With success of Tech's offense, why no copycats?

By Ray Glier

For the AJC

Considering its success, the Georgia Tech offense should have legs and be on the move to the four corners of the college football map. The spread option should be drawn up on blackboards, studied and adopted.

The offense works, and the proof is right there on the schedule with the results.

No, not the Yellow Jackets’ schedule and results. Ohio State’s schedule and results.

Go to the Buckeyes’ Web site. Look down the list of scores for this season. You'll see Ohio State 31, Navy 27. See any other Big Ten teams that scored as many points against the Buckeyes as the Midshipmen, who run coach Paul Johnson’s spread option, the offense he left behind in Annapolis when he came to Georgia Tech? Purdue had 26 against Ohio State, Illinois was shut out, Minnesota got seven.

So why isn’t Johnson’s offense spreading, like the Florida spread with the quarterback in shotgun, or Texas Tech’s multiple-receiver look, or the zone-read option made popular by West Virginia, or the "wildcat" that most teams run?

Don’t football coaches copy what works and make it their own?

“When you watch how they operate and how efficient they are, you would think there would be some people around the country that would want to do what they are doing,” Penn State coach Joe Paterno said about Tech’s offense. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some people don’t start to fool around with it, maybe in the spring.”

Don’t hold your breath. BCS teams are not running toward it; they are not even crawling. The alibis for not running Johnson’s offense stack up like a winter’s supply of wood.

*“The No. 1 thing is would the modern-day fan handle it because we’ve got video games, so many games on TV, and that fans want to see excitement," said Mack Brown, coach of No. 2 Texas. "Now the way Paul runs the option it is exciting, but there’s not as many passes. The second part is would you be able to come from behind if you got behind by three touchdowns if the game got started wrong.”

*“The biggest thing most people would say is recruiting,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said about why the Tech offense is not more popular. “Everybody thinks they are going to NFL, that’s one of the big things, not that you can’t go to the NFL playing in that system. If you are going to recruit that great skilled wide-out, most of the time, they are going to go to a place that is a little more conventional offense where they are throwing the ball.”

Johnson doesn’t even have to rehearse his responses to people who insist the offense is not adaptable to big-time college football. He has heard this stuff so much his rebuttal is stamped on his tongue.

“What was the big party line before, it won’t ever work at a BCS league, they are too fast,” said Johnson, whose team rolled up 597 yards on Vanderbilt of the SEC. “The defenses are too fast, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. Now that we have started to have some success, the party line is you can’t recruit, but we’ve had two pretty good recruiting classes, and it looks like we are going to have a third one.

“So what’s going to be next?”

The exporting of Johnson’s offense is going to take a coach with the spirit of an entrepreneur, as well as a coach with political capital who could withstand the shrieks of fans. Maybe if the school lost to a powerhouse long enough they might actually consider something unique.

“I’ve always laughed at some of those guys who try to beat [USC] doing the same things that [the Trojans do],” Johnson said. “You’re never going to get as good of players, so how are they ever going to beat them doing the same thing they’re doing. It never made much sense to me.”

The Tech spread option has some roots in the wishbone developed at Texas in 1968 by the Longhorns offensive coordinator Emory Bellard. Texas tied its first game, lost its second, then won 30 straight by rushing for 363 yards per game in 1969 and 374 yards per game in 1970.

Soon, the wishbone was exported. Royal allowed Barry Switzer, a young assistant at Oklahoma, to come to Austin and study the offense, and OU adopted it. Kentucky coach Rich Brooks was an assistant at UCLA when Pepper Rodgers, who later became Tech's coach, adopted the wishbone and won 17 games in two seasons.

“The fans didn’t like it because it wasn’t, quote, exciting enough, there wasn’t enough passing, and they didn’t beat [USC],” Brooks said. “That stopped it on the west coast. A lot of people on the west coast became disenchanted with it because they want to see the ball thrown a little more.

“Some changes in football take place because people end up stopping them, and some changes take place because fans don’t like it. A lot of the change away from the old option style, the Oklahoma, Texas stuff, was made because fans became disenchanted. It has always been difficult to stop, and it obviously still is.”