The old projector is dark, its film reeled in by the years.

Today, coaches dissect football with gizmos like the digital video recorder. Take a number, any number. Or any specific play. A man with a DVR can pick and choose exactly what he wants and needs.

Someday, a high-tech coach will stare at an image. Then the light bulb will snap on - not the one for the old-fashioned film projectors, but a mental beam that highlights the next offensive innovation in football.

"Eureka!" the coach will say. Well, if he's a football guy, he may utter something a little stronger than that, but you get the picture.

"It's just a continuing thing to try and get ahead," said Pat Mitchell, the co-coach at Cedar Falls and a man with over four decades on the sidelines.

Right now, we're riding another relatively new wave. The spread has spread everywhere; Stan Wienke has brought his version to Waterloo West. At a recent Northern Iowa press luncheon, head coach Mark Farley dropped "zone read option" into the conversation. Three words that have been long part of the football lexicon have been welded together to describe another way for the rushing game to puncture an opposing defense.

And the next phase may be carrying the ball over the horizon. Called the A-11, it's backyard touch colliding with tackle football at midfield. Two men from Piedmont High School in California, head coach Kurt Bryan and director of football operations Steve Humphries, developed the scheme and took on the field in 2007.

In simplest terms, if you put the right people in the right uniform numbers at the right place at the right time, all 11 offensive players on the field can appear to be eligible receivers, even though only five can actually catch a pass legally.

Simple, right? Explaining trigonometry might seem like a walk in the park. Yet, it's spreading.

According to Rivals.com, Bryan and Humphries have been contacted by representatives of major college programs and the National Football League.

Could it be? Five years from now, will a 350-pound guard wearing No. 44 be racing downfield, waving his arms madly to indicate he's wide open? And will Tarvaris Jackson overthrow him?

Stay tuned. And consider this. While the A 11 may be a new offense, and the technology for breaking down football is state of the art, the process of change is as old as the flying wedge.

Just listen to Pat Mitchell recite some of the offensive sets he's seen over the years - the split-T, the wing-T, the I, the wishbone, the veer and so on.

And Mitchell didn't pick the option bones much. There's been the wishbone, Georgia Southern's Ham-bone and now the flexbone.

Once upon a time, all of these offensive sets seemed unstoppable. Dedicated Texas fans can probably tell you how Darrell Royal bulldozed Tennessee in the 1969 Cotton Bowl with his brand new wishbone. He won a national championship, thanks to that triple-option attack.

Yet, the wave died. Defensive coaches found a way to break the bone. Notre Dame did it to the Longhorns on the way to winning the 1971 Cotton Bowl.

And coaches are aiming at the spread, from sea to shining sea.

"I won't say we have it figured out yet," Mitchell said, "but we've made quite a few adjustments. Everybody kind of catches up, but it's really a problem and a very difficult offense."

Football is often just a game of brute force, where my linebacker can dominate your tailback with a flick of a forearm that's bigger than a culvert. But it's also a coach with a DVR, galloping like a racehorse, ahead of the field on the way to the next big thing.

That's when the game will see the light - again.

Contact Jim Sullivan at (319) 291-1434 or jim.sullivan@wcfcourier.com