A Blast From My Past

Today I was returning some books my family had checked out at the local library. (It’s close to my church office).  The library regularly puts out boxes of old books it’s looking to get rid of for whatever you wish to pay for them.  Over the years I’ve found some neat titles including some great sports books, extra copies of some spiritual classics like “Knowing God” and a few youth books for my kids to read.

Today was different.  As I perused the boxes of old books and magazines what do I find but a box quite familiar to my youth.  You see it above.  How many of you remember this game?  I remember “Football Strategy” when Sports Illustrated first purchased the game in 1977.  I was 11 at the time and a group of my friends and me put together a simple league of players that would play games each day after school while we waited for our buses to come and take us home.  Some of the guys rode the same bus so we were able to take the game with us and finish it while we rode home!  A ten game league with playoffs was the norm and we usually finished about the same time as the real NFL so we could start playing the baseball game in the spring.

“Surely this is someone’s throwaway” I thought.  “They probably had spare parts in here and decided to get rid of it.”  The box was well worn with a stain or two on it but as I opened it to check out the contents, there preserved was the entire game!  All of it.  All the cards needed, the die, the books, the charts, even the “widow’s guide to pro football” that was thrown into the game as a joke by its creators.  The widow’s guide didn’t even look like it had been read!  “Ah, but what about the football and ten yard marker” I thought.  I figured since I was lucky enough to find something in as good a shape as this, I would fabricate my own from card stock and my laser printer.  Just as I began to close the case, the two little pieces I looked for fell from the box.  They had been tucked in one of the booklets.  I couldn’t believe it.  The game was in great shape.  Aside from normal use, it looked like it had been put back on a shelf sometime in 1982 (About the time my original copy had come up missing!) and never been touched.  My inner child smiled and gleefully put the box in the bag that had held my family’s books and I made my way to the church office to lay it all out on my desk to see if it really was just like I remember it nearly a quarter century ago!

I could write about my first FS game in 25 years but it’s enough to say I remembered the simplicity this game had for me at a time when board games were just beginning to take over my leisure time.  As the early 80’s gave way to the Commodore 64 computer, more advanced sports strategy games emerged and I remembered loaning this out to a younger friend of mine to play.  Within three years I would be married and I never saw the game again.

If you’re under 35, you probably never remembered this game or if you did, you might remember your older brother having his friends over for some fun and snacks.  For the rest of us, you can probably understand my enthusiasm and my wife’s laughing at me when I came home with the game tucked under my arm!  “It’s coming up on Easter Sunday” she said.  “Is this what you did to prepare to reach the guests we’ll have?” Hmmm…I had to think about that for a minute.  “I’ll finish prepping the message in the morning” I replied.  “Tonight, me and my son are going to the coffee shop to play a game”.  She didn’t think my son would have any interest in something I played when I was his age.  Not with the sophistication of the PS2 football games he owns and the techno freak he is.  But he grinned as I told him the story of my treasure find.  Perhaps to humor his old man he said, “Yea, that would be cool to sit down and try to figure this out!”

We’re off in an hour or so…I just hope I remember my great aerial offense tactics to knock down his defense!   Or perhaps he’ll run me into the ground.  Either way, it feels like 1977 all over again!