1994: Fashion mistakes were made.

We hate split offensive play-calling systems. Despise them. Loathe them. Think they should be thrown into the flames with our old high school yearbooks and that collarless button-down we misguidedly purchased in 1994. (”Dude, it’s like a dai-shiki you can tuck in. Exotic, but still formal.”)

This likely comes from watching the [REDACTED]/Fedora/Locksley monstrosity at Florida in the early ’00s, which even to the untrained eye had an incoherence to it that, at critical moments devolved into dada. Our third bubble-screen in a row? Really? When they just stopped the first two? A draw on third down? Daring! Even when you’re working with top-grade quality, the gangbang approach to in-game strategy seems ineffective at best, especially in terms of setting up defenses for plays later in the game.

Enter Penn State, where Jay Paterno* governs the pass game, Galen Hall** governs the run game, and the end product sort of sits there and cooks at a lukewarm temperature the health department suggests is unsafe for human consumption. Penn State’s last offensive pulse beat somewhere around 2005 when Michael Robinson, unleashed by some cribbed spread-option zone read hoodoo, took Penn State to the Orange Bowl and rewrote the code of reality by making announcers pity a Minnesota safety for a hit he took from a quarterback.

Brian has already laid to waste JayPa’s* record as a quarterbacks coach. (Hint: it’s worse than mediocre, meaning leaning toward “poor.”) There’s little in the way of excuse, since Penn State has consistently taken quality sirloin talent at quarterback and parlayed it into steak finger performance at the college level.

With beloved whipping boy and bookie’s worst enemy Anthony Morelli gone, the return of 2005’s adumbrated VY-bone (itself a bastardized WVU spread) is on the way at Penn State. It’s gonna have passing! It’s gonna have running! It’s gonna have two quarterbacks, one passing and one running, except the white one is the runner, and the black one is the passer, and sometimes the runner will pass, and the passer will run, and there’s gonna be reverses and trick plays and unicorns!

Or, if you’re Captain Killjoy:

”It’s a run offense,” Jay Paterno said. ”It’s really a glorified wishbone offense.”

With sparklers and racing stripes and a lift kit, you mean. It’s like the wishbone, if the wishbone MATED WITH A MAMMOTH and gave birth to HAIRY CYBORG DRAGON OFFENSE. If you’re wondering what this will all look like, it will be like a rare, mystical unicorn with an HDTV for a face tuned to an Obama commercial with black Nikes on and the Apollo moon lander sewn onto it.

The steampunk Dalek is JoePa’s new sideline cart, complete with toilet and guaranteed unbreakable casing for unavoidable sideline collisions.

*Current PSU quarterbacks coach. Obama supporter. Is a secret Muslim, hates America and efficient quarterbacking.

**Current PSU Offensive coordinator and onetime Florida coach in the 80s and 1920s. Son of Rutherford B. Hayes.