Real talk, I think it's time we talk about the Wing T. @canderson and @Rick Burlesons Yam Bag , please sound off.
I will quickly duck out of this conversation, honestly, but I'll explain my affection for it. Story time!
The year was 1998 and I was covering a pretty mediocre 3-8 Stanford football team for the Stanford Daily. In the runup to the 100th Big Game against Cal, I was assigned an article that *seemed* like a not-that-bad type of thing but turned out to be the heaviest lift, lowest-margin job I've ever had: write a 2,000 word article for the cover of Cardinal Today (the gameday tabloid about all things Stanford Football) explaining the history of football strategy and how Big Game contributed to it over time. Believe it or not, there's a lot! Pop Waner was responsible for a bunch of strategic innovations while coaching the then Indians, the Power T that the 1940s Bears used to great success came out of Clark Shaughnessy's Stanford teams*, and of course, Bill Walsh honed his high-flying West Coast offense during his first stint at Stanford before moving up the peninsula to the 49ers. There was plenty of innovation on the Cal side as well, but this being a Stanford publication, Stanford's own contributions were obviously featured more prominently.
Anyway, this turned into an absolute 100-hour wormhole of research, scouring the Geocities and Angelfire websites of the late 1990s to overturn every possible connection between a Stanford/Cal coach and the evolution of the modern game. I was paid, if I recall, $18 for the article, which is sort of 'Malaysian Sweatshop' hourly rates, but I digress. I learned a lot**, but my biggest takeaway by FAR (other than 'never commit to fixed rate pay for potentially unlimited work') was "Holy Shit, People Fucking Love the Wing T."
It became a running joke between me and my roommates, who would invariably come home from class to find me reading EVEN MORE about the Delaware Wing T, sort of fascinated by the passion that people had for it. The one Yammer and I keep joking about was this one page, total 1990s Geocities font, probably black on an uncomfortably dark 'football turf' background with the animated 'under construction' gif, with the headline in bold underlined all caps: PLEDGE YOUR ALLEGIANCE TO THE WING T.
My only exposure to the Wing T was preparing in high school to play some team that ran the Wing T exclusively. All I remember was a lot of fast-hitting plays, a fuck ton of misdirection, and, if I remember correctly, my coach's opinion that it's a great, well-run offense that just *works*, with one weakness: all the handoffs typically happen in about a one-yard radius, and if you can get to that spot quickly with A gap pressure, you can kinda blow up the whole offense. Easier said than done, obviously.
OK have it. Let's talk Wing T. Is my recollection about A Gap pressure true, or did I invent that?
*Quoting from the internet, "Legendary Coach "Pop" Warner, who had headed the Stanford program before handing the reins over to Thornton, proclaimed: "If Stanford ever wins a single game with that crazy (Power T) formation, you can throw all the football I ever knew into the Pacific Ocean. What they're doing is ridiculous." Those words would later be used as an indictment of Pop to show that the game had, indeed, passed him by."
** Other thing I remember learning was over a record that I think falls into the "Cy Young 511 Wins" category in terms of never being broken or even approached. Bob "Horse" Reynolds of Stanford's Vow Boys - who vowed they'd never lose to USC, and made good on the promise - played in 180 consecutive minutes in the Rose Bowl. Those teams went to three straight and he never came out of any of those three games.
I will quickly duck out of this conversation, honestly, but I'll explain my affection for it. Story time!
The year was 1998 and I was covering a pretty mediocre 3-8 Stanford football team for the Stanford Daily. In the runup to the 100th Big Game against Cal, I was assigned an article that *seemed* like a not-that-bad type of thing but turned out to be the heaviest lift, lowest-margin job I've ever had: write a 2,000 word article for the cover of Cardinal Today (the gameday tabloid about all things Stanford Football) explaining the history of football strategy and how Big Game contributed to it over time. Believe it or not, there's a lot! Pop Waner was responsible for a bunch of strategic innovations while coaching the then Indians, the Power T that the 1940s Bears used to great success came out of Clark Shaughnessy's Stanford teams*, and of course, Bill Walsh honed his high-flying West Coast offense during his first stint at Stanford before moving up the peninsula to the 49ers. There was plenty of innovation on the Cal side as well, but this being a Stanford publication, Stanford's own contributions were obviously featured more prominently.
Anyway, this turned into an absolute 100-hour wormhole of research, scouring the Geocities and Angelfire websites of the late 1990s to overturn every possible connection between a Stanford/Cal coach and the evolution of the modern game. I was paid, if I recall, $18 for the article, which is sort of 'Malaysian Sweatshop' hourly rates, but I digress. I learned a lot**, but my biggest takeaway by FAR (other than 'never commit to fixed rate pay for potentially unlimited work') was "Holy Shit, People Fucking Love the Wing T."
It became a running joke between me and my roommates, who would invariably come home from class to find me reading EVEN MORE about the Delaware Wing T, sort of fascinated by the passion that people had for it. The one Yammer and I keep joking about was this one page, total 1990s Geocities font, probably black on an uncomfortably dark 'football turf' background with the animated 'under construction' gif, with the headline in bold underlined all caps: PLEDGE YOUR ALLEGIANCE TO THE WING T.
My only exposure to the Wing T was preparing in high school to play some team that ran the Wing T exclusively. All I remember was a lot of fast-hitting plays, a fuck ton of misdirection, and, if I remember correctly, my coach's opinion that it's a great, well-run offense that just *works*, with one weakness: all the handoffs typically happen in about a one-yard radius, and if you can get to that spot quickly with A gap pressure, you can kinda blow up the whole offense. Easier said than done, obviously.
OK have it. Let's talk Wing T. Is my recollection about A Gap pressure true, or did I invent that?
*Quoting from the internet, "Legendary Coach "Pop" Warner, who had headed the Stanford program before handing the reins over to Thornton, proclaimed: "If Stanford ever wins a single game with that crazy (Power T) formation, you can throw all the football I ever knew into the Pacific Ocean. What they're doing is ridiculous." Those words would later be used as an indictment of Pop to show that the game had, indeed, passed him by."
** Other thing I remember learning was over a record that I think falls into the "Cy Young 511 Wins" category in terms of never being broken or even approached. Bob "Horse" Reynolds of Stanford's Vow Boys - who vowed they'd never lose to USC, and made good on the promise - played in 180 consecutive minutes in the Rose Bowl. Those teams went to three straight and he never came out of any of those three games.