Yes, Texas Tech is pretty much a modern take on what Brigham Young ran with McMahon, Bosco and Detmer back in their days of 46-45 and 52-52 games.
You're right about the blocking and splits. Leach spread out his linemen more than just about any other team I can think of.
And I hate the generic term "spread" as much as anybody. The first time I heard the term used was in the late 1980s when Hawaii ran a spread-option offense and had a lot of success with it. But their version (which they just called a "spread") almost always had the quarterback under center, not in a shotgun.
Urban Meyer was an assistant at Colorado State, one of Hawaii's conference rivals, during the time Hawaii ran that offense. I've always wondered if that is where he got the idea.
I think BYU has wider splits, but not surprisingly they are Air Raid too, and Robert Anae who is BYU's offensive coordinator was the O-Line coach at TT when they first made the change.
Wagner ran the spread option, you are correct, and perhaps you are right about the Meyer-Hawaii connection. But I know for a fact that Meyer, and Dan Mullen visited Louisville to see John L. Smith and Scott Linehan, visited Joe Tiller and Jim Chaney [Yes our very own Jim Chaney] at Purdue, Randy Walker and Kevin Wilson at Northwestern and good old Rich Rod at West Virginia. I also heard he spent a lot of time with Paul Johnson at Georgia Southern, perhaps that is where the option comes into play? He basically incorporated every thing he learned from those guys, and those guys really did know their stuff back in 2001, they were some offensive juggernauts.
Both Purdue and Louisville were traditional "one-back" offenses that Dennis Erickson, and Bill McCartney came up with, and what Scott Linehan, and Bobby Petrino have became so famous for. Which is why I would love to see Jim Chaney get the full reigns of the offense.
I can guarantee that there is little that Meyer runs now that Louisville, Purdue and West Virginia weren't running back then. Most differences are formations and motions, cosmetic things. Meyer just simply took the Counter, Trap, QB Power, Option, Zone Read, and IZ and OZ and put them into Shotgun extensively, nothing revolutionary, but something people weren't ready for, because they thought that it couldn't happen.
YouTube - Percy Harvin Counter Play
Just look at the video, that is nothing short of what Joe Gibbs would run in Washington, but Meyer was intelligent enough to throw it into shotgun, something no one else had thought of.
I'd be willing to bet though, that we won't see some of the stuff he normally runs because Tebow will be gone. The good thing about Urban, is he constantly adjusts, and I'd be willing to bet that he incorporates something else that no one is ready for.