I recently heard there is some sort of rule in the college and pro game that would not allow this to ever get beyond the high school level

I’m sure it will get closed. NC’s HS sports association will probably move on the rule soon.

10 eligible players is not football (you can’t have eleven, since whoever accepts the snap can’t pass to himself, though he CAN receive after he’s passed or handed to someone else).

It’s not football, and it won’t survive a review in NC.

If a player is lined up to receive the snap more than 7 yards behind the line of scrimmage, you are in a punt formation. The punt formation has some slightly different rules regarding player eligibility in some rulebooks that do not require ineligible players to wear ineligible numbers. So they are putting everybody in eligible numbers and running passing plays out of a “punt” formation. Before the snap, the required number of people approach the line and set for one second. Then the ball is snapped. So you still have 5 ineligible people on that play, but the defense doesn’t know who they will be until 1 second before the snap. They might be spread across the line, or they might all be on one side of the center.

In the NFL, college, and most high school associations, the eligible/ineligible number loophole that they are exploiting is only valid for punt formations where there is a reasonable intent to punt. (In other words, this’ll never work on 1st through 3rd down, or whenever a team doesn’t have a punter on the field.) Because of this, it’s just not viable as an offense anywhere else. It’d be like designing an offense based on the rules of 9-man football, then running it in the NFL with 2 “free” players. Good luck with that.

In short, the A-11 will never get a sniff in the NFL. Or in college.

that is the way i understand it, it is already illegal at the pro level. the spread is definitely making strides at higher levels, perhaps because of the favorable emphasis with the rules on wr’s and speed. i was also just discussing the 2-qb thing last week in response to what the fish were doing with a rb and a qb. but you would need 2 qb’s who could run, and actually complete a pass. teams are having a hard enough time finding 1 qb who can excel at both, so it doesn’t look promising. at the pro level, at least

The guys who came up with this thing went on an all-out marketing campaign before they had fully proven that the offense worked. They installed it, got the team practiced up in a couple of games, then had some really good success before teams had a chance to adjust to it. That’s when they came out with YouTubes, DVDs, seminar courses and so on. Recently, it hasn’t been as successful against the defenses in the high school league it started in. (In contrast, the spread went through a normal period of skepticism and proof-of-concept before most people accepted it as a viable offense at the college level.) I want to see how it responds to defensive adjustments before coronating it as the next great offense.