Crimson Red Sports

Meltdown should be interesting this week.  This article is a peek into what's to come!

I liked the reference to old school football and new school football. I think their uniforms best describe them.

I don't think old school is a good description of our style of play.

We are not a three yards and cloud of dust offense. We have big strong mobile linemen. We are able to play two tight ends and take the snap under center and run right up the middle but we rarely do unless it is a short yardage situation. We use multiple formations and personnel. A lot of between the tackles running plays are out of the shotgun pistol formation. We often use 4 wide receivers. Much of what we do is based on a spread offense. We do all this with a very balanced attack.

We do not just line up on defense and say our guys are better than your guys. We may be able to do that in most games but we don't. We are constantly changing personnel and coverage. We use a lot of different blitz packages. We confuse the offense so they do not know what to expect. Sure we have big strong linemen and linebackers but our speed is what sets us apart from most defenses. We run one of the most complex defenses in college football.

I do not call our style of play old school at all. I think cutting edge is a better description.

 :rofl: I could only laugh when I saw them use that term. These young ones think that if anything isn't outlandish then it's got to be old school and when you look at their brand of football and their uniforms, I would say they are a bit outlandish. I kind of like the label "old school", because the old schoolers seem to win more than they lose and that ain't too bad of a thing. ;)

I hear old school and I think of Big 10 football. I think when people say we play old school they mean it as a complement.

We play SMASHMOUTH football, they play helter skelter

That's an excellent description of what Bama does.   :clap:

But I'm not sure "old school football" means three yards and a cloud of dust.  Bryant coached "old school football" but was still cutting edge for his time with the wishbone.   No one is going to win a championship playing styles and strategies that are decades old. 

So, I think old school football has to mean line-of-scrimmage oriented.  The spread offenses were developed by schools with smaller athletes trying to compete with bigger athletes, thus avoiding the line of scrimmage.  The emphasis is speed.   Stanford does the opposite -- they cannot competitively recruit speed guys at an academic school, but they can recruit big smart guys like Barrett Jones, a good QB, multiple TEs, etc.  While Stanford is "old school," they aren't simply three yards and a cloud of dust -- they take advantage of their player's brains too. 

Bama is "old school" in the sense that it is a line-of-scrimmage oriented team.  But that doesn't make it simple.

That's all well and good, but what is the point if we have no feathers on our jerseys or holographic images on our helmets?

Bama does something that gets more attention than uniforms:  Winning.