JRN 362 Story of Football Lecture on Offense Evolution and TV Impact

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football
Rich Hanley, Associate Professor
Lecture Twenty-One

Review
• Off the field, both the college game
and the NFL kept pace with each
wave of technological change that
appeared to make the game more
accessible and popular over the last
decade of the 20th century and the
first two decades of the 21st. It also
made the game more vulnerable.

Peak Football, Peak TV
• As noted, colleges started to use the
run-and-shoot and other spread
offenses in the 1970s as Mouse
Davis at Portland State and John
Jenkins of the University of Houston
rode a wave of innovation that kept
defenses off-balance.
• The NFL adopted it, too.

• NFL teams began to move.
Cleveland went to Baltimore and
became the Ravens, to be replaced
by an expansion team in the city also
named the Browns.
• St. Louis moved to Arizona, to be
replaced by the Rams who would
return to Los Angeles from St. Louis.

• The Chargers, too, moved back to
Los Angeles, the original AFL home
of the franchise.
• The Oakland Raiders moved to Las
Vegas.

• College football likewise joined the
movable feast, only with conference
realignments.
• The Southwest Conference, one of
the first college conferences when
formed in 1914, folded in 1996.

• The Big 8 absorbed Texas and other
SWC schools and grew into the Big
12.
• It was still known as the Big 12 even
with less than 12 teams. Colorado
joined the Pac 12.

• Missouri and Texas A&M joined the
Southeastern Conference and
Nebraska joined the Big 10 to offset
the arrival of West Virginia and TCU
in the Big 12.
• But Texas and Oklahoma planned to
leave for the SEC by 2024.

• The Pac 8 became the Pac 10 and
then the Pac 12 by 2011 and the Pac
2 by 2023.
• The Big Ten, formed in 1895 as the
Western Conference, would stretch –
some would say yawn - from
California to New Jersey by 2024.

• The move of USC and UCLA to the
Big 10 showed that conferences that
once clustered in specific regions had
become national in scope and rich in
money.
• The SEC, ACC and Big 12 all
expanded beyond recognition while
the Pac 12 evaporated, leaving four
major conferences.

• The college playoffs likewise would
expand in 2024, moving from four to
12 teams, capping a movement that
began in the 1930s and became
formalized at first in 1998 when
football coaches and university
presidents developed the Bowl
Championship Series.

• The complex system tried to bolt a
championship structure onto to the
existing traditional bowl games, but it
failed to produce a clear champion.
• Finally in 2012, the BCS members
voted to start a four-team playoff
beginning in 2014.

• A committee would select and seed
the top four teams and integrate the
semifinals into the existing bowl
structure.
• As expected, the Power Five
conferences would dominate the
selection process, with the best of the
Group of Five conferences mostly left

• Despite criticism, the four-team
playoff would end with a true national
champion on the field, not in the
polls.
• And that team would more likely than
not feature a spread offense capable
of scoring points – lots of points.

• The January 4, 2006, game between
Texas and USC stands illustrates the
change in offense.
• The BCS national championship
game featured the top two scoring
offenses in the nation, the first time
that happened in a bowl or BCS
game in more than two decades.

• Heisman Trophy runner-up,
quarterback Vince Young led Texas
to a 50.9 points-per-game, average.
• USC 50 points per game and had two
Heisman recipients in quarterback
Matt Leinart and tailback Reggie
Bush.

• Texas won, 41-38.
• From 1989 until that 2005, no more
than six schools averaged 40 or more
points per game in a given year.

• Since that game, many schools per
year have averaged 40 or more
points per game. In 2018, 12 teams
averaged more than 40 per game, a
far cry from the 1920s and 1930s
when teams averaged between 13-16
points per game.

• In 2019, five teams averaged more
than 50 points per game, headed by
LSU with 57.8 points per game.
• Points per game have regressed from
that point but are still high – around
45.7 ppg in 2022 (Tennessee)- by
historical standards.

• The reasons behind the explosion in
offense in both the college and pro
games are clear: rule changes to
enhance safety and scoring, new
generations of artificial and natural
turf and climate-controlled stadiums,
and formations featuring fast players
that forced defenses to adapt with
speed and aggression.

• Take Hal Mumme and the Air Raid
offense, built upon generations of the
spread.
• Like the run-and-shoot, the air raid
offense emerged from high school
football, this one at Copperas Cove in
Texas where Mumme coached after
serving as a coordinator at UTEP.

• At UTEP, Mumme faced LaVell
Edwards and BYU’s pass-first
offense, so he visited Edwards to
learn about adapting a passing attack
for a high school team.
• BYU had won the national
championship in 1984 with its spread
offense.

• Under Edwards in 1990, BYU
quarterback Ty Detmer totaled 5,188
passing yards and 41 touchdowns in
12 regular season games.
• He set 42 NCAA records at the time
and stands sixth as of 2023 in all-time
career yardage with 15,031.

• Case Keenum of Houston is the all-
time leader with 19,217 yards (2007-
2011) as of 2023, followed by Timmy
Chang of Hawaii (17,0720 yards,
2000-2004).

• In 1989, Mumme took the head
coaching job at NAIA (now Division
III) Iowa Wesleyan and hired as an
assistant Mike Leach.
• Over 1989, 1990 and 1991, the two
refined BYU’s playbook into a no-
huddle, rapid-fire offense they would
call the Air Raid.

• Quarterback Dustin Dewald ran the
offense in 1991 and set several NAIA
passing records, including most
completions in a game (61), most in a
season (468), and most passing
attempts (715).

• The offense included plays such as
the Mesh, which spread players
outside the hash marks with crossing
routes if warranted.

• The shallow cross pattern developed
into one of the most widely used
plays in the scheme.

• Mumme and Leach took the offense
to NCAA Division II Valdosta State
and then to Kentucky, where
quarterback Tim Couch set numerous
records.
• Leach became head coach at Texas
Tech in 2000, where QB Kliff
Kingsbury starred in 2000-2002 .

• Recruiting violations stalled Mumme’s
career but Leach went on to coach
Washington State and then
Mississippi State.
• He died in 2022.

• The Air Raid offense became so
successful that Alabama coach Nick
Saban, in a move like what the Rules
Committee tried against Notre
Dame’s shift in the 1920s, asked for a
10-second-between-plays rule to
slow down the no-huddle offense.
The NCAA rejected it.

• Spread offenses would eventually
reach the NFL as college coaches
such as Chip Kelly from Oregon and
Kliff Kingsbury from Texas Tech
migrated to the pro game with
athletes who knew how to operate
the Air Raid and option offenses,
giving one segment of fans – fantasy
participants – lots of room for points.

• From 1987-2005, ESPN broadcast a
NFL game on Sunday nights, giving
fans what then-commissioner Paul
Tagliabue once described as a 12-
hour experience on that day of the
week. Between 1990-1997, the cable
channel TNT shared the Sunday
night slot.

• In addition to game coverage, ESPN
produced Sunday morning pre-game
shows and weeknight programs
arrayed in the space between the
NFL schedule.
• Extensive game highlights filled the
nightly Sports Center recap of games
as well.

• ESPN’s existence transformed both
pro and college football from events
an audience watched to one that, like
baseball, the audience followed now
that video would be available in many
different programs throughout the
week.

• When Direct TV launched its Sunday
Ticket on satellite in 1994, the NFL
showed that it alone could carry an
entire medium. With Sunday Ticket,
Direct TV might have failed to attract
enough subscribers to remain
solvent.

• Yet the most innovative development
in NFL coverage came from an
unlikely source: TNT.
• TNT anticipated the extraordinary
interest in fantasy football by
including player statistics on its in-
game crawl.

• In the years before widespread
adoption of the World Wide Web, the
crawl provided fantasy players and
leagues with vital stats from the
games played earlier in the day.
• The web, however, proved to be the
catalyst for a fresh path to watch and
follow football.

• To be sure, fantasy football existed in
a firm state prior to consumer
adoption of the internet as an in-
home information appliance.
• Leagues formed in companies and in
social networks of friends who
circulated through local bars and
clubs.

• League members would draft players,
usually in a mid-weeknight of
libations and fellowship.
• A commissioner tracked weekly
statistics and compiled standings on
paper. The web simplified and
automated the process, expanding
the fantasy realm.

• As when television emerged, an
uneasy sense percolated through the
NFL that fantasy football online would
undermine television coverage of
games.
• Chief among fears: fans would
monitor statistics, not watch the
game, eroding ticket sales.

• The fears were unwarranted.
• Fantasy football increased TV
viewership by 35 percent as fans
watched more games to track players
outside of their traditional rooting
interests.
• That meant more revenue.

• And as the Scott’s seed company did
with its 1960s booklet titled How to
Watch Football on TV, the NFL,
networks covering the league, other
sports sites and advertisers cultivated
an audience among fantasy players.

• That attitude is based on presenting
fantasy football as a skills-based
activity that requires research and
detailed analysis.
• Recall how the booklet on watching
football on TV was based on keeping
up with the Jones; now, fantasy
football would do the same.

• As one marketing scholar concluded,
“Promoting these types of aptitudes
will support and foster an experience
that encourages participants to spend
more time and money focused on the
sport products and services
associated with the fantasy sports
league.”

• The Ngram shows the explosion of
fantasy football as measured by use
of that expression in books.

• How popular is fantasy football?
• The Fantasy Sports Trade
Association estimates that some 60
million Americans play fantasy sports,
with most in football leagues.

• The average fantasy football follower
spends three hours per week on
tasks associated with playing.
• Enter legal, online gambling to the
mix in the 2020s.

• In 2021,the NFL partnered with
Caesars Entertainment, DraftKings
and FanDuel to score revenue from
the gaming sector.
• That’s ironic for a league that once
banned players for gambling and
sought to force Joe Namath to sell a
bar where gamblers were said to

• The NFL moved to colonize emerging
media and new media forms just as
the original organizers of football did
in the 19th century.
• The league launched NFL.com in
1995, hiring producers and reporters
to produce stories and operate a
fantasy league.

• The NFL spotted another opportunity
to extend its footprint in 2003: cable
television.
• In November 2003, the league
launched the NFL Network. That
gave it constant access to 85 percent
of TV viewers via cable or satellite.

• The NFL owned the rights to the
games and now could pay itself to
show the action on its own network,
drawing multiple revenue streams
through cable fees and advertising.

• At first, the NFL showed only a
handful of games on Thursday nights.
• In 2013, the league offered a full
season of Thursday games, with
extensive pre-game and post-game
programming to create more
inventory to generate more revenue.

• The networks, both traditional and
ESPN, meanwhile, continued to pay
billions of dollars to broadcast games
during the regular season, the
playoffs and, of course, the top-rated
show each year: the Super Bowl.
• Streamers are in the game, too.

• Amazon Prime secured the Thursday
night package from 2023 to 2033 with
a $1 billion annual rights fee to give
streaming a NFL foothold. It added a
Black Friday game in 2023.
• The 2023 NFL playoffs will also
include a streaming-only Wild Card
game on Peacock.

• Google’s YouTube TV snagged the
Sunday Ticket rights from satellite
service DirectTV, moving all out-of-
market games to that platform.

• In all, the NFL will earn at least $110
billion from traditional, cable and
streaming television networks and
platforms from 2022 to 2033.

• ESPN and the NFL Network devote
days of coverage to the NFL
Combine in late winter and to the
NFL Draft in the spring to keep fan
interest percolating outside of the
traditional season.

• The NFL Network’s RedZone channel
cuts to games with teams poised to
score and can show up to eight
games at once.
• The league describes the channel as
the “perfect Fantasy Football
companion.”

• Colleges likewise keep fan interest
high in the off-season, signing deals
with ESPN and regional sports and
conference networks for live
coverage of Pro Days and annual
spring practices and intrasquad
games.

• Still, college football could not avoid
scandal as it rode a wave of
unprecedented popularity.
• One of the most inexplicable cases
occurred in the unlikeliest of places:
Happy Valley.

• The Penn State scandal reduced all
the ills of college football into a single
campus.
• Here, a major university had been
controlled by its football coach, Joe
Paterno, simply because he won
games and his team drew 100,000
fans on Saturdays to State College,

• Paterno, a graduate of Brown
University who grew up in Brooklyn,
N.Y., joined Penn State as an
assistant in 1950 as an assistant. He
became head coach in 1966 and over
the next 45 years established Penn
State as a national power, winning
national championships in 1982 and
again in 1986.

• More than that, he served a role as a
reassuring presence as cultural and
technological change rinsed through
America from the mid 1960s to the
first decade of the 21st century.
• He was, like Vince Lombardi, a
throwback to a mythological past of
small-town America.

• Unlike the pros and even most
college teams, Paterno’s players
embodied the team concept from
their plain uniforms without team
logos or names on the back of
jerseys to the formal road attire.

• But behind the veneer stood a coach
who, like Rockne, threatened
administrators when threatened
himself over players’ legal and
academic issues.
• He threatened to tell alumni, for
example, to withhold donations and
told academic administrators that he
would discipline players.

• And most of all, he protected a former
assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, who
was accused of raping children in the
Penn State football locker room.
• In November 2011, Sandusky was
arrested for assaulting children, and
Paterno’s role in failing to notify
police emerged.

• Penn State fired Paterno, and
students, when hearing the news,
blamed the university and took to the
streets to protest to protect their
football coach, or rather their idea of
a football coach.

• Paterno died of cancer within months
of his dismissal.
• The university removed the statute
erected in his honor outside Beaver
Stadium.
• The NCAA later imposed sanctions
on the school that fell just shy of the
death penalty.

• The fall of Joe Paterno revealed the
same appearance versus reality
theme that had accompanied football
since the 19th century.
• That theme would deepen as
leagues, coaches and fans relied
increasingly on technology as their
interface with the game.

• The rise of video, internet and digital
technology from the mid 1980s to the
present consistently amplified the
NFL’s already dominant position and
helped college teams as well.

• In 1986, the NFL adopted instant
replay to review calls, adding an
element of strategy to the process by
leaving the decision to go to the
booth up to the coach.
• Replay rules have been tinkered with
over time to the present structure.

• College and NFL teams were
featured on video games, which
became ever more sophisticated and
realistic as the century deepened.
• Licensing deals for jerseys and
official gear, meanwhile, presented
opportunities for fresh flows of cash.

• Yet amid the rain of cash, problems
lurked.
• College players, for one, wanted a
piece of the video game and clothing
action given that the NCAA marketed
jerseys with their names on it. The
NCAA decided to end participation in
video games after 2014.

• That changed in 2021, when under
pressure from the federal government
and state legislatures – and a
Supreme Court decision - the NCAA
permitted athletes to earn money
from their names, images and
likenesses.

• College football players earn the
most in NIL compensation,
commanding a projected $726.2
million. That’s more than twice that
of men’s basketball players.

• The rise of fantasy football online,
video game licensing fees and NIL
deals created a torrent of cash, but it
pointed to an era when the violence
of the game would become blurred in
the abstractions of statistics.

• Yet through all the heroics, scandals
and cash, one fact that had been
apparent in the 19th century became
ever more so evident: the game’s
physical toll on players.

• Simply put, football had never really
changed after all these years despite
massive shifts in the technology and
culture.
• But it’s future look less certain than it
had even in 1905 when calls to ban
the game forced President Theodore
Roosevelt to step in.

• By the middle of the second decade
of the 21st century, youth participation
rates in tackle football wobbled.
• Would America awaken from its
dream life and end its love of ecstasy
and violence as exemplified by
football?

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