“The Single Wing and a Prayer”, by Keith Piper and David Piper, a 300 page book complete with a 75 minute DVD which describes in detail Keith Piper’s single wing offense which he ran successfully at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, is now available for purchase by visiting the Denison University Bookstore, http://www.denisonbookstore.com.
The price of the book is $38.95 plus $9.95 for shipping and handling. All proceeds will go toward the Denison University Football Program.
Keith Piper was the Denison University head football coach from 1954-1992, and for 18 of those years he ran, exclusively, the single wing offense. For many of those years, Denison was the only college football team in the nation running the “antiquated” offense, which features a direct snap back to the waiting tailback or fullback and a “quarterback” who often leads the play by trapping or blocking through the hole. The lone wingback, for whom the offense was named, figures prominently in the power series and the reverses and misdirection plays associated with the single wing offense. Keith Piper, from Niles, Ohio, was a center for his Niles McKinley High School football team which ran the single wing offense under Coach Earl Hoker. He continued on to Baldwin-Wallace College and played single wing center for Coach Ray Watts. In 1962 in his ninth year as Denison’s head coach, and because he had no traditional quarterbacks to run the split-T offense, he turned to the single wing with Tony Hall, a transfer from Ohio State, at tailback. Denison lost only two games in the 1962-63 seasons, featuring two-way players running the offense and staying in the game to play defense. Piper would return to various forms of the “T” in 1965 with many successful seasons, and in 1978 he put the single wing in again and never turned back until his retirement in 1992. The book also features many anecdotes from former Denison players and coaches who coached with and against Keith Piper. David Piper, one of Keith’s sons, picked up the book in 2003 and finished what his father had started back in 1979, a book about the single wing offense and Coach Piper’s life in football.
The Single Wing and a Prayer 