One of the things that has truly sucked about getting older is that I find myself caring less about silly shit than I used to. I’ve been limited to just one video game season at a time, which is awful. My baseball and football cards were sold a longtime ago. Saddest of all, last year college football got just my passing interest, at least compared to past years. I didn’t realize this until the NFL draft season came along and I could barely fill out a 3 round mock. I know, 3 rounds sounds like a lot, but I’m the same guy who did this last year. I love the draft, watched every pick since I was in 5th grade (the Manning/Leaf draft), and generally know these players to a dorky fault. So how did someone who loved college football to a fault lose it? Jeff Fucking Mullen. The former WVU offensive coordinator killed the joy of watching WVU play. That joy being when we utterly ass-raped teams with an offense that seemed like a cheat code. That’s what Rod’s spread was for WVU: A fucking cheat code.
Four options? Fuck. I was really into the idea of becoming a coach around this time, and good lord I just wanted to learn the spread and find a 5th option and become the next ”genius”. Then Rod left, I got a English professor who let me use ”fuck” in papers, and now I’m here. Despite the dream change, and the consequences of learning such things, I still find offensive football ridiculously fascinating. Thats what made Jeff Mullens reign of terror at WVU so sad. He was running a high school version of the spread, essentially taking the school in reverse from where it was, as others like Urban Meyer (shotgun veer, west coast passing principles) and Chip Kelly (mid-line option) continued to evolve the spread in increasingly creative ways.
/shits pants
That play above is called ”Four Verticals” and new WVU OC Dana Holgorsen runs it like a drunk kid playing Madden. Holgorsen, a disciple of the awesomely insane Hal Mumme and Mike Leach, has taken the Air Raid concepts (draw,stick,mesh,4 verts) and packaged them in a ultimately tougher to stop way. Additionally, while Leach preferred horizontal routes, Holgorsen runs a lot of vertical routes. The man runs a ballsier passing game than Mike Leach, which is like out snuffing Larry Flynt.
**squees**
So what we end up out of all of this is the team I love being 2 for its last 3 in the ”hiring offensive genius” department. I don’t know if Holgorsen will do better than Bill Stewart has done, if he’ll be the guy to bring a National Title to WVU. But at the very least, I’ll be watching.
First Off The Bus 