Today's Tidbit... The RPO of 1947

My recent book, Hut! Hut! Hike!, looks at when various elements of football's vocabulary entered the game and what was happening in football that caused them to coin a new term. For example, the run-pass option emerged after WWII, and the term has been used since then. However, the abbreviation, RPO, is more recent, first appearing in a newspaper in 2015.

Option football arrived with Don Faurot's Split-T Offense in 1941. Faurot put horizontal pressure on defenses by using even wider splits in the line than those used with the Modern T. In addition, the splits among the backs also widened.

(Faurot, 1950)

More critically, the Split T introduced the option running attack to football. As in the Modern T, the quarterback aligned under center, and his first movement post-snap was to give or fake a quick-hitting halfback dive.