In 1988, a third year coach edged his team to a national championship led by a brutalizing rushing attack. He employed an option-based running attack with dynamic athletes at fullback, running-back, and especially the quarterback. He was blessed to have in his corner such talents as Bobby Daugherty, Kenneth Goldsmith, Richie Harris, and Patrick Baynes. The coach I am of course talking about is former Furman Paladins coach Jimmy Satterfield.

Jimmy may not have been immortalized to the same extent as also 3rd-year coach 1988 national champion Lou Holtz, but he betrayed mortality in different ways . The classic 336 page Offensive Football Strategies, released in 2000, is a collection of coaching-clinic-articles by such minds of the game as Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno, Tom Osborne, Bill Synder, but also by one Jimmy Satterfield.

Jimmy’s article was titled “The I Option Package” and focuses on his option game. One of his diagrammed plays is called “Loaded Option G Scheme” and this page of this book is the first link to include “G-Scheme Football” upon a google search today. The G-Scheme involves a “G-Block” which just refers to a trap of a defensive end/end-man-line-of-scrimmage by the play-side guard.

What is old is new again.

Chip Long Is A Recycler

Chip Long is reintroducing, or repackaging, depending on your point of view, a football play that is generally only living today in the Wing-T offense. This isn’t by any stretch of the imagination a “finesse” “spready” so-called “weak-willed” play, instead it is by every definition of the word the embodiment of “Man-Ball.”

Supposedly, this type of play was the “most famous option” by Nebraska. I’ve heard that possibly, Gap-focused running teams like Louisville in the past, and Stanford/Michigan of today have run this type of play, but it is certainly uncommon at the FBS level, Regardless they do not seem to have ran it as Chip runs it. Before delving into this play in detail, let’s try to finish a bit more of Jimmy’s story.

Jimmy’s Championship

In 1988, Jimmy lost two games, which two games I am not entirely sure. I have tried to find a breakdown of his team’s schedule, but it appears to be hiding. One of the games he lost that year was against the Clemson Tigers. The official game program of that day for the Tigers described Furman’s offensive strategy as “Over the past eight seasons, Furman has relied heavily on its ground attack, averaging 263.0 yards per game on the ground since 1980.”.

As an aside, that game program is an absolute gem, there is an ancient KFC ad in it (page 33), and some people trying to make a board game called “Ultimate Football board game” on page 122, I guess 1988 was the “Ultimate” of football? Perhaps for Notre Dame!

Anyways, evidently Clemson was the holder of the “College Football Belt”, and in this game “Furman held the ball for 34:36 of the game but lost 3 fumbles prevented them from challenging for the upset. Williams threw for just 74 yards in the win but 2 Furman quarterbacks combined for just 62 yards passing.”

Jimmy went on to play for the national championship in I-AA that year against Georgia Southern. You can watch my “cut” of the game in the following, I condensed Furman’s offense, but included the drama of Georgia Southern’s last drive.

He called G-scheme variants about 3 or 4 times in the game until the final drive. The score was 17-12 with Furman having the ball with 1:49 minutes left. Georgia Southern had 3 timeouts, so Jimmy chose to grind out the game on running plays.

On this final drive Jimmy went to his most trusted play: the G-scheme. He called it again, and again, and again, and one more time. Finally, it was 4th and 2 on Georgia Southern’s 20 yard line , and he again went back to the well.

However, it was not to be as the runner was stuffed for a 1 yard gain on 4th down. Georgia Southern went on to throw an interception on the ensuing drive which gave Jimmy the National Championship. Jimmy trusted this play, the G-Scheme, to such a great extent because in his years of coaching, it had not failed him. By the way, in the “Jimmy Satterfield Show” following the championship, the “Rick Roll” song was actually played as background music, this really was 1988.

Jimmy seems like he would have been a fun coach to play under. He heard from his son–who was using the early days of the internet–that one of his players was close to breaking Emmitt Smith’s record of 100 yard rushers so like a typical football historian he made sure that his player broke the national record for 100 yard games.

This quote I typed from this video so please excuse any of my mistakes. It is simply beautiful and needs to be fully stated: