The T-Bone Formation

Taking a break from Miss Market's wiles today. I've been thinking about the evolution or devolution of football.

Is the wildcat formation a throwback or a leap into the future? The direct snap to a multi-talented back who can run the option, throw on the rollout or dash on a keeper before the defense can adjust is employed more and more by colleges and the NFL since Arkansas dreamed it up for Darren McFadden. I'm awaiting the return of the classic single wing and its running game of beautiful fakes and spinning backfields.

Another thought on football. In the years to come I believe more and more teams will attempt the two-point conversion after every touchdown regardless of the score and time left to put maximum pressure on the opponent. If you succeed just 50% of the time you're no worse off than having converted every place kick. Odds are you're successful more than half the time.

The death of Slingin' Sammy Baugh of TCU and Washington Redskins' fame brought to mind a game called the Oil Bowl, a summertime affair played each year in Wichita Falls, Texas, between high school all-stars from Oklahoma and Texas. I covered one such tilt in the early '80s when the Texas coach was Baugh's son, a lean, rawboned ranchhand, the kind of ex-football player rarely seen anymore in the day of 300-pound offensive linemen and 230-pound quarterbacks.

I don't remember the game too well, but I do remember a succulent 16 0z. T-bone, iceberg lettuce salad with French dressing, baked potato wrapped in foil and smothered in butter and sweet iced tea I had at the diner next to my motel for under 10 bucks. It still beats any meal I've spent a paycheck on at a Manhattan hot spot in the years since. I suppose the taste buds vanish with other appetites as the years roll by.

Well, to mangle Rick's line to Ilsa, "We'll always have Wichita Falls."