By Brandon Boyer, Staff Writer

Published in print Sept. 17, 2014

I am not a football person.

I have had to push myself to learn about the country’s juggernaut that is American football.

Prior to four years ago, when a roommate of mine showcased the technical wonders and physical prowess shown in football in our suite at UNC Charlotte, I never watched football. The few times I had been over to a friend’s house to hang out and football was the activity of choice, it was like watching grass grow.

It was just so unfathomably BORING. I was a proponent of the world’s version of football. The one with the ball at your feet. That football was the perfect combination of constant movement, little to no stoppages and athleticism for me. The constant stoppages and short progress of this football was the antithesis of this to me.

That is… until I watched the University of Oregon play.  It was October and my roommate had on the game of the week which was #9 Stanford facing off against #4 Oregon. Now, keep in mind, this was Andrew Luck’s Stanford. Luck, now gracing the NFL with his keen mind led Stanford out to a quick 21-3 lead in the first quarter. Then, I noticed something.

Oregon was running an awful lot as the second quarter continued, running a no huddle offense and a quick snap count, something I could not fathom with football. These were players jogging into position, forcing their opponents to run and keep up with their ever-pressing tempo. At one point, there was only 15 seconds between snaps for the Ducks and they plowed down the field time and time again, trading blows with Stanford to go into halftime still trailing 31-24.

This is something I had never seen before. All the football games I had ever seen were slow under their own weight, with players wandering around between plays, several commercials and timeouts called, and announcers blathering about the history of the game.

What I was watching was the exact opposite. What I was watching was Chip Kelly’s football.

Whatever he said at halftime excited his already high-octane team, leading the Ducks to shutting out Stanford in the second half, scoring four more times and winning the game, 52-31.

After watching the Ducks hop around the field play to play, operating on a hurry up and silent counts, I was hooked on football.

This was the blend of hard-hitting, boisterous Americanized sport combined with the constant movement and blood-driven need to score found in the football that I loved that I had so craved to find so I could fit in. I was able to watch games now because they kept up with my rather short attention span, in short. Gone was the wandering between plays, the waiting on the play clock, and timeouts to check on what the play was.

This was football turned up to 11. The hurry up offense had been produced at places like Clemson, but Kelly, when he was at New Hampshire, developed a simple principle that utilized the hurry up offense at its heart: “The more plays you can run, the better chance you would have to score.” In a piece from ESPN the Magazine on Kelly’s beginnings at the Philadelphia Eagles, there is a discussion on how Kelly has revolutionized the game. It points out that Kelly was the first coach to make a point about the volume of plays in a game being as key as their execution. It meant having several looks and schemes derived from one formation and each formation having their own sets of player-determined looks and deviations, keeping opposing defenses off balance, on their heels, and always having to play catch up.

It is a system that increases athleticism, decreases the size of the playbook and puts players in a place where they are successful since they understand every aspect of what it is they need to do when they’re playing.

It is a system that goes into excruciating detail and moves away from the traditional forms of the game, where manipulating the clock and hitting your opponent as hard as you can is most important.

This is a game that is imaginative and attractive to watch and will only to continue to spread its influence, which will only continue to attract people like me who like fast-paced, constantly moving games and will keep a hold of those who just want to see their team run up the score.