Coach Rod's First Year at Michigan: Can The Spread Offense Have Social Consequences?

The Game is this weekend. A few years ago, as I recall, the marketing people in the Ohio State and Michigan Athletic Departments decided to extend their already profitable trademarking approaches to include the game that is arguably the most famous rivalry in college football. It didn't work.

Not much is working this year either; at least for Michigan. The Game has been overwhelmed by other neighboring state rivalries and by this weekend's highly anticipated contest between Michigan State and Penn State.

Much has been said about Coach Rich Rodriguez's handling of adversity during his first year. Even more has been said about his new system, the style and standard of play he has brought to Michigan: the spread offense. Before Coach Rodriguez arrived, I knew little about the spread offense. I still don't know much about it, though in an effort to become more informed, I easily located a website advocating its many virtues called: www.spreadoffense.com.

If I were a responsible ethics correspondent with the charge of say, evaluating the end of Rodriguez's first year, I suppose I should be recapping the kerfuffle over his contract, his seeming disloyalty to his home state of West Virginia in leaving it rather unceremoniously, and the lost recruiting war fought over quarterback sensation, Terelle Pryor, just to mention a few possible ethics conundrums.

Instead, I am more interested in learning about the social implications of the spread offense. I don't think for a moment that Rodriguez should be fired after his first season, as some friends have suggested, because of his lackluster record, or because of the circumstances of his contract and so on. If this transpires, which is highly improbable, then such an action to my way of thinking would be pretty unethical. Coach Rodriguez should be given a few years at least. If for no other reason than that the spread offense takes awhile to have a chance to spread. So, like the faltering stock market, I am prepared to hold on to what I have and to wait it out.

At the same time, I have been fascinated for some time with the notion that certain plays and particularly innovations in styles of play, like technologies in sport, have social consequences. Of course, the spread offense is not exactly new. But it is new to Michigan.

So, here are a few questions I have for experts on the spread offense as it adapts itself to Michigan winters and to the Big House over the next few years.

1. Does this offense make the game more democratic? So, for example, does it spread the glory to more players than just the quarterback?

2. Does it allow players, and I guess, especially the quarterback, to call his own plays, in which case it would be more beneficial, because the game then actually does teach players to be independent as its proponents so often claim it does.

3. Does the spread offense lead to more concussions?

4. Does the spread offense unfairly advantage only certain skills and therefore lead to a kind of perverse specialization that is not good for the game, or more importantly, for the players?

5. Does the spread offense lead to more strategic cheating than there already is in the game? Or does it diminish it?

6. Does the spread offense decrease the opportunity for players to shave points in a game?

7. Does it decrease the incentive to use performance-enhancing drugs?

Like most others, I have already heard more than I wish, that one of the problems with the spread offense is that it will be more difficult for talented Michigan-bred quarterbacks (and for that matter other spread offense-trained quarterbacks at other schools) to successfully transition to the pro game, where the spread is not currently common. I am skeptical of this argument. First, if the spread continues to catch on, then more college quarterbacks will be trained and become skilled at it. The pros rely on former college quarterbacks.

And of course, with the spread expanding, more coaches will be skilled in teaching and using it. Which means, I guess, that we should not expect Rich Rodriguez to be a Michigan man for very long, because undoubtedly those who are the leaders and the best in the spread offense will be offered even more lucrative contracts to spread the gospel of the spread to the NFL.