[Fly Like a Duck]

Nobody ever said the spread was some revolutionary answer to winning football games. But I'll tell you what it does do, it provides the offense with favorable numbers in the box in order to run the ball. Instead of running against 9 man boxes, you run against 5 and 6 man boxes. Instead of asking your best athletes to take the punishment of running the ball between the tackel 25 times a game, you get them the ball in space against guys their size, so they have better opportunities to make plays. And you are mistaken if you think it takes an all-American qb to run the Tony Franklin System. Raceland just graduated a kid that is 5"9 160 lbs and has a 35 yard arm.. By the way he threw for over 5,000 yards, 60 TDs, and won more game than anybody in school history, also lead his team to the state semifinals this year. And before you blame it on the system... Raceland is a run first team and had one of the leading rushers in Class A and all-area player of the year at RB, he got plenty of carries. Highlands, Owensboro Catholic, Mayfield, Elizabethtown, Franklin County, Raceland, NCC.. All these teams and many other have great success in this system. It's not what offense you run, it's how well you coach it and what players you have playing in it. And your point about play action.. Watch Baylor, they have some of the most effective play action concepts in the game right now bc they are in the spread, using the pistol to get your back running down hill while still giving the qb the benefit of being off the LOS. You're right about one thing, the spread is another form of pther offenses.. That's football man, everything ties in together somewhere. But to say teams from KY have trouble being successful in the spread bc of weather of lack of talent is just not true. You know that team called the Denver Broncos..they play in some of the worst condition in America, they run the spread. NE patriots.. Harsh conditions, spread offense. This type of offense is here to stay and will only become more and more expanded upon, might as well get used to it.

Since 1998, Highlands has had 3 of their QB's go onto be starting and some who have been record breaking QB's. Lorenzen, Guduigli and Towles are the furthest from average. I forget the kid they had last year (2012), but I know he had offers to go 1-AA (Ivy Leage), but chose to go to school to major in something that I can't even spell.

Owensboro Cath's QB back when they were runner's up to Belfry had a QB that went to Marshall.

E-town, the year they went the state finals had a D1 QB in Chris Todd who signed with Texas Tech, then later went to Auburn where he started as a Senior. Their last really good season was in '08, and they had a QB by the name of Chris Thomas, who is now going into his 2nd or 3rd year as the starting catcher for UK's baseball team. Far from your average athlete. They also had guys by the name of Chris Gohman (a Jacob Tamme type TE) who is at Georgetown (why our D1 schools didn't take a stab at him, who knows) and a young guy at the time named Mitchell Henry who plays TE at WKU and will likely get drafted.

Mayfield could win running the flipping "Oooopty Ooop". They've won winning titles in Class A and AA since the beginning of time. Ask Joe Morris why they went Spread after the 07 or 08 season. That year wasn't very good by their standards, the natives were growing restless with their old school attack...so, they switched. Mayfield won titles running the wishbone and they have won running the spread.

Bottom line, and it goes back to what you said in your orginal post. PLAYERS. That's what makes the difference. But, most FANS don't understand that...they'd rather blame it on the style of offense as the reason why their teams aren't successful instead of admitting to themselves that, "Ya know what, we just aren't very damn good."

It's like the firing of college and NFL coaches, heck even HS coaches. It makes that person and fan bases feel a lot better to fire a coach, bring somebody else in than to admit to themselves....."We just suck right now."