re: Is Hal Mumme the most influential coach in modern CFB history?

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Give us some Cliff notes, LA

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ha, it's been a while since i read it. It basically starts out with the TTU game against #1 Texas, where TTU runs its last drive by just spamming four verts over and over and crabtree eventually catches the game-winner--then flashes back to Mumme starting out.



Begins with Mumme getting fired from some college job and having to retreat back to become a HS coach. He decides he's done with trying to run things the traditional way--he has no further to fall so he's gonna try his own ideas all the way. There was some legendary HS coach that ran the pistol or something. He got concepts from him, then became obsessed with picking the brains of as many coaches as he could, and grabbed concepts from them. The biggest among these influences was Lavell Edwards at BYU, but he sat in on tons of coaches, including the west coast offense guys in the NFL, Air Coryell, and various other coaches at really every level. Gradually he pieced together various ideas from those offenses to build what ultimately became the air raid. (I think one could argue that he actually just stole a lot of the main air raid concepts from edwards, then just kinda pushed them to an even greater extreme... e.g. the wide OL alignment).


Anyway, it goes thru his ascent thru the coaching ranks (and the corresponding progression of the air raid system), linking up with Leach, hilarious stories about them when they were still at tiny D3 indiana weslyan (i believe at one point, Leach was quadrupling as the offensive coordinator, a history professor, some type of athletic department assistant, and a janitor), then progressing to Valdosta State and eventually Kentucky.



Throughout the book, there are breakdowns of the fundamental air raid concepts, Mumme/Leach's thoughts behind adding them in, how they work, etc.


Basically goes through the whole history of mumme's career and the creation and implementation of the air raid, all the way back up to that TTU game.



Great read. Highly recommend it for any CFB fan