Sports Illustrated Writer Tim Layden Examines the Origin and Evolution of Offensive & Defensive Schemes in New Book

by Jeff Fisher
High School Football America

Award-winning Sports Illustrated writer Tim Layden has written a great book that I highly recommend reading to get you ready for the upcoming season...no matter what level of football you are interested in.

Blood, Sweat and Chalk takes readers inside the game's greatest schemes and plays without getting to dry and technical.  Layden does a magnificent job of weaving interviews with the game's legendary coaches...Bill Belichick, Don Coryell, Joe Gibbs, Darrell Royal and Tom Osborne...into the X's and O's that many fans don't understand.

The journey starts at the turn-of-the-century Single Wing and ends at the crazy A-11 offense that was created at Piedmont High School in northern California.

To learn more about the book, listen to my High School Football America podcast interview with Layden below.

Piedmont's (CA) A-11 Offense...No More

by Jeff Fisher
The High School Football Huddle

It appears as though there won't be an appeal to the February decision by the National Federation of State High School Athletic Association to ban the use of the controversial A-11 offense, invented by Piedmont High School in 2007, that made every player an eligible receiver.

Earlier this week, the Contra Costa Times reported that the California Interscholastic Federation's Football Advisory Committee decided against moving forward with a pilot program to study the effects of the A-11. Click here to read the Contra Costa Times story.

Below is video from a story last year in the Chicago Tribune about Riverside-Brookfield's use of the wide-open offense.