In college athletics, the term, redshirt refers to delaying or suspending a player’s participation for a year.  Usually, an athlete has 4 years of eligibility for play. If redshirted, the player can prolong his time with the team in order to develop more thoroughly, recover from an injury, or even due to transfer status from another school. During the redshirt year, he may practice and take academic subjects at the university/college but he may not compete.  Any competitive play during the year disables the redshirt status. Often we hear of redshirt freshmen, but this can occur in other years as well as long as he competes for no more than 4 years. When we hear that someone is a “5^th year senior”, he has been redshirted for one year of his college tenure.

On a different note, when you hear someone is practicing in a black jersey that often means that he is not to be “hit or tackled”. The jersey is to let other players know that he is not to receive any physical contact during practice; usually due to an injury. This is only for practice purposes.

During practice sessions, there are also players who are called the Scout team. These players wear different color jerseys during practice to emulate playing against the competition. Scout teams often learn the playbooks of opposing teams so that practice sessions simulate game conditions. Actually, these players are real important to the success of the team on game day.  By the way, the scout team may include redshirted players.

Lynn – a great blog follower, has noticed announcers using lingo that sounds like the wild west has been revived in NCAA football. She is a good “category 1” lady and has a “hankerin’” to understand what the radio commentator meant when he referred to Offensive formations like: the shotgun, the pistol, the gun, the bootleg and ….excuse me for this one, the naked bootleg. So here we go with the best explanations I can come up with; from a Southern Girls point of view, that is!

The Shotgun

This Offensive “scheme” is not new….’seems it’s been around for a long time, some say all the way back to the days of Knute Rockne and the “Fighting Irish”. I apologize to y’all for having to mention an Indiana team.

7 men line up on the line of scrimmage (the Center and 3 on each side of him). About 7 yards behind the Center, the Quarterback lines up. The Quarterback might have another “back” on one OR both sides of him and there again, he might be the only one in the “backfield” with the rest of the backs spread out as receivers.

It is said to be like a shotgun in that receivers are sort of “sprayed” about the field in the way a shotgun sprays ammunition. Others say the formation itself looks like a shotgun….I don’t see it, but ‘could be.

An advantage of the shotgun is that since the “QB” is further back from the line of scrimmage, he has some extra seconds to look for receivers and to make some decisions before the Defense comes barreling in toward him. Disadvantages exist too, in that the Defense can usually predict a pass play is coming when they see this formation. Also, the Center has to snap the ball back further and the risk of a bad snap increases.

Cool announcers sometimes just call it the “gun” for short.

The Pistol

This seems to be just a variation on the shotgun. The QB lines up a little closer to the Center- maybe 5 yards back, rather than 7. Then, another “back” lines up 2-3 yards behind the QB. Often, this formation is run with 3 Wide Receivers (they line up standing wide apart from the others). The pistol gives the option of running or passing, depending on what the QB sees the Defense is planning to do. This one has a lot of options for short passes and reverse or counter runs.

The Bootleg

In the bootleg, the QB pretends (fakes) a hand-off to one of the backs so that the Defensive players will be drawn away from the real ball carrier. Then, the QB moves in the OPPOSITE direction to either pass or run the ball himself. He does this with the blocking protection of a few linemen, while the rest of the linemen are “faking” blocking for the pretend ball carrier. To be successful, the QB and the running back have to be good actors and draw the Defense to the wrong player.

Furthermore, if the QB does this whole fake job and then runs to the opposite side WITHOUT the protection of any linemen, it is called the naked bootleg -obviously, because the QB is left “naked”, without any blocking coverage. In this case, let’s hope his acting skills were real, real good.

Bonus

I thought of another couple of oddly worded plays to mention at this time. They don’t sound like fire arms, but nevertheless…..

Draw play – the QB moves backward as if to pass, in order to draw the defense away from the receivers downfield.

Fleaflicker – the QB hands off the ball to player in the backfield who then passes the ball to an eligible receiver down the field.

Sure hope that helps all y’all. If I’ve been confusing, please feel free to ask some questions and I’ll try to answer, ‘best I can.

Football folks have a kind of “lingo” that contains catchy little words and phrases that seemingly need no explanation. Here are some explanations for these words and phrases, just in case you think they DO require some explaining.

Ju-Co (pronounced Joo-coh)- The player is a transfer from a Junior College

Hash marks – these are two rows of lines near the middle of the football field that are parallel to the side lines. They are about a yard long.  The officials set the ball on or between the hash marks before the play starts. So, if the ball is downed in between a hash mark and the nearest sideline, it is reset on the hash mark for the next play. (in other words, they are markers that help the officials when setting the ball down for the next play!)

BCS – Okay, this is an acronym for Bowl Championship Series. You will hear all sorts of folks on TV and Radio complaining that this system is awful and we should have a play-off system instead. In a nutshell, this is a system of selecting teams to play in end-of-the-year “bowl games”  designed to be big time money-makers for the sponsors of the bowl (they shamelessly name the bowl for the corporate sponsor in most cases). The most important bowls come last and ideally, the #1 team and some other team who is highly ranked play in the BCS National Championship Game. Some years this is a great game and some years it’s just not. ( hint: an intelligent question to pose might include something like, “what do you think of the current BCS ranking system?” If asked for your opinion, just say “I think I’ll wait to see how it plays out this season.”)

Wild cat formation (also known as Wild hog) – This is a type of play used by the Offense that Arkansas helped popularize. It can be explained in great detail, but let’s just say that the Offense lines up in an unbalanced-looking formation and a running back takes the snap from Center rather than the Quarterback. After the snap, a variety of options are available, including a pass by the running back and a sweep run behind some blockers.

Rushing Yards – This is totally easy to understand. It just means the number of yards the team or a player accumulates on running play/s, i.e. yards gained without passing the ball. ‘Sometimes called, “yards on the ground”. You might hear, “well, we held them to 60 yards rushing”. Which means that the Defense kept the other team’s Offense from running the ball very well. Also, individual players might be lauded for their total rushing yards because they racked up a lot of them. Like for example, in 1988 Barry Sanders had 2628 total yards rushing in one season. (It would be cool to say, “Wow! If so and so keeps that up, Barry Sanders’ record might be in danger!)

Spread Offense – The object of the spread offense is to open up the Offense’s formation, so that  the Defense is forced to spread itself thin across the field to cover(stay with) everyone. The Quarterback stands back away from the Center (shotgun formation) and they can have as many as 5 receivers spread out. There are several forms of this offense and defenses are learning more all the time about how to best defend against it.

Betting terms: I’ll take Miami and the points; Texas -14, Wake Forest +14 – I think this is just a weird way to say it. But, it means that the predictions have some team beating Miami by more points than you think they’ll be able to make. You still think Miami is going to lose, but not by as many “points” as the betting predictions.

Texas -14 means that they are supposed to beat Wake Forest by 14 points. Wake Forest + 14 means that they will lose by 14. See why I said it was a weird way to put it?

Sack – This just means that the Defense broke through the Offensive blockers and tackled the Quarterback behind the line of scrimmage.

Clock Management – This is usually mentioned during the latter part of the 1^st half or in the closing minutes of the game. It speaks of the Offense using their Time Outs, plays without a huddle, and plays that stop the Game Clock in a way that provides for more opportunity to score or maintain their lead.

Pump Fake – An easy one….the Quarterback moves his arm in a motion that looks like he’s throwing the ball, but holds on to it. This is designed to “fake out” the defense and make them commit to covering a receiver that’s not going to be the QB’s target.

They’re/We’re “Deep”  at that position – In this context, it simply means that the team has several players who play the position well. This is great because the players can be taken in and out of play to rest and if someone is injured, a replacement is prepared to go into the game.

Shut down corner – A Corner back is a Defensive player. A “shut down” Corner means that this Defensive player just rarely lets the offensive guy he covers get by him for any yardage.