Want to Rebuild a Football Team Quickly? Try the Wishbone

Jim Young rode the shotgun arms of his Purdue quarterbacks to help rebuild the Boilermaker football program back in the 1970s.

But Young knew that when he took the job at the U.S. Military Academy, there was only one basic offense that would turn around the fortunes of the Cadets in the 1980s.

The wishbone.

“I’m not denying that the key to our success the past three years has been because we’ve been able to install the wishbone attack,” Young said. “It’s the trend now. If you have the backs, it’s a great way to win football games.”

The wishbone--with its three backs lining up in the backfield rather than one or two set out as wide receivers--is the quintessential option offense. Because it is so hard to defend, coaches who want a chance to find rapid success have turned more and more to the attack in recent years.

Jerry Pettibone, who inherited the Northern Illinois program at a time when it was moving out of the Mid-American Conference and going to an independent status, had little doubt the wishbone was the key to his program.

“It does take time. It isn’t something that clicks overnight,” Pettibone said. “But it is something that can work for you quickly in terms of learning it and moving the football.”

Pettibone learned the system from his days at Oklahoma, probably the most successful wishbone team of the past 15 years. The Sooners, blessed with a wealth of strong halfbacks, have used it under Barry Switzer to become one of the dominant teams of the 1980s.

“You look at those programs and the ones that have been successful consistently over the past several years have been teams that have used the wishbone,” Young said.

The wishbone is a low risk offense. Because wishbone teams seldom pass, turnovers are usually cut down, something that a new coach at a new program finds essential.

“I know that at Northwestern, we’d like to have gone to it but there just wasn’t the time to put it in,” said Northwestern Coach Francis Peay. “Had we had the time, we would have gone to it. There just wasn’t time.”

Young also said discipline, something that has always been a hallmark of service academy teams, is required for proper execution.

“We’ve had that advantage, so has the Air Force when it started to win regularly again,” Young said. “There is a discipline that is required in properly executing the wishbone. Not that the athletes at the Military Academy are the only ones that are disciplined, but from the standpoint of the entire squad there is great discipline and it has helped implement it.”

The wishbone isn’t without its detractors, including those skeptical of how it can help a new program get off the ground.

“One of the things you have to remember about the wishbone is that you have to recruit three very strong backs who can all handle the football and run it,” said Wisconsin Coach Jim Hilles, who is in his first season with the Badgers and has shown little interest in changing the Wisconsin offensive formation to the wishbone.

Iowa Coach Hayden Fry, who also inherited a mediocre program but who shunned the wishbone, said the offense can work but it won’t always put fans in the stadium.

“When I came here I wanted to have an exciting offense, something people would come to watch,” said Fry, a former SMU and North Texas State coach who went to the pro-style passing attack to rebuild the Hawkeyes. “You do that by throwing the ball, pardner. And we did that.”

Illinois Coach Mike White agreed.

“We made some mistakes when we got started throwing the football, but that’s how we got the interest back in Illinois football, not by running the ball every down,” White said.

In addition to a good ball-handling quarterback, a wishbone also requires another key ingredient: Getting the early lead. Wishbone teams are seldom equipped to pass and if they fall behind, the time-consuming, methodical style of the wishbone does not lend itself to a comeback.

However, because it is unique, young teams looking for an upset have a better chance to sneak up on someone with a wishbone.

“You don’t see it often and if you just have three or four days to prepare for it, it’s tough, plenty tough,” Peay said. “I’ll tell you something else. Your scout teams aren’t prepared to run the wishbone because you don’t teach it. So, you really don’t get the practice time necessary to prepare for it, something you may just see one week.”