The Washington times., 1931-09-16
No SPECIAL
MAGIC IN
STYLE
BY BOB ZUPPKE

No matter what style of offense
is used by a football coach. If his
team is losing, he wishes he had
tried another.
There is lot of loose talk about
styles or systems of football, by
people who do not know or seem
to forget that no coach has any
secrets from any other coach, and
that the fundamentals of football
are all alike, just the same as play
ing the violin.
There is no special magic about
any one style, or every coach in
the United States would be using
it.
In football there are often sew
eral ways of doing the same thing
successfully, which is a good thing
for the game. It is sheer foolish
ness for anyone to say that any
system is the best.
Rockne at Notre Dame, Warner
at Stanford, Stagg at Chicago,
Yost at Michigan, Alexander at
Georgia Tech, Wade at Alabama
and many other coaches had high
" developed systems which have
been extremely successful but no
two of them coached exactly alike.
Best System
The best system is team Of IL
men who can run faster, tackle
harder, kick farther and Jump
higher than the other fellows. Any
offenSe is good that fits the abil-
ity Of the material.
The strange thing is that many
coaches will try to adopt the
styles recently used by winning
teams, regardless whether their
material is adapted to the system.
Back in 1914, for instance,
most Of the winning teams
seemed to be using a balanced
line-that is, three players on
each side Of the center. But
o few years later the unbal-
anced line-fOur men on one
side Of the center and two on
the Other-became popular and
was widely adopted. So it
swung back and forth.
In the Notre Dame offense there
is a balanced line, with the backs
maSSed to one side or the other.
To carry out this plan effectively
you need four fast backs and two
fast guards for interference.
Knute Rockne was usually able to
find enough fast backs to fit into
the scheme. But if a coach has
two fast backs and two slow ones,
the offense would be slowed up
and would be good for nothing.
Nevertheless, some coaches
have attempted to utilize the
Notre Dame attack without the
personnel to make it click.
Not Effective
The two-wing back system used
by Northwestern, last years Big
Ten champions, will not be as
effective as Pop Warmers when
Pop had NeverS, a throwing as
well as plunging fullback. Han
ley has a great fullbacK in Rus
sell, but he is not thu over, so
Hanley must devise plays to use
Rentner's arm and the otfense
will be put at a disadvantage to
scme extent.
Some people wonder why
some coach doesn't have his
team pass more. You cannot
teach any player to throw a
football any more than you can
make a pitcher out of any base
ball player. All the coach can
do is possibly to improve natu-
raj ability in throwing and
tie it up with a receiver.
I do not look for any revolu-
tionary developments in the style
of football this season. Some
coaches are going back to the old
fashioned balanced line with no
wing.back-three backs behind the
1ine-known as the '"T" forma-
ton.
The lateral pass will be used
SpaSmodically. 1t will always be
q hit or miss play, but it is a
good threat. You can get away
with it if you have good ball
handlers, but it will be a boomer
ang if you try it with poor hand
lerS.