College Football History: The Wishbone

Youtube ^ | About a year ago | Matthew Wright

[ought-six]

“Do that now and you’ll get a defensive holding call. And you can’t even go low and hard to take out the blockers any more.”

Your phrase “any more” is critical.

My argument was about how Notre Dame stopped the wishbone some fifty years ago. It is disingenuous to apply that to today’s game — as you are doing — that has been impacted by a plethora of new rules and penalties that did not exist fifty years ago.

In the wishbone, and triple option, the tactic was to confuse the defense as to just who among various potential ball carriers had the ball (i.e., fakes and sleight of hand, etc.); and the rules back then accepted that the defense could be “tricked” into going after a potential ball carrier who actually did NOT have the ball, and tackle him; that was not a penalty, because the defense did exactly what it was expected to do (thus, it was not defensive holding).

[Pilsner]

Rules changes were the main demise of triple option football (regardless of what formation was used).

Agree. Have the NFL go back to its 1960 rules, called as they were, including 36 man rosters, and the more rugby like football, and you could win with Paul Brown’s Defense, and Tom Landry’s Flex Offense. Try to run today’s pass oriented offenses, with offensive lineman unable to use their hands, defensive backs able to hit receivers until the ball is in the air, and no roughing the passer personal foul, and you would be crushed.

Not saying the old game was better, but it was very different.

[spankalib]

:))

I root for all the service academies.

Pro offenses won't work at the academies - they just can't recruit that kind of talent.

That's why team oriented offensive systems, like the trip-op, or the double wing are so successful, they focus on team rather than individual stars.

[reed13k]

Yep .... a lot of us alumi are still aggravated from when they started adding players names to their shirts instead of just having their number.

[IrishBrigade]

‘I always wondered what happened. It worked so well, and then..... it didn’t.’

the pro’s don’t like tossing the ball around in the backfield, and they don’t like their QB’s taking more hits than necessary...

[wgmalabama]

I always thought that. I wondered what killed it. This helped answer that question. I do wonder why more colleges don’t run it today. I am not athletic in nature so it may be harder to execute than I give it credit.

[scrabblehack]

Quarterbacks run more?

I was wondering why NFL running backs’ pay has not kept up with that of other positions. My thought was that more quarterbacks run.

[dfwgator]

Running backs are pretty much now a dime a dozen. The running game depends much more on the offensive line. Plus the career of a running back isn’t more than a few years, you rarely see running backs over the age of 30 anymore.