I am noticing that most people are using one formation regardless of situation. My question is what are the pros and cons of each formation before I choose one.

Pro - Higher FIQ, Easier Gameplans

Cons - Easier to gameplan against, lack of versatility which may limit your ability to take advantage of certain situations. Typically lower FIQ the more formations you practice.

I place an extreme value on FIQ, so I use only 1 offensive formation. I am sure other coaches have different opinions.

Hope this helps.

nitros (James)

The theory would be that certain formations work better for certain types of offenses - Wishbone/ND Box for Running, I/Pro for Balanced, and Trips/Shotgun for passing. I'm not positive it actually works that way in practice though.

I think most people choose the balanced formations for recruiting purposes. There is a finite number of roughly similarly skilled players available at each position. So if you only need to recruit 1 RB, 1 WR, 1 TE, you can do so relatively inexpensively and save your money for those OL, DL and DBs that cost a ton. However if you are running wishbone and need to recruit 2-3 RB's you'd have to spend more or risk not having enough depth. Or maybe it's just because the other formations aren't as effective, I haven't tried them in a while.

I would look at the successful teams and see which ones run an offense that you would like to run, i.e. balanced, pass-heavy, or run-heavy. And then see what offensive formations they are using. I have been using Pro-Set exclusively for awhile because it seems to be the most versatile, but am starting to experiment with other formations.

Most of my formations are offensive, so I wouldn't look at anything I do.