TUSCALOOSA - Admit it. If you experienced the 1970s glory days of Alabama football under coach Paul Bryant, you watch the 2011 Crimson Tide and imagine what it would be like running the wishbone offense.

Picture Trent Richardson at one halfback and Eddie Lacy at the other. Imagine Jalston Fowler at fullback, or Brandon Lewis in short-yard situations.

Quarterback? How about Marquis Maze, with Blake Sims as his backup?

It isn't going to happen, of course.

But on Nick Saban's weekly radio show Thursday night, the Alabama coach was asked why he doesn't use the wishbone.

Saban gave a lengthy answer.

"First of all, I don't know how to coach it," Saban began.

"Secondly, I don't think in this day and age, the way football has developed to a much more wide-open game. ... It's amazing to me when you look in the newspaper and you look at the NFL stats of the best offenses and the best defenses, just maybe 20 years ago the team that could run the ball the best was usually the team that had the best chance of winning, and now you see the No. 1 offense and they have 3,000 yards passing and 300 rushing."

Next question? No. Saban was just getting warmed up.

"I mean, the game has just changed so dramatically in terms of how wide open it is and how sophisticated the passing game is and how you spread people out on the field and utilize skill players," he said.

"I think the wishbone is a very, very difficult offense to defend, and having defended it and played against it. ..."

Saban reminisced about a 52-10 loss at Oklahoma in 1978 when he was a West Virginia assistant coach and the Sooners were a wishbone juggernaut.

"I remember playing Billy Sims and all of them," Saban said. "They have the chuck wagon with the horses, and every time they score a touchdown they go around. They (darn) near died that day. We didn't even slow them down. They had some pretty good guys running it, too.

"Back in those days, when you were standing on the sidelines at Oklahoma, you could see just the top of the head of the people on the other sidelines because the crown on the field was so steep. So when they caught that pitch going downhill, they were going to be going fast. And they had some fast guys."

Next question? No. Saban wasn't finished.

"But anyway, I think it's a heck of an offense, and I think that when you do something that is really, really different, it will actually be difficult for people to play against," he said. "And if somebody came out right now that really knew how to run the wishbone. ..."

Saban noted that Georgia Tech runs an offense similar to the wishbone, and NCAA Division I-AA power Georgia Southern will bring the triple-option attack to Bryant-Denny Stadium on Nov. 19. The Eagles incorportate spread formations into their offense.

"They are rolling people up offensively all the time in terms of how they run the ball, because people don't defend those kinds of offenses anymore," Saban said.

"We've kind of gotten antiquated, and now we're all of a sudden back. Everybody used to run the ball like we run it. Now people have a hard time stopping us, because they don't play against teams that run the ball like we runs it. These used to be the basic plays that everybody ran."

Saban reiterated that his wife, Terry, questions why the Tide runs up the middle so often.

"But it really is the kind of team we have," he said. "I've tried to explain it to her. It's physical. We have big guys, and they do better when we run direct runs, right at people. When we try to move sideways, they don't move sideways as well as they move straight ahead. It's kind of like the Mack truck theory. "