Is the Spread Offense Here to Stay as the Dominant Offense in College Football?

From New Hampshire down the East Coast and all the way back across the country to California, it seems like everyone is running the spread offense in college football.

Some people think it's a fad and that the pro-style, drop-back offense will ultimately remain as the top style. But the spread offense should continue to thrive in college football because of its versatility, both in action and in terms of the types of players teams can plug into the system.

While the spread is often thought of as being a high-risk, sling-the-ball-all-over-the-field passing offense, most spread offenses these days actually revolve around the run. That misconception stems from the days of teams like the Houston Oilers and Steve Spurrier's Florida Gators among others, most of them college teams, when they used to run up the scores on people and pass circles around them. But those offenses had a fatal flaw in that running ball was very difficult and thus controlling the clock was almost impossible in close games against good teams. Remember when Houston blew a 35-3 lead to the Bills in the playoffs in the NFL's greatest comeback ever? It was because they couldn't run the ball to stop the clock.

The spread's popularity went down for a while because running the ball was thought to be too difficult to pull off from the shotgun. But that notion has now been proven to be completely false. That's because running the ball takes a certain attitude and committment those old spread teams didn't have. Now, teams have taken that spread offense and in many cases built a type of balanced attack that is driven by the run yet also can use the open space created by the threat of the run to pick teams apart with the pass.