By Clint McElroy
HQ 118 | SUMMER 2022
While this edition of the magazine features a Thundering Herd football preview, I thought I would take this opportunity to offer up a personal football review. Let me explain. In past editions of this column, I have told you about a few instances which proved I was not adept at playing the brutal sport:
- There was the time as a kid that I split my head open by running into a tree trying to catch a football in my backyard.
- There was the time I sprained my neck and had to be hauled away to the St. Mary’s Emergency Room playing in the Flag Football Intramurals Championship at Marshall University.
- And there was the time I sprained both thumbs on consecutive plays in a full-pads-and-helmet charity game between the Huntington Jaycees and the Cabell County Sheriff’s Department.
Obviously, I was not cut out for playing traditional football. But there was one style of the sport that I was very good at, one that was not quite so life-threatening — Foto Electric Football. My cousins Tim and Tom Neal had a Foto Electric Football game, and we played it all the time. It was made by a company called Cadaco and it was based on my strong suit — strategy.
The Foto device consisted of a box with a lightbulb in it and a semi-opaque screen at the top shaped like a football field. Offensive plays were printed on thin sheets of paper using Xs and Os and lines indicating a running play or a passing play. One player would select a play and put it facedown on the screen without the other player knowing what it was. The other player would then select a defense and place it facedown on top of the other. Then, hut one, hut two, and you would turn on the light. The paper would disappear, leaving just the diagrams. The play’s success or failure was determined by where the defensive lines crossed the ball carrier’s line.
Exciting, right? OK, so maybe it wasn’t Patrick Mahomes hitting Travis Kelce across the middle for a touchdown in overtime, but we loved every second of it. You could play for hours, or until the light bulb burned out. You could learn plays like the buttonhook route, jet sweep, lonesome polecat, skinny post, flea flicker and fumblerooski. And, you didn’t have to risk sprained necks, sprained thumbs or 17 stitches in your head.
I never forgot the Foto Electric Football game. A couple of years ago I found one for sale on eBay and bought it. I ultimately decided to use it as the trophy for my family’s Fantasy Football League. Yep, my love of football strategy continues today as the general manager of “Jabba the Hutt One, Hutt Two.” And just like Foto, fantasy football is fun, engaging and, most importantly, safe.
And the adventure continues …
