We win with offense.

MANY, MAYBE MOST, FOOTBALL coaches believe that you win with defense. I know that some of them do. But I hold the opposite view. I believe in building the program around offense.

Seven years ago I took over a high school program that had won just four games in four years. As the head freshman coach of those teams, I had the opportunity to observe the games either live or on tape.

Although many reasons could be cited for the losses, I saw offense as the problem: an inability to move the ball and score. Two seasons before I was named head coach, the team scored a total of 51 points in 11 games and never more than seven in any one game. Somewhat amazingly, it still managed to win two games.

When I took over in 1988, I decided to change the approach--to concentrate on offense. I believed that first, as a staff, we had to determine how we wanted to use our practice time with the players. Since we were a small school with a graduating class of 110 to 135 students, we felt that it was essential to make each player responsible for learning both an offensive and a defensive position.

Time management was crucial. Since we were going to spend most of our time on offense and felt most of our opponents would be focused equally on offense and defense, we had to figure out a way to ensure an advantage.

The answer, we felt, lay in two directions. First, we would spend a lot of time on group and team offense with each of our players; and second, we would perfect all of our basic plays and execution. With this kind of approach, we felt that we wouldn't have to make radical changes in our game plan from week to week.

Obviously, the more plays we felt comfortable with, the greater would be our variety and resourcefulness.