this day and age. but the read option is.

the only way that byu can consistently beat the big boys is with smoke and mirrors, through great coaching. period. when you run stuff like the air raid, it's not sneaking up on anyone anymore, and you have to win by having better players than the opposition. why? because teams will go one on one with our wr's, then go zone in the middle, and dare us to beat them. we won't. we will have to manufacture ways to move the ball and will struggle in the run game. and when you struggle in the run game, it's game on on our qb. simply put, the 1980s called, and they want to let you know that people have figured out the byu offense of old.

what the read option does is allow a coordinator to get creative and easily manufacture yards and points. you don't have to run your qb all that much if you choose, and you don't need the athletes that so many on cb think that you need. in addition, you can find prolific run-pass qb's much easier than you can pure, effective passing qb's. why? because with a running qb, you force the defense to play its hand, making reads easier for everyone. if they guess wrong, you'll have numbers, immediately. this makes things extremely simple for the qb. so rather than needing a great guy at qb, you can get away with the nick marshall's of the world, but still be prolific. all of this variety allows you to not have to necessarily need the athletes that oregon has. don't get stuck on oregon. everyone is using the read option because it works.

of course, this is all contingent upon an OC with some imagination....