Spread offense is helping the little guy thrive

by Greg Boeck, Special to FOXSports.com

Updated: August 19, 2008, 5:06 PM EST 63 comments

In these preseason days of hopes and Bowl Championship Series dreams, however, the mad scientists behind the spread of the spread offense in college football are all banking on the same bottom line: The up-tempo, no-huddle, skill-oriented, pass-happy, fan-friendly offense will be The Great Equalizer for the have-nots of the game.

The offense, hardly new but spreading like wildfire, played a key role in the 2007 season of upsets, kicked off by Appalachian State's shocker at Michigan and punctuated by West Virginia's embarrassment of Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.

Now, it's all the rave across the college football landscape, THE blueprint for leveling the playing field against the likes of LSU, Ohio State, Southern California and Georgia.

Of course, as college football analyst Terry Bowden has noted, LSU did win the national championship last season employing a conventional offense, which is what Ohio State, USC and Georgia also run.

Still, you can feel the buzz in outposts like Auburn, where Tony Franklin's newly-installed spread offense spit out a 23-20 bowl victory against Clemson that featured a season-best 423 yards and 93 plays. During the regular season, Auburn averaged 56 plays.

Out: the pound-it-inside two-back offense. In: fun, wide-open football.

In Hattiesburg, Miss., they've caught the fever with new Southern Mississippi coach Larry Fedora on board.

"The old saying is defense wins championships and offense fills the seats," Fedora says. "You are going to put people in the stands because they want to see you score some points. If not, soccer would be our sport like the rest of the world.''

The offense puts a premium on skilled players, and have-nots can recruit them with the lure of immediate playing time and thrill of offensive fireworks.

Everybody touches the football in the equal-opportunity spread, which stretches the field horizontally and creates vertical seams and one highlight-film dash to the end zone after another.

"You can run the football out of the spread and throw out of it,'' says Fedora, who spent the last three seasons as offensive coordinator at Oklahoma State, where in each of the past two years the Cowboys were in the top 10 in rushing yards and top 20 in total offense per game.

It's like option football used to be. It gave you a chance, if you didn't have massive offensive linemen, because people had to defend the option.

"What the spread does," Fedora says, "is now you are spreading the entire field and putting the ball into somebody's hands in the open field, where, if one guy misses, you have a chance for an explosive play. That's why it's the great equalizer.''

If nothing else, it is closing the gap on the haves.

Check out Texas Tech, which received its highest preseason ranking (No. 14) in 31 years in the first USA Today Coaches Poll. The Red Raiders did even better in The Associated Press preseason Top 25, with a No. 12 ranking.

The last time Texas Tech was ranked as high in the preseason was in 1977 when the Red Raiders entered the season No. 8 in the AP poll.

The big reason? Coach Mike Leach's all-out aerial assault out of the spread offense. Leach, at the forefront of the offense's spread throughout college football, guided the Red Raiders to a Gator Bowl appearance last season with the nation's leading offense that featured the nation's leading receiver and quarterback.

"There is a lot of dimension to it,'' Leach says of the spread offense. "You can design your skill players in a variety of ways, move them around the field and get them isolated. It provides a lot of versatility, whether you want to run it or throw it.''

Graham Harrell and Mike Leach are thriving via the spread. (Sam Greenwood / Getty Images)

Since Leach arrived in Lubbock nine years ago, the Red Raiders have won five NCAA passing titles and three total offense titles. Leach's eight teams have also combined for 151 team and individual school records.

"It's fun to see everybody involved,'' says Leach, who has turned Tech into Quarterback U. "You don't know what's going to happen because so many people can get the ball.''

No wonder coaching staffs across the country have visited Lubbock to pick Leach's brain.

But will the spread offense ever reward a have-not with a national title? "I don't know,'' says Leach. "We're just going to try to beat Eastern Washington.''

At Missouri, coach Gary Pinkel has parlayed the spread offense and 12-2 finish last season into a No. 6 AP ranking and No. 7 USA Today preseason ranking .

That's what happens when you return a Heisman Trophy candidate (Chase Daniel) who directed an offense that produced 6,864 total yards and two of his favorite targets (Jeremy Maclin and Chase Coffman).

June Jones, who created offensive mismatches and defensive headaches at Hawaii, will try to duplicate that success at SMU with the introduction of his spread offense. The key player: Junior quarterback Justin Willis, who threw for 2,944 yards and 25 touchdowns last season on a 1-11 team.

Perhaps the biggest testament to the growing popularity of the spread came at Arizona. The Wildcats hired defensive genius Mike Stoops five years ago, but 12 wins in his first three years sent him looking for an offensive specialist to rescue the program.

Spread offense guru Sonny Dykes joined the staff last season and the Wildcats set single-season records for passing yards, passing yards per game, completions, touchdown passes and completion rates.

And where did Dykes learn his trade? As offensive coordinator under Mike Leach.

Spread the word — and the offense.