I don’t think the basketball analogy carries over well to football. In hoops, a distinctive style of play can take a more talented opponent out of its comfort zone. That is, to a significant degree, on both offense and defense a basketball team can dictate the tempo of a game—slow down a transition team, speed up a half-court team.

In football, I think the only way to really do this is on offense, by going to a no-huddle or trotting out crazy formations. Yes, you can blitz a whole bunch to try to upset a precision passing attack, and you can “stack the box” to try to shut down a run game. But we’re kind of off-topic, aren’t we? Rather than play calling, we’re now into the more general area of game planning.

Hydro is right: all play calling is (or at least should be) grounded in a game-long (even season-long) strategy of deceiving opponents. Giving them something they don’t expect. Thus, the notion of a “trick play” may not be all that helpful.

But while conventional (for lack of a better label) play calling attempts to be deceptive over a whole series of plays, what we fans commonly see as “trick” plays stand out all by themselves, regardless of down, distance, score, field position, tendencies, etc.. And the reason they do so—just as you note, Ken—is because the play is designed to have an unconventional number of players touch the ball. Since almost every play involves two touches (after the center), anything other than two is almost always surprising or “tricky”.

Should Cal use more of these? I don’t know. Depends on the opponent, the personnel, the game situation. In 2009, any play that gets the ball in Jahvid Best’s hands will be a welcome play call as far as I’m concerned. I really don’t care how many other players touch the ball before or after him—as long as they’re all wearing Blue and Gold!

I think he’s trying to dispel common misconceptions regarding football, and educate us all regarding what’s actually going on. He’s got a point in that the use of the term ‘trick play’ is problematic, since it implies that there are ‘non-trick plays’ which don’t involve any deception, which isn’t really true. Still, I agree with you that ‘everybody knows what a trick play is’.

I actually rather like your definition; it seems like a good catch-all definition, though I’m not sure it would cover certain types of fake kicks. Here’s my definition; how do you think it compares?

Or, alternately, every play is a trick play, because they all involve deception in some manner.

However, I think we can all agree that there is some ‘layman’ definition of what a trick play is, and that such a category is a real subset of all football plays. You may find such a category faulty or even meaningless, but you can’t deny that when someone says ‘trickeration’, a certain subset of football plays come to mind. I think the key ingredient in such plays is this: while every play involves deception of some sort, most plays involve deception in terms of player movement (such as pulling guards or crossing routes), or fakes that suggest the ball might go somewhere, but it in fact doesn’t (like pump fakes, or play-action passes). However, the average fan, who is watching the ball, isn’t paying much attention to such things, and so isn’t fooled by such ‘deception’. In the average fan’s mind, a ‘trick’ play involves a sudden misdirection of the ball, such as occurs with laterals, reverses, and flea-flickers. Such plays fool the fans at least as much as, if not more than, the defense.

Oops… it was supposed to read “Great defenses are lesslikely to allow a trick play to actually work.”

You make a really good point here, Ken. I don’t think a playcaller can simply call a trick play just to call something tricky; rather the call should be made because the playcaller believes it will exploit a certain weakness in the defense. A great defense will obviously present fewer of these weakness that can be exploited. While obviously anything Cal can do offensively to keep USC’s defense form expecting what is coming at them is a good thing, I think Cal has to be both more sophisticated and less cavalier in drawing up an offensive gameplan.