match. Now it is just see who has the faster skill players and the bigger NIL budget.
I miss the days when you could tell what a team was going to do on third and short and they would still run it down your throat. The option was about willpower. About lining up and saying here it comes try to stop us. That is what built this program. Not transfer portal shopping sprees and seven on seven drills in February. We need to bring some of that old school mentality back before the game becomes unrecognizable. DeBoer can talk about momentum all he wants but I want to see some toughness in the run game this fall. That would be real momentum.