From my formative years through the late 1980s, Ohio State was seriously challenged for the top spot in my heart.
The Buckeyes held serve and Texas Tech was my faraway team as I scrambled to find info in the non-internet age, but the Oklahoma Sooners were the top challenger to the Buckeyes.
In fact, I hated the two times that the teams played in 1977 and 1983!
Why? It was the personality of Barry Switzer, his colorful players, and the wonder that is option football or more specifically the Wishbone offense.
Texas might have started the Wishbone by being the first team to popularize the offense, but it was Switzer and the Sooners that truly installed the offense as a rarely stopped force.
As successful as the Longhorns were running the 'bone, the Sooner's version was better for one reason-Barry Switzer committed themselves to recruiting the African-American athlete at all positions instead of just at specific positions.
The Sooners were playing black quarterbacks at a time that other teams were hardly recruiting black players and that made a huge difference between the Sooners and other teams using the system.
With the elite players playing for Oklahoma and with the strengths of the offense, the Sooners did not lose very many games when I was a Sooner fan.
To this day,I can remember Sooner quarterbacks like J.C.Watts, Thomas Lott, and Jamelle Holieway running the corner and making that last second pitch to a trailing back, who would then shoot down the sidelines for a long touchdown run.
The offense featured three running backs on the field with a fullback stationed directly behind the quarterback and the two remaining halfbacks split behind the fullback, which looking at it from behind the line of scrimmage gave the offense its name.
The Wishbone required a quarterback that was able to think on his feet and he had to be quick on them as well.
The three options that a quarterback (therefore the name of Triple Option) had to read from the line of scrimmage was for the quarterback to run ( that could also be a pitch further down the line), hand the ball off (usually to a fullback straight ahead, but could be a halfback run as well) or the seldomly called pass play.
The Wishbone did not have many passes called other than the occasional short pop pass over the middle to the tight end.
It was not uncommon for a Wishbone team to throw less than ten passes a game and often five or six might be the height of the passing numbers.
The offense was not for everyone as the 1985 National Champion Sooners found out as they struggled with Troy Aikman at the controls.
Aikman could not run the traditional bone, so Oklahoma tried a hybrid in order to take advantage of Aikman's strengths.
The results saw the Sooners lose their only game of the season with an offense that was sputtering and only when Aikman's season ended with a broken leg and freshman Jamelle Holieway running the pure Wishbone did the Sooners go on their title run.
The two major issues with the Wishbone as defenses began to figure it out were that you needed at least two quarterbacks as the QB's took so many hits and that if you got behind, the limitations in the passing game (with three running backs, there is only one wide receiver) make it very difficult to catch up on the scoreboard and when trailing if you choose to stick with the running game, the clock rolls on so much faster without the incomplete passes to stop the clock.
The Wishbone is still used by a few teams, Georgia Tech uses a variation of the offense, the military schools use it as an equalizer against the bigger schools, and I-AA powerhouse Georgia Southern has used it ever since their program was started in the 1980s, but it is not in vogue currently as most quarterbacks want to throw the football more than the offense would allow.
I love option football and I love watching it.
Few games in my tape collection (now DVD) get more use than old Oklahoma games just because I enjoy them so much.
I wish someone would give it a try with a top program again, but I kinda doubt that will happen.
In any event, that's the story on the Wishbone and my years singing Boomer Sooner.
Back again tomorrow!
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