Particularly for a program which isn't a routine Top-20 football factory, and even moreso for a program which routinely wins zero to four games per season for several times in a decade, trying something contrarian, even updating something anitquarian makes sense. Do something which most other programs, particularly in your conference, aren't doing on offense. Sure, CPJ's option-based spread would be a possibility, but go back further. Wishbone. Single-wing. Triple-wing. (It's not like pieces of those generally forgotten systems haven't lived on. The direct snap concept is from the single wing. Empty backfield, just the QB? That's an old triple-wing look.) Some exceptionally fine coaches (e.g., Andy Kerr, Francis Schmidt) in the '30s encouraged their offensive players to do downfield laterals occasionally -- something which that crazy successful, never-punt/always onside-kick/always-go-for-it-on-4th-down Arkansas high school coach Kevin Kelley has done since 2015. It astounds me that the few college offenses with an under-center QB don't dust off the old "buck-lateral" series, which some T-formation coaches in the '50s adapted upon borrowing it from single-wing teams.
When Spurrier brought the Fun 'n Gun to the staid SEC in the '90s, from stretching the field to using that "Emory & Henry" formation for a radical change-up, he said this in 1995: "If you want to be successful," Spurrier told S.L. Price of Sports Illustrated in 1995, "you have to do it the way everybody does it and do it a lot better -- or you have to do it differently. I can't outwork anybody and I can't coach the off-tackle play better than anybody else. So I figured I'd try to coach some different ball plays, and instead of poor-mouthing my team, I'd try to build it up to the point where the players think, Coach believes we're pretty good; by golly, let's go prove it."
UT faithful would go nuts just have dwag fans have!
