College football owes the Big 12 a thank-you note. It goes something like this:

First, an apology guys.  All those Bevo jokes? Forget ’em. It’s our fault we wore our good shoes around his pen. Oh, and it turns out you really can’t roll a marble across the state of Iowa.

Given recent NCAA developments, please excuse the crack about Kansas just needing a basketball program that doesn’t embarrass football. And really, who needs a conference network anyway?

We’ve changed our mind about the Big 12. In fact, we want to thank you for drawing up the blueprint for modern college football success. The mocking of wide-open Big 12 offenses we used to dismiss? Done. Over. More passé than Lee Corso’s ties.

Your conference has been a glorious laboratory. You’ve been perfecting the spread offense so prominent today for about 20 years. We tried to bully you. We tried to shame you. Instead, we’re now imitating you.

 It’s our fault we haven’t been all-in until now. Stoops, Leach, Johnny Football, Gundy, even Art Briles, take a bow.

Fans love the spread. Recruits are drawn to it. Thanks again for the blueprint.

Regards,

The Game

Too much gush? Consider that if the Big 12 didn’t invent/perfect the most popular modern-day offense, it certainly has a hand in the copyright.

“They’re never going to give us that credit. You know that,” Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said. “If you just look back five years ago at the guys who were complaining about tempo and RPOs, they’re all running the same schemes the Big 12 was 15 years ago.”

That’s an indirect shot at Alabama coach Nick Saban and former Arkansas coach Bret Bielema, who once raised player safety issues because plays were being run so fast. These days, they’d be laughed out of the room. Aside from Stanford, Wisconsin, Kansas State, the military academies and a handful of others, just about every team incorporates some aspect of the offense the Big 12 has used as a staple.

“I’ve said it for a number of years: ‘Look out if LSU learns how to throw it,'” remarked former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops.

Well, it happened. This season, LSU coach Ed Orgeron adopted spread/RPO concepts like they were a new religion. Joe Burrow is a Heisman Trophy frontrunner, the most accurate passer in the country, the second-leading passer overall — oh, and he just set the LSU single-season record for passing touchdowns … in seven games.

Saban is in his fifth year of being a convert. That has come in handy. The Crimson Tide are on track for their worst defensive numbers since 2007. There is no panic in the streets of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Not yet. It’s because back-up Mac Jones is running the same system Alabama still has a chance with Tua Tagovailoa sidelined with a sprained ankle.

“In this day and age, you have to score some points to win,” Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley said. “You’re not going to have a defense that shuts everybody out. I just think it’s natural progression. I think it’s going to be around for the foreseeable future.”

The spread started to germinate nationwide two decades ago when Stoops hired Mike Leach as his offensive coordinator at Oklahoma . A year later, Leach brought the Air Raid to Texas Tech as head coach where he averaged more than eight wins a year for a decade.

Leach’s scheme “spread” his offense from sideline to sideline. The run-pass option confused defenses even further allowing quarterbacks to make their read on what to do with the ball after the snap.

The nation took notice … but with a sometimes-sideways glance. 

“It used to drive us crazy at Texas Tech,” said SMU’s Sonny Dykes, a Leach assistant for seven years. “People would call it a gimmick offense. They’d say, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s a nice little offense, but that’s not a real offense. You can’t win big games with that kind of offense.’

“I think it’s been proven obviously that you can.”

Clemson has won two national championships with it. Outside that Big 12 loop, Urban Meyer did it at Utah, Florida and Ohio State. Ryan Day inherited the offense and made it even more powerful with Georgia transfer Justin Fields at the helm.

Ten teams have played in the College Football Playoff. Eight of them had the spread as a base offense.

“At some of the best programs … it’s almost like you can’t win without the ‘gimmick offense,'” Dykes said.  

Defense wins championships? Yeah, maybe. But we saw things changing as far back as 2010. Auburn won a national championship with a defense that was 57th going into the BCS Championship Game against Oregon.

Two years ago, Oklahoma had Georgia dead and buried in the Rose Bowl semifinal of the CFP, 31-14 with seconds left before halftime.  If, if, if OU had held on, is there much doubt the Sooners would have prevailed over Alabama in the CFP National Championship?

This season, both LSU and Alabama run the ball … well enough. Both teams defend … well enough. But through circumstance and strategy,  both programs almost had to adopt the new philosophy.

Basically, in this day and age, it is best way to compete for a championship. LSU is second nationally in scoring. Burrow leads the country in pass efficiency. He is the most accurate thrower in America. Tagovailoa might be the first Alabama quarterback taken in the first round of the NFL Draft since 1976.

The SEC is averaging its second-most yards per game (418) in at least the last 20 years. Halfway through the season, only the Big 12 (understandably at 35.2 points per team) was scoring more than the SEC (incredibly at 33.7). Those figures were way above the national average at midseason — 407.8 yards in total offense and 29.7 points (second-most ever).

Summary: The spread has made it OK to outscore people. When the chute doesn’t open on defense, it’s almost always there to rely on.

“I think that’s what the game is turning into,” Burrow said. “You can see the NFL going more toward the college system with Baker Mayfield, Deshaun Watson. Kyler Murray is 5-foot-9 [actually 5-foot-10] and went No. 1 overall. That wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago.”

The LSU transition has been almost seamless. Orgeron hired 28-year-old New Orleans Saints assistant Joe Brady as passing game coordinator to help install the spread. Total yards are up 34 percent. Scoring is up almost 18 points per game.

In an ultimate irony, Burrow transferred into an offense he had been recruited to run at Ohio State. When asked about the evolution of the LSU offense, Burrow said, “How long do you have? It’s not the same offense. Playmakers all over the field.”

“Watching all the offenses around the country, we needed to make a change,” Burrow added. “We weren’t going to be able to compete for SEC titles and national championships if we didn’t make that change.”

The change has been dramatic. The top 20 scoring seasons in the game’s history have come in the last 20 years, basically since Leach went to Oklahoma spreading the spread virus.  LSU is completing more than four more passes per game this season (27.5) than it attempted (23) in 2017.

Eight weeks in, LSU (second) and Alabama (fourth) are in the top four nationally in scoring. Total number of SEC offenses finishing in the top four since 2009: one, Alabama in 2018.

The Tigers and Tide are also Nos. 2-3 nationally in pass efficiency. Maybe the best thing that can be said of both programs is that they could play in the Big 12. That’s a compliment.

In a weird circle-of-life moment this offseason, the Arizona Cardinals hired a losing college coach (Kliff Kingsbury) from USC, which had brought him in to install the Air Raid offense Kingsbury had learned from Leach as a Texas Tech quarterback.

When Kingsbury left USC for Arizona, Trojans coach Clay Helton went for the next best former Texas Tech quarterback he could find. Graham Harrell, then the North Texas offensive coordinator, jumped at the chance in install the Air Raid at the place that made famous Student Body Right and Left.

“Everyone who runs it has success,” Harrell said. “In my mind, it made sense for everyone to try it. At Texas Tech, we had more success with lesser athletes because of the offense.”

Helton went all-in on the spread this season same as Orgeron and Saban. There hasn’t been as much success at USC because of injuries. But for Helton to take the plunge signified a radical philosophy change. He was basically staking his future on it.

The same can be said of Stoops in 1999. He became interested in Leach when Hal Mumme’s Kentucky teams gave his Florida defenses so much trouble. Leach had been Mumme’s offensive coordinator at Iowa Wesleyan and Valdosta State before joining him at Kentucky.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘I know [Kentucky doesn’t] have the best people in the league,'” said Stoops, the Gators’ defensive coordinator from 1996-98, “‘but they led the league in time of possession, first downs, yards and on and on and on.’ I’m thinking, ‘Golly, these guys are hard to deal with. If I can do the same thing at Oklahoma, people aren’t used to seeing it. It will attract quarterbacks.’ I felt like I could get better players.”

Two years after Leach was hired, Oklahoma won the 2000 national championship. Leach had moved on to Texas Tech by then, but Stoops had kept the concepts, philosophy and playbook he left behind.  

“That’s when [the Air Raid] became popular,” Stoops said.

What followed were four Heisman winners and 11 Big 12 titles for Oklahoma over the next 18 years.

“You don’t have to shut people down,” Dykes said. “Now it gives you a chance to win some games that maybe you wouldn’t have won before. It’s a great equalizer. It’s created some really good stories for college football. At the end of the day, it’s hard for this offense to really be shut down. If you’ve got a quarterback and can spread the ball out and throw it, it is hard to play great defense against them.”

Next month, No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 LSU meet again for what might be another Game of the Century. The last time Bama and LSU met in a game with that designation, the Tigers won 9-6 in 2011.

The way things are going, that’ll be the score at the coin flip Nov. 9 at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

The thank you notes will already have been written.