Just saw that piece about the Big Ten coaches begging for a 24-team playoff and I gotta say it makes me miss the old option offense more than anything. You watch these spread teams now with their RPOs and their QB draws and they have no idea what real misdirection looks like. Back in the 90s when Coach Fran was running that veer option we could make a defense look silly without a single pass attempt. You knew exactly what we were going to do and you still could not stop it because it was about discipline and execution not about scheme complexity.
The triple option was a thing of beauty. Three guys converging on the fullback and then the quarterback pulls it and the pitch man is already five yards downfield. That is coaching pure and simple. You do not need five star recruits to run that offense. You need a quarterback who can read one defender and a fullback who is not afraid to get hit. We had guys like LaDainian Tomlinson running out of that system and it was poetry. Now everything is about tempo and space and analytics and I just shake my head.
I know I sound like an old man yelling at clouds but watch a game from the 1994 season and tell me that is not more entertaining than watching these teams run the same RPO bubble screen fifteen times a game. The option offense was about toughness and trust. Your linemen had to be quick on their feet and your backs had to hit the hole with bad intentions. None of this finesse stuff. I would give anything to see us line up in the wishbone one more time and just run it down somebody's throat for four quarters. That was real football.