When quarterback Jeremy George entered the Piedmont (Calif.) High School football coaches' office to talk to Kurt Bryan, he noticed an unusual formation on the dry-erase board.

 

At first, George thought the formation was meant for the punt team.

 

No, Bryan said, that's our new offense.

 

George looked back to the board and was a little confused.

 

"Initially, the first thought I had was, 'I'm pretty sure that's illegal,' " George said. "I've got to admit I thought it was a little crazy. I think most of the players thought it was crazy. A lot of people were a little skeptical."

 

And for good reason.

 

Bryan, Piedmont's coach, and Steve Humphries, the director of football operations, had developed an offense in which all 11 players on the field potentially are eligible to catch the ball. Though they weren't certain it was legal when they first concocted the idea, they were willing to implement it for the 2007 season.

 

After compiling a 7-4 record and a first-round playoff appearance, Bryan and Humphries now call their innovation a success.

 

"Going into the season, we thought that either we're going to get fired or we're going to transform the game because of the innovative aspects and the wealth of ideas," Bryan said. "Luckily, it turned out to be the latter."

 

The plan began at Humphries' house in northern California while the two were dreaming of ideas. The question: how to effectively level the playing field for Piedmont, with an enrollment of less than 1,000, when the Highlanders faced schools with student bodies nearly twice that.

 

Then, Humphries came up with a whopper: Why not put two quarterbacks in a shotgun formation and make every player on the field a potential receiving threat?

 

http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=825031

http://www.bluegrasspreps.com/showthread.php?t=156523