There’s a play-calling sickness in college football – football at every level, really – and no team is safe. It’s called the zone read and in a copycat football universe, it is infecting everything in its path. Its symptoms include: abandonment of traditional power running games, disasters in short yardage and goal-line situations, paralyzing playcalling predictability and silly, unforced turnovers. It’s affecting the health of college football, won’t you please help?

That this sickness is pervasive and all-consuming was proven emphatically this past weekend as the disease entered the bloodstream of the University of Southern California, turning the program’s once-proud running tradition into an error-riddled game of finesse. USC fumbled the ball twice in the first half in botched attempts to run this sleight of hand they call the zone read option. And the turnovers aren’t the biggest problem, what’s worse is that it robs teams, especially ones like USC, of the effectiveness of a true running game and the ball-control and physical dominance advantages that can come with it. USC’s Ronald Jones is one of the most talented running backs in the nation – or he could be – so here’s a friendly suggestion, get the QB under center and then have him turn around and hand the ball to him.

If teams want to run an option offense, then get to it. People used to do it all the time. The wishbone is fun, all it takes is about nineteen super-fast guys and a decade of practice. But the read option isn’t an option offense at all. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the running back is getting the ball and everybody knows it. Nifty playcalling doesn’t turn your drop-back quarterback into J.C. Watts (look it up) and there are a ridiculous number of stiff, relatively-unathletic QBs that are running the read option every third play. All the read option does, in most cases, is disrupt the natural flow of a team’s offense, distracts them from what they are trying to accomplish and distorts the true offensive identity they might be trying to establish. It also ensures that running backs essentially get the ball while standing still instead of getting the ball running full-speed toward the hole (watch Stanford’s running game with Bryce Love if you want to see the opposite).

Anyway, it’s too late now, Sam Darnold’s an option quarterback. Most college football coaches are lemmings, and if you’re an SC fan, you just gotta pray the coaches don’t start watching old video clips of George Blanda because then they turn Darnold into a kicking quarterback.