Welcome to 25 Years of Option Central !
For a number of reasons, we decided not to wait another "Ten Years" to celebrate another milestone. We're hard pressed to think about any 5 year period in recent history..in Football, or in the world for that matter, that is marked by as much change and cataclysm.
Arguably, in recent years, much of the buzz around the "option" has become the RPO, or Run/Pass Option. A modern implementation of the decades old "Veer Pass" and "Tight End Dump Pass", today's RPOs leverage the Shotgun formation and Zone/Read action to create difficult and varied "conflicts" for a Defense.
In our announcement of the addition of the 2019 RPO Clinic to our Members Video Library, we opened with this quote from Bill Belichick :
"When a guy gets a key, and two different plays look like the same play, if he’s right on one, he’s wrong on the other. A lot of those plays are run by the quarterback, so both plays are in play and the quarterback makes a decision on what to do as he reads the defense. You can’t be right defensively, is the philosophy there.”
Bill Belichick
Our commentary at that time was that the RPO was neither a running play nor a passing play. Rather, we noted, the RPO had evolved from a type of play to an entire offense, and an Option Central Membership included a virtual seat at the 2 day 2019 RPO Clinic. The RPO clinic recordings offered streaming video presentations from High School and College coaches and covered RPO-related topics of interest for coaches on "both sides of the ball".
As we began publishing the RPO clinic videos, our Chalk Talk series, produced in collaboration with Coach Tony DeMeo turned to the Passing game. Totalling 15 Chalk Talks, a number of plays from that Triple Gun Passing Chalk Talk series were included in CoachTube courses that followed (see the news pages from 2019 and 2020 for more details).
Our focus in 2021 and 2022 turned to our CoachTube courses, many of which focused on Attacking Defenses with the Triple Gun Offense. The courses, which combined both presentation and Chalk Talk video were offered free of charge to active Members at the time of publication as a complementary Option Central Member benefit.
Later in 2023, we added a Play of the Day Index page that included a description and link to Coach DeMeo's daily blog posts, many of which included an introduction by Coach DeMeo. Coach DeMeo's Play of the Day posts had recently moved to an Option Central affiliate site, adding new features such as a High School Play of the Day that highlighted a team running plays from the Triple Gun Offense.
As the 2023 year drew to a close, we assisted Coach DeMeo in finalizing his manuscript of Tony DeMeo's Triple Gun Offense: An Evolution of Option Football. We were aware of the extensive amount of work and time that Coach had invested in what would be his first book in 15 years. The Digital Version of Tony DeMeo's Triple Gun Offense: An Evolution of Option Football was released in the Spring of 2024 by Throw Deep Publishing. But only half the job was done, as Coach Tony DeMeo has always intended to publish a Paperback version. In addition, a number of coaches began to inquire as to whether and when a Paperback would be available.
After a few months, it had become less and less likely that the Paperback version would ever be completed. So, in early Summer, we agreed to work with Coach DeMeo once again, and on August 10, the Paperback version of Tony DeMeo’s Triple Gun Offense: An Evolution of Option Football was released. It is available now at Amazon .
With our attention now back squarely on Option Central and well into our 25th Anniversary year, we're focused on how to best continue what Mike Schuster created 25 years ago, New Membership options, "grandfathering" active members and expanding our outreach efforts to Guest Contributors and content creators from the Option Football community are just some of the things we have done thus far.
Like we've said before, its always a good time to become a Member of Option Central !
Option Central - all things Option since 1999 !