The two-platoon system is a tactic in
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
enabled by rules allowing
unlimited substitution adopted during the 1940s. The "two platoons", offense and defense, are an integral part of the modern game today.
History
![Fritz Crisler](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Fritz_Crisler.png)
In its earliest iteration,
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
-- like the sport of
rugby
Rugby may refer to:
Sport
* Rugby football in many forms:
** Rugby league: 13 players per side
*** Masters Rugby League
*** Mod league
*** Rugby league nines
*** Rugby league sevens
*** Touch (sport)
*** Wheelchair rugby league
** Rugby union: 1 ...
whence it sprung -- featured squads of players alternating on offense and defense in continuous action without leaving the field. This
one-platoon system
The one-platoon system, also known as iron man football, is a platoon system in American football where players play on both offense and defense. It was the result of smaller roster sizes in the early days of the game and rules that limited player ...
was mandated by rule. Prior to 1932, a player removed during the first half could not return to the field until the second half, while a player removed in the second half was lost for the game.
[George C. Nilan, "It Can Never Happen Again: The New Rules Make Drastic Changes in the Game," ''Illustrated Football Annual, 1932.'' New York: Fiction House, 1932; pg. 84.] With no limits to the size of a college football roster, a severe competitive advantage was thereby created for large collegiate football programs, which could send in multiple waves of talented players; smaller schools typically experienced a severe talent drop-off between starters and reserves.
This provided the impetus for reform of the substitution rule effective with the 1933 season. Henceforth, players could be removed from the game for rest and recuperation and return to action once per quarter.
This allowed talented starters to spend more time on the field, enabling small programs to remain more competitive with their larger peers.
A lack of players during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, during which many able-bodied college-age men volunteered for or were drafted into military service, provided the rationale for a further loosening of substitution rules.
A rule allowing unlimited substitution was initiated, with players now permitted to rest and return as many times as they wished per quarter. The limited pool of talented players was thus better conserved. This rules change had the corollary effect of opening the game to offensive and defensive specialization -- the so-called "two-platoon" system.
The first known use of the "two-platoon" system was by
Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
head coach
Fritz Crisler
Herbert Orin "Fritz" Crisler (; January 12, 1899 – August 19, 1982) was an American college football coach who is best known as "the father of two-platoon football," an innovation in which separate units of players were used for offense and d ...
in 1945 against an
Army
An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...
team under head coach "Colonel"
Earl "Red" Blaik.
When F. Scott Fitzgerald was living at La Paix, on the Turnbull estate in Baltimore, in 1933, he called Asa Bushnell, Princeton’s graduate manager of athletics and a clubmate of Fitzgerald’s, at 3 AM. “Get a pencil and paper,” said Fitzgerald. “I have some suggestions for Fritz Crisler.” Fitzgerald then explained his ideas that led to the two-platoon system, and Chrisler wrote back saying the plan had many virtues and would be adopted on the condition that it would be called “the Fitzgerald system“. Fitzgerald wrote back and said he guessed they better keep “the Fitzgerald system” in reserve. But that’s where the idea came from.
ee Andrew Turnbull’s biography of Fitzgerald.
Michigan lost the game 28–7, but Crisler's use of eight players who played only on offense, eight who played only on defense, and three that played both, impressed Blaik enough for him to adopt it for his own team.
Blaik, a former soldier himself, coined the "
platoon
A platoon is a military unit typically composed of two or more squads, sections, or patrols. Platoon organization varies depending on the country and the branch, but a platoon can be composed of 50 people, although specific platoons may range ...
" terminology in reference to the type of military unit.
[Douglas S. Looney]
One Is More Like It
''Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...
'', 3 September 1990, retrieved 20 January 2009. Between 1946 and 1950, Blaik's two-platoon teams twice finished the season ranked second in the
Associated Press poll
The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadca ...
s and never finished lower than 11th.
In 1954, the NCAA adopted new rules which effectively reinstalled the one-platoon system.
[Clarence Munn]
Thumbs Down On The One Platoon
''Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...
'', 29 November 1954, retrieved 20 January 2009. The revised rules allowed only one player to be substituted between plays, putting an end the mass substitution of offensive and defensive units.
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
head coach "General"
Robert Neyland
Robert Reese Neyland (; February 17, 1892 – March 28, 1962) was an American football player and coach and officer in the United States Army, reaching the rank of brigadier general. He served three stints as the head football coach at the Univ ...
praised the change as the end of "chickenshit football".
![Paul Dietzel (1958)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Paul_Dietzel_%281958%29.jpg)
In 1958, LSU coach
Paul Dietzel
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
*Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
*Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chris ...
came up with a unique three-platoon system. It consisted of three teams of 11 different players, and was designed to keep his players from being fatigued in an era when most players started on both offense and defense. Instead of replacing individual players during the game, Dietzel would bring in an entirely new set of players between plays and series. The three teams were called the White Team (the first-string offense and defense), the Gold (Go) Team (the second-string offense), and the
Chinese Bandits The Chinese Bandits were the backup defensive unit on coach Paul Dietzel's LSU Tigers football teams, most notably the 1958 and 1959 teams. The name was also used briefly by the Army Cadets football team during Dietzel's coaching tenure at the U.S. ...
(the second-string defense). The system worked, as the Tigers went undefeated and won the national championship. The Chinese Bandits, the second-string defensive unit, which consisted of less-talented but ferocious players, became hugely popular with LSU fans and remains one of the most legendary pieces of LSU football history.
After the 1964 season, twelve years since the mandate requiring one-platoon, the NCAA repealed the rules enforcing its use and allowed an unlimited amount of player substitutions.
This allowed, starting with the 1965 season, teams to form separate offensive and defensive units as well as "
special teams
In American football, the specific role that a player takes on the field is referred to as their "position". Under the modern rules of American football, both teams are allowed 11 players on the field at one time and have "unlimited free substitu ...
" which would be employed in kicking situations. The reinstatement of the two-platoon system allowed players to become more specialized by focusing on a limited number of plays and skills related to their specific position.
[K. Adam Powell, Woody Durham]
"An Era of Change (1963-1968)
(Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
cache), ''Border Wars: The First Fifty Years of Atlantic Coast Conference Football'', Scarecrow Press, 2004, , . With players now fresher, coaches could now build their teams for speed and agility rather than brute strength and endurance;
Don Coryell
Donald David Coryell (October 17, 1924 – July 1, 2010) was an American football coach, who coached in the National Football League (NFL) first with the St. Louis Cardinals from 1973 to 1977 and then the San Diego Chargers from 1978 to 1986.
W ...
took advantage of the quarterbacks and wide receivers that were overlooked in the days of one-platoon ball to create one of the first predominantly passing offenses in top-level football.
This, in turn, prompted defenses to respond in kind with wider-open defenses that emphasized
linebacker
Linebacker (LB) is a playing position in gridiron football. Linebackers are members of the defensive team, and line up three to five yards behind the line of scrimmage and the defensive linemen. They are the "middle ground" of defenders, p ...
s and
defensive back
In gridiron football, defensive backs (DBs), also called the secondary, are the players on the defensive side of the ball who play farthest back from the line of scrimmage. They are distinguished from the other two sets of defensive players, the ...
s, which in turn led to the rise of modern defenses such as the
4–3 defense
In American football, a 4–3 defense is a defensive alignment consisting of four down linemen and three linebackers. It is called a "base defense" because it is the default defensive alignment used on "base downs" (1st and 2nd downs). However, ...
and
3–4 defense and led to earlier defenses with more defensive linemen becoming obsolete. By the early 1970s, however, some university administrators, coaches and others were calling for a return to the days of one-platoon football, to save money spent by athletic departments.
One-platoon football seen as a money saver
''The Free-Lance Star
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
'', November 22, 1974.
See also
* One-platoon system
The one-platoon system, also known as iron man football, is a platoon system in American football where players play on both offense and defense. It was the result of smaller roster sizes in the early days of the game and rules that limited player ...
* Platoon system
A platoon system in baseball or American football is a method for substituting players in groups (platoons), to keep complementary players together during playing time.
Baseball
In baseball, a platoon is a method of sharing playing time, where ...
Footnotes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Two-platoon system
American football terminology