The Sports Report: A closer look at USC’s Air Raid offense

Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.

From Ryan Kartje: The ideas that would one day inspire a football revolution had been rattling around in Hal Mumme’s head for a few years before he finally had the chance to use them. It was 1986, and Mumme had just lost his job as Texas El Paso’s offensive coordinator. With nowhere to turn at the college level, Mumme retreated to the ranks of Texas high school football, where he inherited a struggling program with just a handful of wins during the previous decade.

Out of that desperation, the Air Raid’s roots first took hold in the central Texas soil, where three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust was long the offensive doctrine of choice. Mumme didn’t have that luxury at Copperas Cove High. The school’s best athletes weren’t even trying out for the football team.

“I needed an edge,” Mumme recalled, “or else this wasn’t going to work.”

So he strung wild ideas together into a fledgling philosophy, drawing primarily on intel he gathered years before on long car trips to Provo, Utah. Brigham Young coach LaVell Edwards and his staff had often welcomed the UTEP coordinator to pick their brains. During those sessions, Mumme grew enamored with Edwards’ offense, which soared to the 1984 national title with a high-flying pass attack that spread three or four receivers across the field.

Such radical innovation was out of the question at UTEP, where head coach Bill Yung preferred the classic I-Formation. But at Copperas Cove, Mumme was in control. He told prospective players he’d employ a similar wide-open approach to BYU, but “on steroids.” They might throw the ball 75% of the time. He borrowed option route concepts from Mouse Davis and June Jones, two pioneers of the run-and-shoot, and game-planning and play-calling principles from Bill Walsh, the San Francisco 49ers coach and godfather of the West Coast offense.

By now, nearly four decades since Mumme’s offense first debuted at Copperas Cove, the Air Raid has been stretched in every discernible direction. Coaches from coast to coast, across all levels of football, have put their spin on the system, adding new layers or stripping them away, implanting their own concepts atop Mumme’s original open-source philosophy.

The group includes USC coach Lincoln Riley, whose ever-evolving offense has made him the new face of the Air Raid in college football.

UCLA FOOTBALL

From Ben Bolch: Late at night, craving the comfort of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, he hears the words.

If you lose the weight, you’ll have a shot.

Wishing he could splurge for his favorite In-N-Out order of a triple cheeseburger, double-double, animal-style fries, regular fries and a strawberry milkshake, he hears the words.

If you lose the weight, you’ll have a shot.

The words are annoying. They keep him starving. They momentarily make him want to abandon this whole giving-up-what-he-loves madness.

Atonio Mafi marinates in those words, the UCLA offensive lineman remembering how he once strained the scale at 411 pounds, stretching the fabric of his XXXXL jersey on a frame measuring 6-foot-2.

Having dropped the weight equivalent of a third-grader, now down to 340 pounds, the fifth-year senior considers how he’s going to push through his hunger one more time.

“That’s what I keep hearing when those certain times come in,” Mafi said of the moments when he’s tempted to give in, “and then I go and chug a water and get full off of water.”

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DODGERS

From Jack Harris: Mookie Betts’ peaks are so high, even relatively productive stretches at the plate can seem quiet.

That’s where the All-Star right fielder was entering the Dodgers’ weekend series in Miami. He’d been playing well in his return from a foot injury earlier this year, with a .283 batting average and an .859 on-base-plus-slugging percentage since the start of July. But he wasn’t on fire either, not all the way.

That’s changed over the last three games against the Marlins.

On Friday, Betts homered twice and then hit a game-winning double in the 10th inning. On Saturday, he went deep again for his 30th home run of the season.

And on Sunday, in an 8-1 win at LoanDepot Park, Betts put his stamp on the afternoon once more.

The former American League MVP homered in his first at-bat, sending the third pitch of the game bouncing off the top of the center-field wall for his 36th career leadoff blast, tying Shin-Soo Choo for 11th most in MLB history.

“He’s just swinging the bat so well,” manager Dave Roberts said. “When he’s like this, he stays in the strike zone and it seems like every swing he takes is center-cut.”

UCLA BASKETBALL

From Ben Bolch: Devin Williams, a 6-foot-9 power forward from Corona Centennial High, verbally committed to the Bruins on Sunday, providing his new team a sizable recruiting victory over fellow finalist USC.

There was a gasp among family and friends when Williams picked up a USC hat and momentarily looked like he was going to put it on as part of his Instagram Live announcement before flinging it across the room and revealing a UCLA shirt under his jacket.

The cross-town rivals also are jockeying for Isaiah Collier, a highly sought-after point guard from Marietta (Ga.) Wheeler High whose mother is from Inglewood.

Williams, a late bloomer who has been developing his skills as a wing player, can make three-pointers as well as score inside, giving him the versatility to play multiple positions. He’s been a key contributor on teams that won back-to-back Southern Section Open Division championships as well as the most recent California Open Division state title.

ANGELS

Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout helped the Angels put a rosy finish on a rough road trip.

The Toronto Blue Jays, meanwhile, took another dip on their roller-coaster ride through the American League wild-card race.

Ohtani and Trout homered, and the Angels beat the Blue Jays 8-3 on Sunday to complete a three-game sweep.

Ohtani had three hits and scored twice one day after he pitched seven crisp innings in a 2-0 victory. Trout went two for five with two RBIs and also scored twice.

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How Ryan Aguilar turned a ‘heartbreaking’ moment into a career revival with Angels

GALAXY

Daniel Aguirre and Javier “Chicharito” Hernández scored goals in the first 15 minutes and the Galaxy held on for a 2-1 victory over the New England Revolution on Sunday.

Aguirre took a pass from Hernández and scored in the fourth minute to give the Galaxy (11-11-4) an early lead. Hernandez scored 11 minutes later to make it 2-0. Ricard Puig Marti picked up an assist on Hernandez’s team-high 12th goal of the season. Aguirre’s netter was his first.

THIS DATE IN SPORTS

1885 — John L. Sullivan wins the first world heavyweight title under the Marquess of Queensbury rules when he beats Dominic McCaffrey in six rounds. The fight features 3-ounce gloves and 3-minute rounds.

1952 — Dr. Reginald Weir becomes the first Black man to compete in the U.S. Tennis Championships, Weir appears two years after Althea Gibson breaks the color barrier in the tournament and loses in four sets to William Stucki.

1962 — A.C.’s Viking, driven by Sanders Russell, wins the Hambletonian Stakes in straight heats.

1968 — Open tennis begins at the U.S. Tennis Championships. Billie Jean King wins the first stadium match at the U.S. Open and amateurs Ray Moore and Jim Osborne have upset wins over professionals. Moore beats No. 10 Andres Gimeno and Osborne defeats Barry MacKay, each in four sets.

1974 — Nineteen-year-old high school basketball star Moses Malone, signs a contract with the Utah Stars of the ABA to become the first player to go directly from high school into major pro basketball.

1978 — The USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y. opens. Bjorn Borg beats Bob Hewitt in the first match 6-0, 6-2 in the best-of-three sets.

1987 — Charlie Whittingham becomes the first trainer to surpass 500 stakes wins when he sent Ferdinand to victory in the Cabrillo Handicap at Del Mar Racetrack.

1993 — Laffit Pincay Jr. wins the 8,000th race of his career aboard El Toreo in the seventh race at Del Mar racetrack to become the second thoroughbred jockey to ride 8,000 winners.

1993 — Brandie Burton’s 20-foot birdie putt on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff edges Betsy King for the du Maurier Classic title, the LPGA tour’s final major of the season.

1998 — Toms River, N.J., wins its first Little League World Series with a 12-9 victory over Kashima, Japan. Chris Cardone hits home runs in consecutive at-bats — including the game-deciding two-run shot.

2005 — Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova becomes the first U.S. Open defending women’s champion to fall in the first round, losing 6-3, 6-2 to fellow Russian Ekaterina Bychkova on the first day of the U.S. Open.

2011 — Petra Kvitova becomes the first defending Wimbledon champion to lose in the first round at the U.S. Open, 7-6, 6-3 to Alexandra Dulgheru.

2013 — The NFL agrees to pay $765 million to settle lawsuits from thousands of former players who developed dementia or other concussion-related health problems they say were caused by the on-field violence. The settlement, unprecedented in sports, applies to all past NFL players and spouses of those who are deceased.

2015 — Usain Bolt anchors Jamaica to a fourth successive men’s 4x100-meter title and adds to his record-breaking personal haul of IAAF World Championships gold medals to 11.

2018 — Wanheng Menayothin surpasses Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s 50-0 record, beating Pedro Taduran in a unanimous decision to improve to 51-0. The 32-year-old Menayothin (51-0, 18 KOs) won his 10th successful title defense of his WBC minimumweight belt that he won in November 2014.

Compiled by the Associated Press

And finally

Toms River wins the 1998 Little League World Series title. Watch and listen here.