WVU 2.0: How Will Rodriguez's Replacement Revise the Spread Offense?

In my day job as a business reporter, I hear these terms a lot: "disruptive technology" and "creative destruction."

The former refers to something like MySpace or Facebook or the iPod: A piece of technology so revolutionary that it disrupts the marketplace and forces others to react radically.

The second refers to the process of reorganizing—often painfully—a company or technology for its betterment.

WVU had the former; now it must have the latter.

Rich Rodriguez's zone-read spread-option offense was the disruptive technology of the early part of this century in college football. It allowed smaller and less-talented teams to compete against better teams (witness Appy State against Michigan) and allowed good teams to, at times, overwhelm rivals (witness WVU versus Georgia in the 2006 Sugar Bowl).

Versions of the spread have, um, spread all across college football, from Florida to Texas to plays and sets I saw in the Division II playoffs—and even to the NFL, where I heard an announcer over the weekend call a "bubble screen," one of Rodriguez's go-to plays.

At many colleges, the spread has obliterated the I-formation, consigning it to the dustbin of college offensive history along with the Wing-T, and has even unset the pro-set.

The spread is now the norm in college football, which means defenses are learning how to stop it. The only proof you need of that is WVU's two losses to South Florida over the past two years, and last month's loss to Pitt.

Which means now, it's time for a little creative destruction at WVU.

I will not bad-mouth Rodriguez's record at WVU. He was 60-26 in his career with the Mountaineers, posting an average of 8.6 wins per season. He has won at least 10 games in each of the past three seasons, and his team will play in its second BCS bowl in three years next month.

It is uncharitable, as some have written, to say that, in his time at WVU, he only had one great half—the first half against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl—and choked in every other important game. It is indisputable that he and the team returned a poor performance in what was probably the biggest game of his career, the loss to Pitt. And it is hard to understand how he lost to South Florida two years in a row, in exactly the same fashion.

Yet the Big East championships, the Top 10 rankings, and improved recruits cannot be denied. So let's leave that there and move on.

Even before Rodriguez left, I wrote that he needed to shake up the offense—that it was killing Steve Slaton's numbers and concentrating too much firepower along the offensive line, which was getting gummed up by aggressive, penetrating defenses.

Rodriguez's offense is built on spreading the defense and getting his playmakers in space. But in recent games (UConn notwithstanding; the Huskies were outmanned) there has been no space.

The Bubble Screen got poked, the spread got squeezed, the reverse got reversed, and there was no downfield threat to take cornerbacks and safeties away from the line. (Where are you, Brandon Myles?)

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