To put it another (more college football-ish) way, look at the 2007 season. When it became clear that any team in which I had a remote rooting interest would fall short of their preseason goals, I begged for upheaval. Missouri and Kansas undefeated in the last week of the season? 3,457 different #2-ranked teams? A two-loss national champion? All oddly beautiful, in my eyes.
That's why I could hardly contain my enthusiasm when I saw this.
To sum up the link, the A-11 offense is a system developed at a California high school that uses one offensive lineman, two quarterbacks, two tight ends and six wide receivers. Any of the 11 players could theoretically be eligible receivers on a given play, depending on how the formation is tweaked.
This is right up my alley. It perfectly toes the line between being innovative/unusual and making a travesty of the game. It's chaos without being an affront to the spirit of fair play. It also gets bonus points for finally implementing the two-quarterback system. I've been lobbying for this since the days of Kordell "Slash" Stewart in the NFL and would have liked nothing more than to see pairs of mobile signalcallers like Tebow and Leak at Florida or Locker and Stanback at Washington in the same backfield at the same time.
Oh hell yes.
The accompanying video shows a number of plays that were blown up by the defense but that may have gone for big gains if run by a more athletically gifted set of offensive players. The article goes on to mention that the offense had drawn interest from NCAA schools and that Florida and San Jose State even made some use of it last season. Could this be a dream come true?
Well, no.
People who are far smarter than I when it comes to interpreting rule books have informed me that per NCAA rules, the A-11 is essentially a non-starter. With very few exceptions, each college play must begin with five interior offensive lineman wearing numbers 50-79. These players are obviously ineligible receivers. Most high school teams (Texas and Massachussetts excluded) do not face such a hurdle, as NFSHSA rules are a bit different on the topic.
In fact, if you look at the YouTube video of the Florida play referenced in the article, the four offensive lineman split to the right side of the formation don't actually advance beyond the line of scrimmage and in fact stay motionless. As such, I'm not certain if it would qualify as a true "A-11" play.
Interestingly, there is one situation in which the A-11 could be applied in college ball. The NCAA "numbering" rules are relaxed a bit in punting situations. More clarification would be needed (again by people far more rules-saavy than I) but I could imagine this formation being a nightmare for opponents in fourth-and-four type situations.
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