Forth Worth, Texas ? Scan the list of leading rushers in NCAA Division I-A. There’s something missing.

Houston, you have a problem. Austin, Lubbock, Waco, too. You’ve all got a problem.

There is no runner from a college in the state of Texas in the top 10, top 20 or top 30 in NCAA rushing stats. The leading rusher from the Lone Star State is Patrick Cobbs of North Texas. His 91.3 yards per game ranks him No. 36.

“Since the 1950s, Texas has been a running back state,” Fort Worth-based writer and college football historian Dan Jenkins said. “But it always changes. We went from wide- open football in the 1930s to the wing-T. Now, we’re drifting back to everybody getting in a spread offense and throwing the ball.”

Texas is ranked No. 2 and stalking its first national championship since 1970. Back then, the Longhorns were ground-pounders with the wishbone formation. UT version ’05 is third nationally in rushing but is doing it unconventionally.

Junior quarterback Vince Young leads the team in rushing. His 86.4 yards per game ranks 45th nationally. Freshman Jamaal Charles is UT’s top running back. His 78 yards per game ranks 60th.

What in the name of Doak Walker and Jim Swink is going on in the Lone Star State? In six of the past eight years, a school from Texas has produced the nation’s leading rusher. From 1997 to 2000, UT’s Ricky Williams and TCU’s LaDainian Tomlinson each won consecutive rushing titles.

Side note: The Frogs do have a top-five rusher — Aaron Robert Merrill Brown. Combine the yards of junior Robert Merrill and freshman Aaron Brown and you get 145 yards per game — which would be fourth nationally.

Has the game changed that much? Would Earl Campbell be a starting running back at Texas, or would he play the role of freshman short-yardage specialist Henry Melton? Would Eric Dickerson be a tight end or a wide receiver?

“For years, the conventional wisdom for defensive coaches was, ‘You have to stop the run,'” former Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum said. “That’s where you started when you schemed against a team. You had teams playing eight-, nine-man fronts, and it became harder to run the ball.”

To counter stacked defensive fronts, the current trend is the “spread offense.” The idea is for offensive alignments to force the defense to defend more of the field.

“You’re seeing the total opposite end of the spectrum from the days of the wishbone,” said Slocum, who is a voter in the Master Coaches Survey. “You’ve got people lining up with four, five wide receivers, nobody in the backfield.

“You’re throwing the ball to four or five receivers, by the time you get around to the running back, there’s just not that many chances for him to carry it. You give the running back 30 carries, you’ve got a bunch of upset receivers.”

During the past decade, high schools have been allowed to participate in off-season passing leagues that led to a seven-on-seven state championship. That has helped develop quarterbacks and passing offenses at the high school level and has made running backs supporting players.

“Kids go all summer throwing and catching,” Slocum said. “That has tremendously elevated the skill level of receivers and quarterbacks in the state of Texas. It’s changed the game.”

Football is cyclical. In the 1930s and 1940s with Sammy Baugh, Davey O’Brien and Bobby Layne, the state of Texas was known for its wide-open attacks.

Starting in the 1950s and over the next three or four decades, the style changed to three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust running games, including the wishbone.

“Everybody throws the ball so much these days, it’s hard for a back to make any yards,” Jenkins said. “I’ll bet the runners who are leading the nation are on losing teams.”

Close, but not quite.

The schools of the top-10 leading rushers this week have a combined win-loss record of 53-36, or an average record of about 5-4.

But for now, at least, the running game has been run out of town. The state’s two best teams — 9-0 Texas and 8-1 Texas Tech — are winning not because they’re saddling up running backs. They’re succeeding with modern offenses in which ground delivery is the ultimate in snail mail.