Development of the Spread
July 22, 2009 03:55 PM | General
(3:56 pm)
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This week's smorgasbord of notes ...
Legendary television icon Walter Cronkite, who died last Friday evening at age 92, was a fixture on the CBS News who was once called “the most trusted man in America.”
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| The late Walter Cronkite helped immortalize Sam Huff.
Pro Football Hall of Fame photo |
In 1960, America’s most trusted man had a part in creating the legend of Sam Huff, pro football’s tough-guy middle linebacker who became immortalized in a 30-minute television documentary narrated by Cronkite called “The Violent World of Sam Huff.”
The film provided the country with its first close-up look at professional football. Huff was mic’d during a game and provided fans with an inside glimpse of what it was like playing middle linebacker in the pros.
Although Huff signed plenty of endorsement deals after that documentary, he said that he was never really able to cash in on a big contract like some of his other New York Giants teammates did.
“I was jealous of Frank Gifford,” Huff told me once. “We used to call him Mr. Hollywood.”
The most money Huff said that he ever made in one season was $38,000 when he was traded from the New York Giants to the Washington Redskins.
However, Cronkite’s documentary - and the forward thinking of NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle - helped professional football become the most popular sport in the country.
To borrow a famous Cronkite phrase … And that’s the way it is, Wednesday, July 22, 2009.
Earlier this week, ESPN Radio’s Colin Cowherd came up with a list of the five college football teams that he believes Las Vegas is sleeping on.
From five to one, Cowherd lists Notre Dame, BYU, Stanford, Rutgers and Penn State as the five football programs he thinks will do better than the oddsmakers are predicting.
On the flip side, Cowherd picked three teams that he says will win fewer games. Numbers three and two are Washington and Texas Tech.
Number one on his list is West Virginia.
“The No. 1 overrated team in college football is West Virginia,” Cowherd said. “Vegas has them winning 8 ½ games. They are not well coached. Their senior quarterback, Pat White, hid their flaws from the coaching staff.
“They return only 59 percent of their lettermen, lowest in the Big East; they are switching offenses with a weak offensive line. It’s a huge issue.”
Cowherd continued.
“They lost two stars on their offensive line. They only return five starters (on offense). Most of their games that could go either way are on the road,” he explained. “East Carolina is at home, but they’ll lose and get out-coached by Skip Holtz. They’ll lose at Auburn, lose at South Florida, lose at Cincinnati, lose at Rutgers; I have them losing to Pittsburgh.
“This team is not well coached. They lose a senior quarterback that was athletic in that conference and hid many of their flaws.”
Hmm.
Sticking with ESPN guys, Mark Schlabach has an interesting piece running on The Family’s online wing about the evolution of the spread offense. He said the roots of the spread came from the Run ‘n’ Shoot offense created by high school coach Tiger Ellison in 1958.
Where West Virginia fits into this is the Mountaineers’ surprising 38-35 upset victory over Georgia in the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl, which Schlabach lists in the story timeline as one of the most notable moments in the development of the spread.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=4340650
After thinking about this for a while, I seem to recall another cutting edge coach at West Virginia University.
Many years ago, Offensive Coordinator Bobby Bowden called Texas Coach Darrell Royal to learn more about the hot offensive fad of the time – the wishbone - before the Mountaineers’ appearance against South Carolina in the 1969 Peach Bowl.
Bowden was able to slip that offense in right underneath the Gamecock’s noses, helping West Virginia run for more than 350 yards in a 14-3 victory.
“The press was not as well informed back then so we were able to put it in without them knowing,” Bowden said in 2004.
When Bowden became head coach in 1970, he kept a form of the Texas wishbone in his regular offense to compliment the Houston veer that he was also running.
Staying on the spread, ESPN blogger Brian Bennett earlier this week talked to Pitt defensive coordinator Phil Bennett about ways of defending that offense. What Bennett said he tries to do is to treat the spread like the option game where he places a guy on the outside end and an inside-out guy on the quarterback.
Where Bennett says defenses can get into real trouble with the spread is when offenses are able to play action pass off of it (isn’t that what Bill Stewart and Jeff Mullen have been saying for almost two years now?).
“I watched West Virginia against North Carolina, and they were so geared up to stop the run that Pat (White) threw for 330 yards – and it was off play pass,” said Bennett.
Read it for yourself.
http://myespn.go.com/blogs/bigeast
Our sports information graduate assistant Steve Stone is a big Buffalo Bills fan, so he sent along a note about former Mountaineer defensive back Ellis Lankster.
Lankster was drafted in the seventh round by the Bills and he has played extremely well during minicamp. Buffalo Bills.com’s Chris Brown lists Lankster as one of the team’s sleepers heading into training camp.
“Unofficially, (Lankster) had three interceptions and seven pass breakups through OTAs and minicamp, and held his own when matched up against some of the top wideouts on Buffalo’s roster,” Brown wrote.
“He’s got the athletic skills to push to make this team,” said defensive backs coach George Catavolos.
Go get ‘em Ellis.
Can you name a coach in college football today making more than $3 million per year who has never won a BCS bowl game?
He exists and he’s working at the University of Iowa.
Earlier this week, Kirk Ferentz signed a seven-year contract extension that will pay him an annual salary of $3.02 million per year.
Number one, Ferentz has the most generous boss in America, and two, cutting out a couple hundred thousand dollars from printed media guides is definitely the way to go for athletic departments to save money.
For those former Mountaineers out there, the Varsity Club Weekend will take place Sept. 11-2 in Morgantown. Golf is planned for Friday at the Pines Country Club and Saturday, the Mountaineer Athletic Club will have a tailgate at the Coca-Cola Hospitality Village before West Virginia’s game against East Carolina.
All ex-athletes are welcome to the tailgate, but a limited number of game tickets are available for dues-paying Varsity Club members. To find out about ticket availability and/or joining the WVU Varsity Club, contact the Mountaineer Athletic Club toll-free at 1-800-433-2072.
And finally, last weekend WVU basketball All-American Wil Robinson was officially inducted into the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame. According to Gary McPherson, there representing West Virginia University, Robinson told a humorous story about being tricked by the George Washington student section into shooting the ball early in a game that wound up going into overtime.
The contest was tied and WVU Coach Sonny Moran had instructed Robinson to run down the clock before taking the last shot.
As he was backing in to get closer to the basket, the GW students began counting down … five, four, three, two, one. Robinson fired up a desperate shot that George Washington managed to rebound with plenty of time still remaining on the clock.
GW didn’t make the basket and the Mountaineers wound up winning the game in overtime. That is where Robinson left the story.
McPherson, who remembered the game vividly, said there was a post script to Robinson’s story. In the locker room afterward, Sonny went up to Robinson and asked him why he had shot the ball with being plenty of time still remaining on the clock. Robinson explained that he had heard the students counting down.
“I thought they were telling the truth,” Robinson said.
Overhearing the conversation, husky forward Dick Symons chimed in. “Hell, Wil, this is Washington, D.C. Nobody tells the truth over here!”
Have a great week!
