And why?

It's because college football coaches generally are not in the business of inventing strategies. They survive, and sometimes flourish, primarily through the plagiarism concept of offensive innovation.

In other words, the college guys clone what they see at the high school level. If you really want to see what your favorite college team will be attempting to execute five years from now, get out to a high school game. There is nothing you see at the college and/or professional football level that did not have seeds at high school.

"Nothing is really new," says Bob Paroli. "Everything you see has been done before, or it's a variation of what's been done before."

Paroli, the coach at Fayetteville Seventy-First High, is 77 years old. He played football at N.C. State before Earle Edwards got the head coaching job in 1954. Entering Friday night's game against Fayetteville Douglas Byrd High, Paroli's teams had won 372 times.

This man has seen it all. He has lived it all. More important, he has defended it all. And right now, in the midst of his 55th year of football coaching, Paroli probably can read the tea leaves a good deal better than David Cutcliffe, Butch Davis, Skip Holtz, Jerry Moore, Tom O'Brien and even the state's resident smartie, Jim Grobe.

Paroli takes the opposite stance, of course.

"It's just that in high school, you never know what's coming next, so that puts you in the position of having to get ready for anything that'll come next. The college coaches are the best in the business, but the high school coaches have to deal with what's coming next first."

What's coming next, these days in high school football, is out of a small school in Piedmont, Calif.: A-11.

Remember that formation. It's A-11, and it's so exotic and controversial that some states, including North Carolina, have outlawed the strategy. Forty permit it.

Devised by Piedmont coach Kurt Bryan and originally nicknamed "Pluto," some plays begin from a straight punt formation. At other times, there are two quarterbacks in on the same play.

In many cases, all 11 players on the field appear eligible to receive a pass. At various times and on any given play, linemen move off the line of scrimmage after having informed game officials that they would be pass-eligible on the coming play. A big part of the rebellion is that under certain circumstances, players with uniform numbers ranging from 50 through 79 become pass receivers. For defensive backs and linebackers, it's a never-ending numbers nightmare.

"There's always something new or a new twist on something old coming along," Paroli said. "It's a cycle that goes on and on in offensive football."

But don't be surprised to see A-11, or a variation of it, pop up at the college level. The twin veer, veer, wishbone, hambone, single wing, double wing and wing-T formations all originated on high school fields. So did the spread-option, the latest rage that only now is creeping into the ACC.

It wasn't that long ago that many of the top college teams in the nation ran a wishbone similar to the offense Georgia Tech's Paul Johnson has used for the past few seasons.

"It just went out of style, and a lot of that was because the high school coaches started tinkering with new ideas," Johnson said. "Now, you really have to look and look to find prospects who are used to running it. But as long as you can find enough of them, it's still a tough offense to stop."

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