Which do you prefer, yardage through the air or on the ground?

     Saturday college football fans will get the best of both worlds as Idaho State’s potent spread passing attack goes head to head against Air Force’s ruthless ground-and-pound rushing game.

     It’s an interesting dichotomy of frames of mind. Not very often do we get to see two football teams on the same field that share literally nothing in common when it comes to offensive philosophy. The goal is the same - go forward and gain yards. But how it’s done is vastly different.

    “(There are) a lot of similarities between what they try to do offensively and how radical they are offensively to how radical we are offensively,” Idaho State head coach Mike Kramer said. “So there are some very strong similarities between both teams. One is the yin and the other is the yang.”

     Seriously, fans will fill like they are watching games from two distinct decades. The Falcons will pound and pound with the occasional pass over the top of a sleeping defense. It’s something straight out of the 1980’s.

     “I half expect Dee Dallas to be playing quarterback for Air Force, running the ball downhill,” Kramer said.

     On the other hand, the Bengals sport more of a new-age, spread option progressive offense that will run the ball every now and then.

    Opposites attract. It’s a match made in heaven.

    “It’s like water and ice,” Kramer said. “One’s got to be able to stay liquid and the other wants to stay rock solid. It’s just a matter of which team can play well in the mode that they want to play at.”

    It’s interesting that Kramer has chosen to adopt his passing offense with Don Bailey calling the shots. I say interesting because the man himself has said that his background is based on a similar ground attack.

    “It’s an option offense based upon the wishbone,” he said. “The wishbone is something that goes deep into my heritage.”

    If only Kramer could get some sort of “Inception” type of mind entry so his players can better understand how to stop the option.

    “It’s something that I definitely understand, but can I translate that to our players? Can we discover a way defensively to stop all the facets of what they try to do? That remains to be seen,” he said. “It’s more vision and you have to watch a certain visual key and react accordingly to that vision key. For us it’s vision, it’s being able to adjust as they adjust and adjust as fast as they adjust.”

    When ISU has the ball on Saturday, Air Force has to mind their P’s and Q’s so as to avoid getting burnt by the occasional run play. That event could gash the defense for huge gains.

    The opposite is true when the Bengals are on D.

    “That’s the thing. You just have to stay awake every single play,” said cornerback Donovan Henley. “After every play you have to realize it’s a new play and you can’t try to cheat by lining up somewhere different. You have to stick to your assignment every single time. You have to honor the pass, honor the run and you can’t just try to cheat on plays.”

    The similar differences continue.

    I am looking forward to seeing how each team responds to what the offenses want to do. Kramer brought up the point that Air Force will play Michigan the next week. Maybe the Falcons don’t want to show too much of their offense and will have a somewhat vanilla game plan.

    On the other hand, maybe they’ll show the Wolverines everything.

    “Air Force wants to run the ball and use play action pass to go over the top and keep you off balance,” Kramer said. “Of course they play Michigan next week, so they want to show things to Michigan that maybe they want Michigan to have to work on.”

    The game will be fun on Saturday. Make sure you at least listen to Jerry Miller’s broadcast to get the feeling of the difference in offenses.