Scores Page added to Website

I've added a scores page to the website. It will contain the weekly scores after they are calculated, as well as archives from previous seasons.

Scores

The first 7 Weeks of 2004 are now posted!

I will hopefully finish up with the 2004 scores when I get back from my trip.

Kentucky recruit likely to attend 'U'

The Gophers football team addressed a major need Tuesday when it received a verbal commitment from four-star defensive lineman Aundre Henderson of Louisville, Ky.

Henderson (6-4, 280 pounds) is the top-rated defensive lineman prospect in Kentucky and the state's No. 2 prospect overall. He had scholarship offers from 10 schools, including Tennessee, Michigan State, Louisville and Kansas State.

"I really liked the situation at Minnesota," Henderson said. "At first I was going to wait until after the season to decide, but I really felt comfortable with Minnesota."

Henderson's commitment is a major coup for the Gophers and defensive line coach Carey Bailey, who recruited Henderson at DuPont Manual High. The Gophers currently have no players from Kentucky on their roster, and blue-chip defensive line recruits are coveted by college recruiters.

Henderson, who expects to weigh 290 pounds by the time his senior season begins, said he can play tackle or defensive end. "If the [Gophers] coaches think I'll be ready to play right away, that's great," he said. "But I just want to come in and learn as much as I can from Coach Bailey. We have a good connection. He's real down to earth and easy to talk to."

Henderson had 45 tackles and seven sacks last season.

U spelling error angers black community

University of Minnesota officials were apologetic Tuesday after they misspelled Sandy Stephens' last name on football tickets for the Gophers' home game against Michigan State. It was another blow to the fragile relationship between the athletic department and the local black community.

The university incorporated pictures of former Gophers greats on season tickets this season, and Stephens' name was spelled "Stevens" on tickets that recently were mailed to season-ticket holders.

Stephens was a pioneering black athlete at the 'U'. He was the nation's first black All-America quarterback, led the Gophers to their last national championship in 1960 and is one of only four Gophers players whose numbers have been retired. Stephens died in 2000.

University officials expressed regret for the mistake, but members of the local black community voiced frustration over the latest faux pas by the university.

"It's incomprehensible for them to misspell the name of a prominent athlete like Sandy Stephens," said former Gophers basketball player Al Nuness, who is the school's representative to the Big Ten advisory committee on diversity. "This guy was the first black major college quarterback. He led them to the Rose Bowl two years in a row, a national title, his number is retired and he has an endowed scholarship in his name. And we misspell his name? That's inexcusable."

The university athletic department has been criticized for historically low graduation rates among black student-athletes and for failing to have an African-American on the immediate staff of athletic director Joel Maturi. Maturi hired a consulting firm last year to help the department deal with diversity issues and said he believes his department is making progress in that area. Former football player Dr. John Williams said there are myriad reasons for the divide.

"There are so many scars and things from decades ago that they have to overcome," he said. "Until the university decides it wants to overcome these things, and it flows from the top down, I think it's always going to be a struggle. I'm not going to make a blanket statement because I know there are good people over there, but it's just that they're dealing with some ingrained attitudes."

The ticket mistake did not help matters. Gregg Shimanski, associate athletic director for external relations, took responsibility for the error and said university officials hope to contact the Stephens family to apologize.

"This was not a reflection of Sandy or what he's meant to the university," Shimanski said. "It just happened to be something we all missed. It's something we obviously regret."

Said Williams: "Somebody dropped the ball. Certainly it should have been caught. One side of the fence will say that's to be expected because there seems to be a strained relationship between the university and the black athletes. They may look at it in one light whereas it really could be just an honest error. But it's something that shouldn't have happened."

Buttons boost Mason deal

Lack of a contract extension for Glen Mason is making some University of Minnesota boosters anxious. So much so that 5,000 maroon-and-gold buttons are expected to appear on campus soon as part of a campaign for a new deal for the Gophers football coach.

The buttons will read, "Hey Maturi! Extend Mase now!"

Minnesota athletics director Joel Maturi and Mason, who has two years left on his contract, are at an impasse on an extension.

The Offensive Revolution

Boise State offensive coordinator Chris Peterson was watching his quarterback line up under center for a routine passing drill this spring when an unusual thought crossed his mind. "I was wondering if, in five or 10 years, it's going to look really weird if someone's under center taking a snap -- kind of like how strange it would look now if someone lined up in the single wing," said Peterson. "If someone lines up under center, will people be like, 'What is that?'"

The "I-formation," where a quarterback lines up under center with a tailback and fullback behind him, has been the central tenet of college offenses for more than half a century. Had you flipped around the TV dial on a random Saturday last season, however, you would have seen nearly as many different offensive variations as there were teams. You would have witnessed quarterbacks lined up in the shotgun for nearly the entire game. You would have observed teams sending out five receivers on one play, and three tight ends on the next. You would have caught sight of receivers motioning into the backfield, and running backs shifting out wide. And you would have noticed teams running the option out of four- or five-receiver formations.

There's an offensive revolution afoot in college football. Of the top 11 teams in the country in total offense last season, eight ran some variation of the modern "spread offense," where teams line up with one or no running backs and as many as four or five receivers. The spread was once viewed almost exclusively as a passing scheme, but a new generation of coaches is now using spread principles in the running game as well to create dangerous, balanced attacks. Another trendy style, the "West Coast offense," uses more conventional formations but employs a professionalized, precision-based passing style far more advanced than the traditional college playbook.

"The hot offenses are the West Coast and the spread," said new Florida coach Urban Meyer, who went undefeated at Utah last season while lining up almost entirely in shotgun, spread formations. "There's a bunch of different styles of each, but the one common theme is you want to force the defense to defend the entire field, as opposed to the I-formation, where a lot of times you have to defend a much smaller area of the field."

It's no longer enough, though, just to be a "spread team," an "option team," a "West Coast" team or a "pro-style" team. A cast of young, creative coaching minds is finding ways to incorporate multiple offensive styles into the same playbook.

The top four teams in the country in total offense last season -- Louisville, Bowling Green, Utah and Boise State -- showcased some of the sport's most groundbreaking schemes while combining for a 43-5 record. Louisville coach Bobby Petrino, whose team averaged nearly 50 points per game, molded his personnel to be proficient in both the spread and traditional power-I football. Then Utah coach Meyer dazzled the profession with a shotgun, one-back spread offense that also incorporated old-school option football; Bowling Green, where Meyer coached from 2001-02, ran virtually the same system but with more emphasis on passing. And Peterson's Broncos, despite losing eight offensive starters from the year before, produced a school-record 48.9 points per game in '04 with a West Coast-based system that included a dizzying array of trickery, wacky formations and seemingly endless substitutions.

Elsewhere, Mike Leach's Texas Tech Red Raiders, using an innovative aerial assault that has been shattering NCAA records for several years now, threw for 520 yards in a Holiday Bowl upset of fourth-ranked Cal; Auburn, after going 8-5 the previous season with virtually the same offensive personnel, rode new coordinator Al Borges' West Coast expertise to a 13-0 season. Even Nebraska, the standard-bearer for traditional power football for more than 40 years, brought in former Oakland Raiders head coach Bill Callahan to install a more modern, West Coast scheme.

"There's been a big shift in terms of philosophy and what coaches are incorporating in their offense from what we saw when we came here nine years ago," said Purdue coach Joe Tiller, one of the earliest practitioners of the spread. "I don't know of anyone in the Big Ten that doesn't run some form of a one-back offense now. I suspect that may be accurate nationally as well."

More change is in store this year, as Meyer has taken his unique "spread-option" to Florida, the same school where another noted offensive innovator, Steve Spurrier, took the SEC by storm 15 years earlier. Spurrier himself is back in the college game as well after a four-year absence, taking his one-of-a-kind "Fun 'n' Gun" attack to South Carolina. And Clemson has hired former Toledo offensive coordinator Rob Spence -- nicknamed the "Mad Scientist" for his frenetic spread offense, which ranked in the top 20 nationally the past four seasons -- to reenergize its attack.

Another potentially intriguing subplot for 2005 involves the number of teams jumping on the Utah/Meyer bandwagon. Though spread offenses have been popping up with increasing frequency in college football since the late '90s, Meyer's high-profile success last season at such an unlikely destination has prompted a number of schools -- including Oregon, New Mexico, Purdue and Missouri -- to install all or parts of his scheme this season. Even Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, one of the game's original offensive gurus, had his staff study Bowling Green's offense this spring.

"A lot of these guys are creating their own offenses," said Spurrier. "Anyone who is consistently successful -- you have to look at what they're doing, because you might be able to get some ideas. I don't think you can really just copy [everything], but you can copy a play or two and adopt it to what you do. "

The spread and West Coast are just the latest in a long cycle of offensive crazes that have dotted college football's evolution. From the single wing, to the T-formation, to the wishbone, to the Run 'n' Shoot, enterprising offensive coaches have constantly searched for a new wrinkle that might give them an advantage over defenses. The offensive innovations on offense are often a direct response to systemic changes in defensive philosophy. The recent advent of the spread, for instance -- which began to surface more frequently in the late '90s and has boomed in popularity ever since -- is viewed by many coaches as a necessary means to combat the complex, NFL-style blitz packages that have pervaded the college game over the past decade.

"Linebackers and safeties are more athletic than they were [10 years ago]," said Tiller. "Defensive coaches and players lick their chops if they see you line up in a more conventional formation. It means they don't have to defend as much of the field, and they don't have to run as much."

It's also no coincidence that many of the game's more modern offenses are built around quarterbacks who can run. They don't necessarily have to be blazing speedsters in the mold of Michael Vick or Vince Young. But, as Utah did with Alex Smith last season, every team from Texas A&M (Reggie McNeal), to Oregon (Kellen Clemens), to Michigan State (Drew Stanton), to Northwestern (Brett Basanez) now has a trigger-man who at least presents a threat to take off if defenses get too aggressive.

"In the old days, we were able to get by without a guy who can move, but with the way defenses have progressed, if you have an immobile kid back there, it really hurts you," said Michigan State head coach John L. Smith, who brought the spread to Idaho, Utah State and Louisville before arriving in East Lansing. "From a defensive standpoint, you used to be able to get away with not covering the QB. Now if you've got an athletic guy back there who you have to account for on every play, that puts a lot of pressure on you defensively and opens up the game a lot."

It's not as if traditional offenses have disappeared from college football. Though the cutting-edge passing concepts Norm Chow introduced when he was an assistant at BYU in the '70s and '80s inspired a whole generation of coaches -- most notably Leach -- his playbook at USC (where he was the offensive coordinator before leaving for the NFL after least season) during the Trojans' 36-3 run the past three seasons was actually fairly simple, with plenty of contributions from the traditional tight end and fullback positions. Michigan, coming off consecutive Rose Bowl seasons, has had great success running a mostly conservative, pro-style offense. And Ohio State and LSU have both won national titles this decade with fairly vanilla offensive approaches.

Those teams, however, were also blessed with some of the most talented skill players in the country. When you have a quarterback like Matt Leinart throwing to receivers like Mike Williams and Dwayne Jarrett, or a supreme playmaker like Braylon Edwards, or an elite tailback like Michael Hart, you have a built-in advantage more valuable than the most creative schemes.

"The [teams that] are most successful are the ones that have the talent to put 'em on the field and leave 'em on the field," said Tiller. "You can show me all the multiplicity of formations you want -- if they have the superior talent, the rest of it is window dressing."

It's no coincidence, then, that the majority of today's unconventional offenses have taken root at schools with traditionally less-prestigious football programs -- Boise State, Louisville, Texas Tech, Utah, Bowling Green and Northwestern -- where unique schemes can help lessen competitive disadvantages, and where the microscope on coaches isn't quite so glaring.

"If you try something really funky at Willamete, but it doesn't work and it falls apart, everybody goes, 'Hey, that was a good idea, good try,'" said Boise State head coach Dan Hawkins, whose unconventional mentality was honed during tours of duty at several lower-level colleges. "If you try something like that at this level and it doesn't work, people are like, 'YOU are an IDIOT.' Sometimes they'll want to fire somebody after one play. So the risk factor is much greater."

Callahan, whose 2002 Raiders team led the NFL in total offense, got a first-hand lesson in such backlash last season, when his inaugural Nebraska team struggled to grasp the new offense and finished with the school's first losing record in 43 years. While the Huskers figure to get better once Callahan can recruit more players who fit his style, an impatient fan base won't put up with the growing pains much longer.

With the offensive revolution spreading to other, high-profile locales this season, so, too, will its pioneers face a greater pressure-cooker. Meyer's system worked wonders in the MAC and Mountain West, but can it be as successful week-in, week-out against the superior defenses of the SEC? Spurrier's Fun 'n' Gun flourished in talent-rich Florida, where receivers with 4.4 speed seem to grow on trees, but can he attract the same caliber of athlete at South Carolina? And as Louisville upgrades to a new conference, will Petrino's power-run game, which last season wore down countless Conference USA opponents, have the same effect against more physical Big East teams?

"So much depends on what your quarterback can do," said Meyer, who had a future No. 1 draft pick in Smith but inherits another rising star at Florida in Chris Leak. "With the speed we're going to see [on defense], we're going to have to be careful how many times we have the quarterback run. But, we're going to have two [legitimate] tight ends here; last year we didn't have one. We're going to have four legit receivers. I remember playing Missouri our first year at Bowling Green, when we only had one."

Finally, as the spread and its various offshoots become pervasive, allowing defenses increased exposure the schemes, will defensive coordinators finally catch up to it -- thus instigating another turn in the offensive cycle?

"Defenses have [already] caught up to [the spread]," said Michigan State's Smith. "When we started with it, you'd have guys uncovered all over the field. You don't see those type of mismatches anymore, and we've had to adjust.

"Everything is cyclical. Defenses will catch up again, and who knows, maybe we'll have shift those [receivers] back in and start running the wishbone again."

In other words, enjoy the revolution while it lasts.

10 Key Moments in the Revolution

Also, check out the Virtual Playbook